My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me by Gina Roitman

My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me by Gina Roitman

Gina Roitman: Photo by Lynn Hatwin

We've all heard stories from our mothers, stories that made us feel uncomfortable or that we rolled our eyes at. As young girls, the tales were often too far removed from our own experiences to have any meaning.

It's usually much later in life when these stories carry much more significance for us. These stories tell us who we are and add a few more missing pieces to our own identity puzzle.

Writer Gina Roitman has just released a chilling documentary featuring some incredible personal discoveries. She has spent the last eight years filming her investigation into a tale that her mother began telling her when she was very young.

Gina Roitman grew up in Montreal, but was born in Germany in the years following the Second World War. Her parents were Holocaust survivors whose family members had all perished in concentration camps. Roitman's mother often told her young daughter stories of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. But young Gina was living in a different country at a different time, and as can be expected, she wasn't all that interested in her mother's stories. She also refused to believe that all Germans could be as horrible as her mother said, something that infuriated her mother.

Around the world, many people believe that after World War II ended, the Nazis suddenly disappeared. But as we see in the documentary, this was not the case.

Roitman's parents met at an overpopulated Displaced Persons camp outside Passau, Germany, in the US military zone. When Roitman's mother became pregnant, she insisted that her daughter be born at a birthing centre, and not in the camp. Too many Jewish babies were inexplicably dying there; a murderer was ostensibly afoot. The mother said that she had saved Gina's life.

For Roitman, this was just one of her mother's paranoid stories. Then, many years after her mother had died, Roitman discovered the work of Anna Rosmus, a German historian who had investigated the treatment of Jews in Passau in the 20th century. It was then that Roitman heard the story again of the mysterious deaths of Jewish babies at the Displaced Persons camp at Pocking-Waldstadt where her parents had lived.

In My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me, a one-hour documentary, Gina Roitman returns to Passau for the first time in her life to meet Anna Rosmus, investigate her mother's claims and ultimately discover some important parts of her own identity. This is a moving documentary that should not be missed. The footage and stories are haunting.

To see a trailer of the film click here.

My Mother, the Nazi Midwife and Me will be showing on Saturday, May 18 on the CBC Documentary Channel. 

Other documentaries:
5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi
Detropia by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
Finding Dawn by Christine Welch
The Fruit Hunters by Yung Chang


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Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée

Susceptible by Geneviève Castrée

Susceptible 
Geneviève Castrée
Drawn and Quarterly

Susceptible is Geneviève Castrée’s first full-length English-language graphic novel. The multi-disciplinary artist and Quebec native has crafted a moving tale about Goglu, a bright, dreamy little girl who has a less than ideal start in life. As the title implies, she is sensitive, but Vulnerable would have also been a fitting title.

The reader meets Goglu still in the womb asking about whether sadness can be inherited from one generation to the next. The little girl is born to a 19-year-old Quebec mother and her English-speaking logger boyfriend in 1981. Her father played a very minor parenting role before moving to British Columbia, “a mythical kingdom where dads go to disappear.”

Her mother like droves of other young people in the early eighties had gone out west to make some quick money during the Alberta oil boom and experience her first adult adventure. Her mother, Amère, which aptly reflects her bitterness, returns to Quebec alone to give birth, but family support is not forthcoming. The youngest of 16 children, Amère didn’t receive much herself in the way of parenting.

Goglu is a latch-key kid from the time she starts school. Her mother sets an alarm clock so that the six-year-old knows when it is time to get ready and catch the bus to school.

Amère is a struggling single mother who still parties like most 20-year-olds, but strictly on the weekends. She eventually meets her significant other, Amer, and they move in together, but Amer in no way assumes any fathering responsibilities, and he resents Goglu. The weekend parties continue, and too ashamed to invite friends over to her house, the girl finds herself alone, a lot. As a teen, Goglu is troubled by her mother’s increasing dependence on alcohol.

At her South Shore school, Goglu is an outcast, an odd duck among a bunch of suburban kids. But in high school, she makes friends through that great equalizer—drugs. She struggles to finish high school as she starts to use harder drugs, and then eerily finds herself in her mother’s previous predicament, the one that ruined “her bright future.”

Geneviève Castrée shows genuine talent as a graphic novelist and has created a compelling story. Particularly innovative is the circular panel she uses to illustrate an intense argument with her mother. We can all attest that arguments tend to be circular in nature, often returning to the original accusations.

Of all the books I’ve read in the last few years, I found Susceptible the most heart-wrenching. Goglu, like many unwanted children, internalizes her mother and stepfather’s resentment, which unsurprisingly results in her own anger, depression and self-imposed alienation.

Although it would be easy to point the finger at Amère for being a poor mother, she too was an unwanted child. As a single-parent with few resources, she chose to live with another wage-earner to make life and decision-making a little easier. In her desperation, she not only chose a man she didn’t love, but also one who had little patience for her daughter.

A lot of people will find this a harrowing read, but for many this will be validation for their own experiences growing up in cash-strapped homes with ill-equipped parents. Susceptible should be on the bookshelf of every teacher, guidance counsellor, social worker and planned parenthood advocate.

I applaud the publisher for taking this risk on a story that could potentially help a lot of people, both young and old.

This has been cross-posted at Rover Arts.

Other reviews
Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado
Bombay Wali and other stories by Veena Gokhale
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Gay Dwarves of America by Anne Fleming
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston
The World is Moving Around Me by Dany Laferrière
The Return by Dany Laferrière

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis

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Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado

Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado

The gift of a book can change the course of a child’s life,” writes Ania Szado in the acknowledgments of her recent historical novel Studio Saint-Ex. Szado is referring to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which she received as a gift at age 11. This is when the seed of Studio Saint-Ex ostensibly was planted.

Ania Szado has researched the life of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry while he was writing The Little Prince in 1943 and has created his character and that of his estranged wife, Consuelo, based on widely known historical facts.

The Saint-Exupérys are in essence insta-characters, torn from the pages of history. Studio Saint-Ex is a fictionalization of their lives when they were living in New York as expats during the Nazi occupation of France.

Into the storyline, Szado has inserted her own original character, 22-year-old Mignonne Lachapelle, an ambitious young fashion designer, who meets Antoine de Saint-Exupéry through the French community. As can be expected, the young woman falls in love with the legendary writer.

As history would have it, the couple had an open marriage, and this serves as Mignonne Lachapelle’s promising point of entry into their lives. At the same time, the ingenue is trying to forge a name for herself in the fashion industry, just as there is an upsurge in demand for high-fashion items in New York.

In her first job as a designer’s assistant, Mignonne is ordered to drum up business in the French community, where fashion trends are started. As the wife of an exalted figure among expats, Consuelo is considered influential and, consequently, a highly prized potential client. While Mignonne proposes items from her clothing line to Consuelo, she is also trying to seduce her husband. The wife is wise to this and plays along, continually turning the situation to her own advantage.

Although initially the story has great narrative force, it quickly loses momentum and becomes predictable. What saves the book is some particularly inspired writing by Ania Szado on the art of garment design.

As tempting as it may be to use historical figures as the basis of a novel, history still imposes some rather severe limitations, particularly on this storyline. Szado states in the book’s Afterword that some sources suggest that Saint-Exupéry’s extramarital relationships were “exclusively platonic.”

Consequently, the love triangle serves as little more than a tease to readers, reducing the focus of the novel to the aspirations of the young fashion designer. In the end, the story becomes completely implausible when Mignonne manages to co-opt Saint-Exupéry’s work and catapult her own career.

Studio Saint-Ex is a forced fit. Ultimately, Saint-Exupery’s name and The Little Prince, among the best-selling books of all time, are used to draw in readers, but the story is too farfetched and contrived to take seriously.

This has been cross-posted at the Globe and Mail.


Other reviews
Bombay Wali and other stories by Veena Gokhale
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier
Gay Dwarves of America by Anne Fleming
One Good Hustle by Billie Livingston
The World is Moving Around Me by Dany Laferrière
The Return by Dany Laferrière

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

The Goodtime Girl by Tess Fragoulis

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Read more »