D.Z. Stone is a journalist with academic training in cultural anthropology. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and Newsday. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, she holds a Masters from Columbia University. She resides outside of New York City.
"Kati & Willi Salcers' resilience in the face of terror
demonstrates how nothing can stop us from living our lives. They
are the definition of inspiration! Check out their #biography, NO
PAST TENSE: Love and Survival in the Shadow of the Holocaust."
--Tony Robbins
"In an age of Holocaust denial, which simply provides more proof of
the fragility of human reason, books like this provide additional
evidence of what happened because Hitler considered Jews vermin and
the German people went along. That's reason enough to hope this
volume finds lots of readers." --Bill Tammeus, Bill's 'Faith
Matters' Blog
"This unique and almost accidental biography of two young people,
separately, living through horrible events during the Holocaust is
bound to be considered a classic telling of the Holocaust
experience. How is it accidental? Willi and Kati Salcer spent
decades of their lives as Holocaust survivors shunning any and all
opportunities to tell their stories. They were not interested in
bringing those memories to the surface. Kati, in particular, did
not think their horrible experiences could be made shareable. They
finally succumbed at the insistence of their son Ron, who came to
understand - without knowing any details - that his parents, once
two young Jewish Czech teenagers, had been through terrible
experiences during WWII. He managed to have them record their
experiences for the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1996. The
Foundation is housed at the University of Southern California. Ron
felt that more could be drawn out of them, and he also felt that
their story should be available in book form. He sought and found
the ideal person to build the chronicle for readers, preserving the
couple's voices while adding her own as well as an engaging
narrative structure. That person is journalist and cultural
anthropology specialist D.Z. Stone. Katarina Kellner and William
Salcer, both from small Czech villages, met in 1944. Both had been
educated in topnotch Budapest schools. After the Germans invaded
Hungary, the young people, who had met in a ghetto, found
themselves forced into labor camps. Willi survived Mauthausen and
Kati survived Auschwitz. Hearing of Willi's survival after
Germany's defeat, Kati successfully searched for him. Though their
personalities and values were not entirely harmonious, they
married. In 1946, they smuggled themselves into pre-state Israel,
where they flourished until they felt the need to move on. After
leaving Israel, they lived in many places, but most of their
several homes were in the United States where they maintained
citizenship and where Willi rebuilt and improved upon his
remarkable career as an inventor and businessman. He held sixteen
patents. All through the early part of their lives, and even into
their later years, the Salcers suffered frequent, and sometimes
unspeakable, hardships, as did their Czech relatives. How they
faced and fought through those obstacles is illuminated by the
dozens of stories synthesized brilliantly by Ms. Stone. Every
reader will have his or her favorite story. Here are some of them:
In April 1944, Hungarian gendarmes push Kati - along with her
mother, brother and grandmother - from their home. Laughing all the
way, the gendarmes direct them to enter the next-door home.
Incredibly, this new Jewish ghetto included the home of Kati's
great uncle, Oscar Bing. It was actually a very nice home,
well-supplied with food and other necessities. It was the nicest
place of confinement one could imagine. Other aspects of the
ghetto, however - a stepping stone to labor camps - were not so
pleasant. Soon enough, the confiscated homes of the town's Jews
were taken over by their non-Jewish neighbors, few if any of whom
showed any sympathy for their plight. In August 1945, after Kati's
liberation from Auschwitz and return to her family's village, she
went to the mayor's office to discuss the return of the
family-owned home and pharmacy. She wanted those Christians to be
gone and everything restored. After the mayor hemmed and hawed, not
ready to take such a step, Kati took matters more fully into her
own hands and moved into the adjacent gardener's shed. She became a
grand example of positive chutzpah. In Kati's own words decades
later, she explained: Yes, you can say this was a provocative act.
I knew people were watching from the house and there was a small
crowd of villagers pointing at me and whispering, "What is she
doing?" I was glad I was getting attention; let the entire village
be reminded of what they had done. In February 1946, the recently
married young couple, disgusted with conditions in postwar Europe,
connect ed with an organization called Hakshara. This entity
provided agricultural training for Jews hoping to emigrate to
Palestine. Illegal immigration was the only immigration possible
for the Salcers and other Jews. Just as luck would have it, while
they were pursuing this Aliyah hope, Willi received a notice
demanding him to report for duty in the Czechoslovakian army! How
they finally made their way to a new life in pre-state Israel is
one of the most fascinating stories in the book. The ship purchased
for the voyage was renamed "The Jewish Soldier." Willi contributed
his skills for what would become the new Jewish state by designing
and constructing tanks. Thus, he played his part in the unofficial
Israeli army. Soon after, in 1948, he became a member of the newly
formed Israeli Air Force. These vignettes, presented much more
elaborately in the book, offer a taste of what No Past Tense has in
store for readers. In the domain of their experience, there can
only be now and the future. Thus the book's title. October 16, the
book's publication date, is also the couple's wedding anniversary.
Even though they are gone from this world that tested them so
severely, their abiding love and resilient natures come alive on
every page."-- Philip K. Jason, Federation Star
"'No Past Tense' is not an easy book to read yet it is very
important in terms of history. It is the biography of Katarina
(Kati) Kellner and William (Willi) Salcer, two Czech Jews who as
teenagers lived through the Holocaust in Hungary and survived
Auschwitz and Mauthausen, respectively. Their stories are about
their childhoods, their education in Budapest, and 16-year-old Kati
meeting 19-year-old Willi in the Jewish ghetto in Plesivec, a
Slovak village annexed by Hungary in 1938. After they were
liberated from the camps they returned to learn that most Jews were
gone and the villagers that remained did not want them back. As an
act of defiance, Kati took up residence in a shed on her family's
property, and reclaimed what was hers and won Willi's heart. They
lived as smugglers in post-war Europe until 1946 when they
illegally immigrated to what was then known as Palestine. They
describe Palestine frankly and speak about issues that are rarely
addressed, especially prejudice against 'newcomers' from other
Jews. Willi built tanks for the Haganah, the underground Jewish
army that eventually became the Israel Defense Forces and supported
the War of Independence but he refused to move into homes that had
been abandoned by Palestinian Arabs. After he was discharged from
the Israeli Air Force, Willi founded the country's first rubber
factory and headed the association of Israeli manufacturers when he
was only 28 years old. In 1958, because he did not want children to
know war, Willi convinced Kati to move to America. What he did not
tell her was that punitive tax fines, imposed when the government
needed money due to the crisis in the Sinai, shook his faith in
Israel. This is an aspect of Israeli life that we rarely hear
about. In America, due to a few bad investments, Willi lost all
their money and Kati suffered panic attacks for the first time.
Willi was able to eventually rebuild his fortune, while Kati was
able to rediscover her courage, and start living again. Holocaust
memoirs can be very depressing and I know people who have totally
sworn them off. This does not mean that they have done the same
with the Holocaust but that it is time to take a break. What makes
this different from other memoirs is that it motivates us through
the courage seen by Willi and Kati. We have two distinct stories
that come together about two people who always looked forward even
during the bleakest of times. Through their resilience, they were
able to reinvent themselves when it was necessary to do so. The
Holocaust, of course, hovers over their lives but it does not stop
them from achieving their lives goals. Most of us would be unable
to bear being broken once but they were able to do so several times
and some back stronger as a result. Today anti-Semitism and
Holocaust denial seem to be more in the air than ever before and it
is so important that we never forget the past. The Salcers did not
share with their children that they has been in the camps and had
it not been for Ron Salcer's sense that his parents had experienced
something terrible, this story would have gone untold. As Ron
learned more through the interviews that he pushed his parents to
record. It was then that he decided to contact D.Z. Stone to write
down their life stories. In 1999, Stone conducted over 100 hours of
interviews that eventually became this book." -- Amos Lassen,
reviewsbyamoslassen.com
"Kati and Willi Salcers resilience in the face of terror
demonstrates how nothing can stop us from living our lives. They
are the definition of inspiration." -- Tony Robbins, NY Times #1
Best Selling Author, Philanthropist, and the World's #1 Life and
Business Strategist
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