Teaneck—Many people of all ages gathered in a packed living room for Rabbi Hanoch Teller’s speech presenting his latest book, “Heroic Children,” at the home of Chary and Steven Fox. Steven is co-chair of the Teaneck Holocaust Commemoration Committee.
“Heroic Children” recounts the lives of nine children from all different religious and socio-economic backgrounds who went through the Holocaust and lived to tell their story. Father of 18 children and author of 28 books, Teller shared that he has worked on this particular book for over 14 years.
Teller addressed how this book is different than the multitude of Holocaust literature already available. “I think that the frontier that has not yet been explored is the story of children,” said Teller. “When the war was over, everyone, understandably, wanted to tell their story of how they suffered. The children were able to tell it then but they haven’t told it since.”
“Teller’s book is significant because, as we know, the amount of survivors is diminishing every day and the ones that are still around are primarily child survivors,” Fox said in Teller’s introduction. The Holocaust is becoming an event of the distant past, making it all the more necessary to keep the memory alive. Teller said that when he grew up, seeing numbers on peoples’ arms was a very common occurrence. “I wonder how many numbers my children have seen and whether my grandchildren have seen any at all.”
“What is the most famous story of the Holocaust?” Teller asked the audience.
“Anne Frank,” was the resounding reply.
“Now, Anne’s story is not a reflective story,” explained Teller. “She wasn’t in the camps, she had a roof over her head, there was a modicum of food, and she was with her family. But because it is a story, it is so well known. It is easier to relate. The way the mind works is that it is easier to relate to one than to a quarter of a million. It is even easier to relate to six million paper clips over six million souls.”
Instead of rattling off statistics, Teller said he recounts stories so “people can better personalize what happened.” The goal of the book, explained Teller, is so “you can read these riveting stories and know the whole story of the Holocaust.”
Teller recounted the nerve-wracking story of how he got permission to use his book’s cover picture, a young Hungarian child at the Auschwitz liberation, mere hours before it went to print. “For those of you who say ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover,’ I say to you, ‘You’ve never tried to sell a book,’” Teller said jokingly. When he requested the picture from The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he was told the child on the cover did not want his picture altered and used in any way. Given only a possible last name and a continent of origin, Teller used his powers of deduction to track this man down and get his permission 13 minutes before printing.
“If you park your car in front of a fire hydrant and you get a $150 ticket, that’s frustration,” he described. “But if you learn from this to never park in front of a hydrant again, this frustration became tuition and you learn something productive from it. We’ve never had a more painful experience than the Holocaust and it makes me crazy how we haven’t learned a thing. And nor has the world. This is one of the things we attempt to address in this book.”
Teller used stories from the Holocaust so that those listening could incorporate lessons for their own lives. “Oskar Schindler was a dishonest businessman, a womanizer, and he saved nearly 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, “ recounted Teller. “Had it not been for the latter, if he would’ve been remembered, and that’s a major ‘if,’ it would’ve been as a creep. But now the name Oskar Schindler is synonymous with heroism, bravery and courage. Like Vaseline means petroleum jelly and Kleenex means tissues, Schindler means self-sacrifice. He changed his name. And we can too.”
The book can be purchased online at www.hanochteller.com and at local Jewish bookstores.
