ABSTRACT
The Jews who escaped from the Nazis had to live in countries whose languages they didn’t understand, and had to adapt to local customs that made no sense to them. In order to properly navigate, while trying to pretend they knew what they were doing, they had to reinvent themselves, and to create personal myths that would allow them to hold on to their convictions in a way that also would accord with their new lives. How else could they explain—to themselves and others—what previously had been normal and now seemed bizarre? This was difficult enough for families that were immigrating together. But those whose members left separately, and who had different experiences, needed to create their own survival myths. For instance, my mother was bound to resent remaining in Vienna while assuming that her husband was having a good time in Paris, and that her children not only were safe in Belgium but happy. My father, whose charmed life had been based on his entrepreneurial skills, had to reestablish his business, in order to overcome his depression and to reunite us and reestablish our former way of life. My brother was young and fortunate enough to continue putting his energies into playing soccer, thereby hiding his longing for his mother. I escaped into glorious fantasies of an as yet vague intellectual and glamorous future. But could such divergent myths portend well for a harmonious family life?
