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Wounded by war, writer tells story

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/14781/full/14781/wounded-by-war-writer-tells-story/ Wounded by war, writer tells story Friday, January 5, 2001 | by ABBY JACOBS "My life is more paradoxical than most other people's," says Eva Wald Leveton. "The good guys in Holland kicked me out and the bad guys in Berlin kept me." The child of a Jewish father who escaped Germany through Holland and then to San Francisco, and a Christian mother who was forced to return to Berlin during World War II, Leveton moved to San Francisco in 1946 at age 11. She tells her story in "Eva's Berlin." Paradoxically, while survival was problematic, it was less so in the capital of the Third Reich, which harbored some 6,000 Jews during the war, than in many other Nazi-occupied communities. "Any other city would have been a different story," she says. "It was a friendly, tolerant city." A blue-eyed blonde, she could easily pass for Aryan on the streets of Berlin. Nonetheless, she lived in constant fear. "My star is invisible," she writes, "yet I'm afraid they'll see it anyway." The fear included worries that her paternal grandparents would be sent to concentration camps, fear that neighbors would turn in her mother—who frequently made anti-Nazi remarks—and, of course, fear of the Nazis. She describes herself as a "child caught in the in-between," meaning, between the Nazis and Jews. Between her mother and her grandmother. Between the ruins of her mother's Berlin and the promise of her father's America. When the Christian children were evacuated from Berlin for safety in a transport called the kinderschulverschickung, Leveton remained behind so as not to draw attention to her Jewish identity—and fellow Berliners kept her safe. Thus, Leveton remained in Berlin with the other half-Jewish children, but that meant "living on a fringe" and she had to "learn to tread carefully." Air raids were nightly activities. The bomb shelter became Leveton's schoolhouse and her neighbors became her teachers. She learned math, history and geography as well as medieval lays, the songs of troubadours. Food was scarce. By the end of the war, meals consisted only of potatoes and onions. "We watch as each other's faces become pale and our bodies become thinner," says Leveton, in the voice of herself as a child. When the war ended, Leveton, at age 11, weighed 60 pounds and her mother weighed a mere 80. Her wartime sorrows were compounded by immense family strife. Despite repeated warnings, her father did not escape Germany until 1939. Although her father was given asylum in Holland because he was Jewish, she and her mother were not. As a result, her mother harbored bitterness toward her father and was deeply unhappy. Forced to return to Berlin, Leveton and her mother had to live in her maternal grandparents' home. That home, ideally, should have been a shelter from the external conflict, but her grandmother remained a major foe. Leveton's grandmother always said that marriage to a Jew was one of her mother's worst mistakes and treated them all with a great deal of contempt. After the war ended and Leveton's mother secured papers to immigrate to the United States, Leveton was reluctant to go. Despite a friend's remark that "everything is golden in California," Leveton feared that she wouldn't like her father. She writes: "I don't want to think about [leaving]. My feet are used to these grey stones, my mouth and my heart belong to the soft Berlin air." And though Leveton did leave Germany, her immigration to the United States did not immediately raise her quality of life. She reflects upon her years in America, saying, "Whereas my struggle in Germany centered on the question, 'What does it mean to be Jewish?' I am now struggling with 'What does it mean to be German?'" Additionally, Leveton's parents' physical and emotional health deteriorated. "The war destroyed my parents, pure and simple," she writes. Her father died of cancer when she was 16. Her mother, who had been an alcoholic, committed suicide when Leveton was 19. Leveton was at Stanford University when her mother died, studying psychology and active in drama. During and after college, she was associated with the Interplay and Actors Workshop, and taught acting at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1959, she received a master's degree in psychotherapy at San Francisco State University. She worked for seven years at the University of California Medical Center and then entered into private practice. Leveton, who lives with her husband in San Rafael, never intended to tell her story, but that changed 12 years ago when she went into therapy to finally come to terms with years of pain and fear. Part of her therapy was writing poems about her feelings, of which excerpts are included in the book. She also felt the need to put her emotions into writing in order to have something concrete to share with her two sons, Sasha and Julian, on their trips to Berlin, where she has returned several times. She says her husband of 30 years, Alan Leveton, gave her much strength in the process of writing the book. And though she says that "Hitler ruined me for real [Jewish] affiliation," Leveton has reached out to the Jewish community through workshops and lectures to help heal some of the traumas of the war.

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