Using Family Stories to Write Historical Fiction
By Guest | October 23, 2016 |
Helen Maryles Shankman’s mother’s family taken after the war in the Foehrenwald DP camp in Germany. Photo property of the author, all rights reserved.
Our guest today is Helen Maryles Shankman whose stories have been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She was a finalist in Narrative Magazine’s Story Contest and earned an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers competition. Her stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Gargoyle, Cream City Review, 2 Bridges Review, Grift, Jewishfiction.
I wanted to pay tribute to my parents’ war experiences—and the experiences of the people who risked their lives to save them. As a writer, I was concerned that people might be tiring of World War II. My challenge was to make people feel the Holocaust—for the first time—all over again.
Find Helen on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, and on her Amazon author page.
Using Family Stories to Write Historical Fiction
“So I jumped out of a tree, and I killed him with my knife.”
Anyone saying those words would have gotten my attention. The fact that they were being uttered by my mom’s friend, tiny, round, elderly Mr. Tenenbaum, sitting at my parents’ Passover Seder table, was what made them so extraordinary.
“What’s he talking about, Mom?” I asked her in the kitchen.
“Oh, just one of his stories. He was a partizan during the war,” she answered matter-of-factly.
For many years, whenever anyone asked me about myself, I would begin with, “My parents are Holocaust survivors.” My identity might have been forged by Dick and Jane, by “Bewitched” and “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” by the Viet Nam war on the news every night and the glorious Technicolor Sixties and Seventies, but it was also forged by my parents’ war traumas.
World War II took a terrible, invisible toll on my mother and father. For years, police, politicians, and neighbors persecuted them for their race and religion. Soldiers rounded up their friends and family and killed them. Half of their childhoods, they lived in various holes in the ground, praying that a passing hunter wouldn’t find their tracks and turn them in. The only constants were violence and upheaval. Long after the war was over, what took a terrible toll on them would take a terrible toll on us.
As a dreamy little girl, I wasn’t interested in my parents’ histories. I lost myself in books set in different times, in other places—1920s New York, Victorian England—running away inside my own mind. Mom and Dad’s childhood memories were so ruinously laced with evil that I wanted to shake them off, to forget them completely. World War II had been a long time ago. It was too grim, too gray, like old newspaper photographs.
But I couldn’t run away from my parents’ stories. As I grew up, I began to understand that they weren’t just memories that could be dismissed and forgotten; they were the origin stories for our own scarred and imperfect lives.
By then I was married, with children, and living in New York. I’d lived enough of my own American dream so that I could begin to look at my parents’ experiences with a storyteller’s eye.
My mother answered my questions with pitiless accuracy, like she was reading from witness testimony printed inside her eyelids. Her accounts were astounding, full of miraculous twists, last minute escapes, and her parents’ amazing ability to keep their wits in the abyss of chaos, brave Poles and Germans, fearless partizans. Frustratingly, when I tried writing it all down, her thrilling accounts flattened and dried up on the page. I wasn’t a historian. I was reluctant to use real names. I was afraid to write about things that would hurt people who were still living. I simply wasn’t a nonfiction writer.
So I wrote something else, something that flirted with my love of magical realism. My first novel, The Color of Light, was about a student in an art school run by a vampire. (I was deeply inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thank you, Joss Whedon.)
And here, among the vampires, my family history began to poke through the seams. I made my art student the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and my vampire, still grieving over a lover he’d lost in Auschwitz. Over the course of a long World War II flashback, I sent him to my Mom’s hometown of Wlodawa. I gave my vampire’s Jewish girlfriend a story line that had actually happened to a cousin. I used an anecdote my mother told me about hiding in a root cellar.
That was how it began. Fictionalizing my family’s stories—and adding magical realism—set me free. And set my imagination on fire.
Here are some techniques you can use to weave your family stories into your fiction:
Online Research can open doors. I began by investigating my mother’s stories. Finding the Yizkor Memorial Book for the Town of Wlodawa, Poland online was invaluable, confirming Mom’s versions of events and rounding out the personalities of people she spoke about. I Googled pictures of Wlodawa’s grand Baroque synagogue, and the market square, and the palace where she hid. I found inspiration in photos of paths through snowy forests, rolling wheat fields, and the mighty Bug River just outside of town…as well as period photos of German tanks churning along rutted roads toward Wlodawa.
Contact museums and other organizations. When I wrote to the United States Holocaust Museum to ask the historians about a German who’d protected her family, they told me they didn’t locate lost Nazis, only lost Jews. They directed me to the National Socialist War Crimes Archives in Germany, which sent me 58 pages of typewritten testimony, in German. (Thank you, Google Translate.) I began to keep a blog about my findings, and was overwhelmed when the stepson of one of the Germans who’d sheltered my family found me online and began writing to me about his own surreal war experiences.
Use your family stories as jumping-off points. Even when I was writing a tale about a group of shapeshifting partizans who turned into beasts to attack a band of Nazis, I used my family’s experiences for historical accuracy. When I came up against a place in the story where I needed period detail, I called my mother. “What was the name of your street? How many rooms were in your house? What did you eat when you were in hiding? Where did you sleep? What kind of animals did you watch over when you were hidden as a shepherd girl? How did you know that Selinger, the German officer who was your father’s boss, liked him? How could the Germans tell who was Polish and who was Jewish?” I was still telling my mother’s war stories, but folded into tales that featured a vengeful river and a family of spectral deer.
Talk to other family members. Ask questions about stuff that doesn’t seem important. I peppered my Uncle Philip with questions, too. As my Mom’s older brother, he had a different view of the war, and of my grandparents, than my mother did. Because I was weaving my family’s history through the filter of fiction, I wanted the stories to have as much realistic detail as possible: “What did the Commandant wear if he didn’t wear a uniform? How did you know he was a good German? How did your father know it was time to escape into the forest? What was the weather like that day? What was the layout of the family’s harness and saddle shop? How do you make a saddle, anyway?”
I asked my father: “What games did you play when you were a boy? How was it between the Polish kids and the Jewish kids in your school before the war? What did the underground bunker you hid in look like? Where did you go to the bathroom? What was it like when the Russians came?”
Talk to friends and other people with similar experiences. For me, this meant seeking out as many survivors as I could, mostly friends and family. When I interviewed them, I found it helpful to know the general timeline of the war in their area of Poland. Somehow, it loosened them up, hearing a part of the story they were already familiar with. They could correct me, and add sharp personal details to the general information I had already researched online. Often, they contributed colorful bits and pieces that I would not have thought to ask about. It was like reconstructing a vanished world—one that would vanish completely when they passed.
I didn’t have it in me to write a family memoir. It’s not who I am as a writer. For me, the stories didn’t spring to life unless I added a talking dog, a possible golem, a reluctant Messiah, a monster made of painting rags, folklore and fairy tale. But I could write historical fiction—and weave my family’s history in, around, and through it.
What are some ways you’ve used your family history in your writing?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Captivating essay, Helen. I love your description of your child’s-eye view of your parents’ past being: ” too grim, too gray, like old newspaper photographs.” So perfect. When I was growing up in the sixties, I knew my dad had fought in WW2, and that my parents had both grown up during the depression, but it seemed like ancient history to me as a boy. I often look back and think, to my parents, it was simply 20 years earlier, not an ancient era. I can remember what I was doing in ’96 like it was yesterday.
Perhaps there’s a slight difference in that I can now see how my parents very deliberately kept it that way for their children. It *was* another era for them. My dad never wanted to speak of the war. On top of that desire to bury bad war memories, he had married a woman he hardly knew right before he left for Europe. When he came back, he and his war-bride found they were strangers with very different interests and backgrounds. My dad met my mom in the last days of his crumbling marriage. He was working as a postman and she worked at a soda fountain on his route. It doesn’t take a math wizard to figure out she was just out of high school, and that he was a war vet ten years her senior. I think both families were scandalized.
So yes, to us kids, it was another era, not to be spoken of. Which, of course, made me all the more curious. More and more, I see my relationship with my parents, and their relationship with each other, poking through in my work. It’s funny now how blind I’d been to it.
I’m glad your parents spoke so openly to you. Thanks for sharing your family’s history and your tips for utilizing it. It’s not such ancient history as we sometimes seem to treat it. And remembering it, and gaining the wisdom it should bestow, is more critical today than ever.
Dear Vaughn,
Yes, yes! To me, all of World War 2 took place in black and white. It seemed like a million years ago. Like you, to me, 20 years ago seems like yesterday. Our disinterest in their pasts must have seemed so strange to our parents, who’d experienced the greatest of life’s upheavals.
My cousin’s parents didn’t talk about the war. I don’t know whether they wanted to protect their kids, or whether they just wanted to move on with their lives. We’re always teasing each other about who got the better deal, the cousins who know the family stories, or the cousins who aren’t traumatized.
Thanks for sharing the wonderful stories in your comment. In these times, I heartily agree with your closing words…”remembering it, and gaining the wisdom it should bestow, is more critical today than ever.”
Responding to Helen’s response to Vaughn:
“My cousin’s parents didn’t talk about the war. I don’t know whether they wanted to protect their kids, or whether they just wanted to move on with their lives. We’re always teasing each other about who got the better deal, the cousins who know the family stories, or the cousins who aren’t traumatized.”
As one who is married to one of those cousins whose parents “didn’t talk about the war,” I can pretty much testify that the cousins are also traumatized – just in a different way.
Thank you for this beautiful essay. I was thinking of the 50-yr Silence by Miranda (now forgetting the author’s full name) and how she was able to make sense of what happened with her grandparents (Holocaust survivors). I think those unanswered questions sink deep into our hearts and when the time is right we can begin excavating what it all means.
I wouldn’t exist were it not for the fascinating twists and turns that occurred in my ancestors’ lives. When you think of the contingencies, I am filled with awe!!! Now that I’m a grown up, I wish I’d spent more time listening to the family stories, but amazingly, many are buried deep in my heart and are a rich source of material. It’s also a way for me to honor their lives. Sometimes I give them the happy endings they wanted. But yes, childhood and family are a treasure trove of stories.
Hi, Vijaya. Thank you for your kind words! Yes, absolutely. That was one of my motivations, too.
“…many are buried deep in my heart and are a rich source of material. It’s also a way for me to honor their lives. Sometimes I give them the happy endings they wanted.”
Thank you, Helen! I think documenting family history is so important, and I love using fiction as a fun way to tell the stories!
My mother’s family had an oral tradition of an ancestor named Barnabas Horton who came from England in the 1600’s on a little ship called the Swallow. In the 1990’s my brother’s study of genealogy revealed he was our 9th great-grandfather and there was a lighthouse named after him on Long Island! I flew with my mother, born Helen Horton, from Oregon to Southold, LI, to see it. There was much information about Barnabas at the lighthouse museum, the historical society, and the library – and a massive blue slate covered his grave lettered with an epitaph he was said to have written himself. But not so much about Mary Horton, my 9th great-grandmother, and we could not find her grave although she’s mentioned in Barnabas’s will. When I returned home, I could not help but wonder what Mary’s story was. The only thing I knew was she was young when she married B., and he was a very recent widower with two little boys, and then she left home and family behind to follow him to the wilds of Long Island. She must have been very courageous! I wrote my first novel to give her, and the many women who crossed the ocean, a voice. It sold as a 3-book series, The Southold Chronicles, and the last in the series just released in July. I loved weaving in the family lore with the facts I unraveled through years of research!
I totally agree! And zowie, what a fascinating story! Congratulations on your great job of research, and in selling it as a three book series. It’s very gratifying being able to honor our family by researching and writing about them, isn’t it?
Boy, oh boy, oh boy! Did this essay resonate with me. My WIP titled Julius is based on the many stories my parents shared when I was a kid. The second line spoken in my story, “If you like prison towns” came straight from my father’s lips when I commented that Ossining was pretty. That afternoon I learned all about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
My story deals with the politics of the left, primarily those who were active in the Popular Front. The execution of the Rosenbergs, their support of the Spanish Republic, and the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and the Blacklist become the obsessions of my MC.
My MC’s fascination with Spain and the Lincolns are all based on the stories my mother told me when I was growing up. She was 15 when the war in Spain broke out, living in Asturias, commonly known in Spain as “Zona Roja” the red zone because of its Communist miners. She had a taste of the future terror Franco would bring in 1936 when he put down the Asturias Revolution in 1934.
My mother admired the volunteers of the International Brigades, especially the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, she was fond of Alvah Bessie, who was later to be blacklisted as part of the Hollywood Ten.
My research has taken me on an endless journey. I have lost myself in countless of Internet searches, each time hitting the jackpot (the New Masses online? Wow. Alvah Bessie’s subpeona to testify at HUAC? Wow. Countless of interviews with Santiago Carillo? Wow.)I have visited archives, I have spoken to experts on the SCW, I have met people who knew the Rosenbergs, and I’ve even formed a friendship with one of Alvah’s Bessie’s sons.
This fascination, obsession, and madness (as some have pointed out) all started with my parents. Just like you, I don’t feel I have a memoir in me. I like historical fiction and if I need some inspiration or information all I have to do is call my family in Spain and listen to their stories.
Hi, Rebecca,
Oh my gosh. “If you like prison towns.” Your comment just blows me away. “I have lost myself in countless Internet searches…Fascination, obsession, and madness…” heh heh…yeah, those words absolutely resonate with me. Sounds like you have an incredible story to tell. Good luck with it!
Beautiful post. And now I want to read the color of light.
Families are strange and wonderful stuff. I can so relate, too. My father was in a Seik regiment of the Indian branch of the British Army. He was anot acting major in his early twenties, thanks to his ability to survive the war on the front when his senior officers perished. My mother as a child, survived the Blitz. She often told stories of rushing home to hide behind the blackout blankets, or of how the neighbors house was demolished by the bombs, the only survivor the family cat.
Like you, those memories have been painful for me. I haven’t used them in my work. Perhaps magical realism is the answer.
And your post got me reflecting. The trauma of war is not just visited on the immediate it effects. The aftermath traumatized the generation not yet born. It’s the reason for peace, from not only a humane, but a scientific standpoint.
I’m glad my experiences are resonating with so many other writers! You know, when you’re alone in front of your computer, you wonder if you’re doing the right thing, rummaging through your family’s personal history. It’s so good to hear that other writers are doing the same thing.
Love how you used your family history in a magical way and I am going to read your work. My novel, “Hidden Within the Stones” is based on my Nothern New Mexico roots and the Crypto-Jew population. A bit of added magic and a secret Jewish Brotherhood take the stories my grandparents told one notch up in my imagination. Writing this book was fulfilling in many ways.
Ooh, Robin, what interesting family history you have! That sounds like a great book!
Thank you for sharing your amazing stories with me!
Sounds like a fascinating read, Helen! I am always delving into my family history and keeping records of whatever I find, for future writing.
Wonderful post! The heading caught my attention because I can relate to it. I used my father’s story of his life just before and during WWII in my first book “BAHALA NA (Come What May)” and my grandmother’s story of her life in my second book “The Iron Butterfly”. They both started as a memoir but just like you, I opted to have it as historical fiction because I did not want to offend the family in case they did not want their names mentioned in the book. I researched the time period to make sure all events are in sync.
Family is a great source of writing materials and there are so many interesting stories you heard about them. My father was quiet about the war till the latter part of his life when I decided to take notes of what he was telling me. The story of my grandmother, a young widow with nine children to support told to me by my mother is so unique of the period that it is worth telling.
Thank you, Rosalinda!
I can totally relate to everything you wrote in your comment! I find that a lot of people who were in the war wouldn’t–or couldn’t–talk about their experiences until they were older. How wonderful that you took notes of what your father was telling you…and your grandmother’s story sounds like a fascinating read, too. As writers, we are fortunate that our family’s experiences are so deep and broad.
What a wonderful essay, Helen. Thank you for sharing your story about finding the way to tell these stories. I’m sharing it with my husband, a songwriter working on an a series of songs inspired by a place his family visited regularly in his childhood.
I used a family story in a short story, on submission, about a family with a not-uncommon secret that wouldn’t raise eyebrows today — the illegitimate child of the oldest child in the family, raised by the grandparents as if she were their biological child instead of their grandchild. I remembered well my mother’s story about discovering that fact in the generation above hers, just before a family reunion, then imagined pressures that, fortunately, we didn’t actually experience. I’ve heard similar stories from other families, too. Because of the roots in the family story, I was able to explore additional layers of tensions and consequences. No vampires, though. :) Yet.
Hi, Leslie!
Ooh, good luck with your submission. Yeah, it’s hard to imagine now how powerfully an illegitimate child would have impacted a family just a couple of generations ago. I love the way you’re using it. What an interesting inspiration for a story.
Wonderful essay. Like you, when I grew up WWII and the Holocaust seemed in the distant past. Only as an adult did I realize that it was just 10 years before I was born. My parents wanted to put the Holocaust behind them and I didn’t think to probe more. How I wish I did. Awesome that you were able to mine your family history in your stories.
Hi, Carol! Thank you for your kind words.
My grandparents couldn’t talk about it at all. Neither could my uncle. I’m really fortunate that the internet came around to help me with research.
Part of what inspired me was wondering about the Germans who protected my family, and the Poles–I wondered what in their backgrounds had made them so courageous. Sadly, I was too late to speak to them–the older generation passed in the 70s–but once I started investigating, one thing led to another. It takes a certain amount of compulsive obsessiveness–and luck. I couldn’t find anything at all about my father’s home town.
I have been working on a novel based on my mother’s life. While she did not suffer some of the awful things your parents did, she had many challenges in her life and it took me years to recognize what a strong woman she is. This is quite a departure for me, as my other books are primarily mysteries, but this story has nagged at me for years.
I think it takes many years before we can see our parents as human beings with their own set of challenges, and many years before we can distance ourselves enough to be compassionate. I know that’s how it was for me. Good luck with your novel, Maryann!
Thanks, Helen. What I have had to do is stop thinking of my mother merely as I knew her, but as a character. I’ve been working with Katherine Craft, who has helped me see how to turn this from a book about my mother’s life, to a story about a woman searching for her mother’s love. Writing mysteries is so much easier when the people are all made-up people. LOL
Thanks for featuring Helen for the tour!