Bina Addes, Wexler Oral History Project Oral Historian and child of Holocaust survivors, was interviewed by Jessica Parker on October 4, 2012 in Amherst, MA.

Bina was born in 1947 in a Displaced Persons Camp in Germany, where she spent the first couple years of her life. Her parents were both from Poland and each lost members of their immediate families before and during the Holocaust; Bina's maternal grandfather was killed in a pogrom when her mother was two years of age. She describes her parents' lives before World War II, and their unwillingness to discuss the Holocaust and how they survived.

Bina describes how relatives sponsored them to come to the US; her father wanted to go to Palestine, but her mother felt that she had had enough struggles. They moved in with her mother's cousins in Queens, New York. She grew up surrounded by a network of Survivor families; everyone was considered family and called cousin, even if they weren't related.

When they first arrived, Bina's father worked in the garment district, later running his own laundromat. They kept kosher and celebrated all the holidays, and Bina attended Hebrew School four days a week throughout elementary school. Yiddish was the primary language in Bina's home, but she began to respond in English as she learned the language. Her parents read Yiddish books and subscribed to The Jewish Daily Forward. Her family spent summers in the Catskills with other Survivor families until she was 9 or 10 and sent to a Jewish overnight camp, Camp Pokono Ramona in Flatbrookville, NJ, which, as she says, gave her freedom and helped her through her childhood.

Bina discusses how it was a bit of a shock to move from New York City to Amherst, MA. She was used to Jewish holidays being respected and it was harder to find Jewish community. She said that she felt like an outsider for the first time, though that feeling has since changed. At the time, when she went shopping with her daughters around Christmas, people would ask what Santa was bringing them, an assumption that was new to her.

Growing up, Bina received the message that the Holocaust was not to be discussed; 'big things' couldn't be talked about, resulting in a distant relationship with her parents. She found out that she and her sister had different fathers when Bina was in her thirties as her parents didn't want to jeopardize the sisters' relationship.

Reading Helen Epstein's book, Second Generation, was very significant for Bina and she joined a Second Generation group in Amherst for about five years. It was important for her to learn how being Second Generation impacted her; in turn, she realized that other people shared her experiences. Bina discusses becoming a school psychologist in part because her parents never tried to understand her emotionally and because she got to help children with learning difficulties. She had had learning difficulties as a child, but no one had tried to understand her.

Bina discusses that it's important to her to transmit an understanding of her background and what it means to be from a Holocaust Survivor family to the next generation. At the family Passover seder, for instance, they always remember those no longer with them. She has fostered her children's closeness with their extended family and relives it vicariously through them.

She concludes with advice for the next generation, and her hope that the young people pass along the culture. She asserts that the tradition, morals, and lessons of Judaism can be maintained, even if one is not religious.

To learn more about the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, visit:
http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tell-your-story

To cite this interview: Bina Addes Oral History Interview, interviewed by Jessica Parker, Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, Karmazin Recording Studio, Yiddish Book Center, October 4, 2012. Video recording, [https://archive.org/details/BinaAddes4oct2012YiddishBookCenter] ( [date accessed] )

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