Family inspires Santa Barbara author Jana Zimmer’s writing of ‘Chocolates from Tangier’
Jana Zimmer, a second-generation Holocaust survivor and a Santa Barbara resident, is the author of “Chocolates from Tangier.”
Jana Zimmer, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, weaves together fragments of her family’s history in her book “Chocolates from Tangier,” which was released Jan. 17.
“I’m ending a 40-year career as a lawyer, and I’m at the point in life where I feel the judge is asking me to sum up,” the Santa Barbara author and artist told the News-Press. “I’ve been making art and writing about the Holocaust on and off for about 40 years. It is in my bones, and it literally made me exactly who I am today.
“There are three Hebrew words that I interpret to mandate righteous behavior,” she continued. “One is Repair (Tikkun); the second, Teshuvah (Return), and the third is Tzedekah (Justice). This book speaks to all three.”
Her book is being sold at Chaucer’s Books in Santa Barbara, as well as online through Doppelhouse Press (doppelhouse.com) and Amazon.
Ms. Zimmer was born in 1946, the only child of two Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia, who fled with them as a refugee from the communists to land in Canada days after her second birthday.
Ms. Zimmer became a collage/mixed media artist after her mother came to live with her in 1995. In her artwork, through text and image, she explores issues of memory, exile and responsibility.
Ms. Zimmer talked to the News-Press about how her parents influenced “Chocolates from Tangiers.”
“My mother and father were each the sole survivor of their immediate family. I asked them each to write down their whole life stories in about 1984 — 40 years after the liberation,” Ms. Zimmer said. “I did that because I was afraid to ask them to speak only about the Holocaust; I thought it would be too painful.
“Now, I’m glad I did it that way, because I learned that fundamentally they were not formed by their wartime experience, but by earlier circumstances,” she said. “Still, their core experiences were carried very differently after the war.
“I know my father had nightmares about Auschwitz every single night of his life, until he died at 86, because he told me that. But when I asked my mother if she ever had bad dreams, she insisted that she did not. She said that the war was horrible, but it was in the past. That was not true, at all, even for her. But it helped her to believe it.
“Their losses, as well as their resilience, their individual coping strategies dictated the direction of my own life,” Ms. Zimmer said. “The book is structured around my art exhibits in Prague and Terezin (my father’s losses), and Freiberg, Germany (my mother’s). In the dedication, I call them the Cynic and the Mystic, my yin and my yang.”
The News-Press asked Ms. Zimmer what she learned about her family during the writing of “Chocolates from Tangier.”
“What seems to be coming up is that this search for what and who has been lost is never over. If you look at my art, you see that I am constantly excavating for clues to what they were thinking and feeling.”
She said that in the beginning, she was trying to honor her family and make them count as individuals among the European Jews, which includes the six million who were killed by the Nazis.
“I am still learning new things and new people are finding me. The connections are attenuated, because my immediate family was murdered, but I take what I can get. A woman who was related to my grandmother’s twin sister in America found me a few months ago. She wrote me an email that asked, ‘Are you the Jana Zimmer who is Berta Altschul’s granddaughter?’ I said yes, and that started a communication, and she sent me letters in Czech and German that were written between 1939 and 1945 by my one uncle who had survived.
“There are some very sad and confusing references to my father’s condition when he came back from Auschwitz that he had not disclosed to me. I suspect there will be more occurrences like this as the book finds its way into the world.”
Ms. Zimmer spoke to what she hopes her readers take from this book.
“I have to say that my hopes have changed in the last couple of years. The book was 40 years in the making. Of course, I wanted to respect and make a mark on behalf of my family, and I want and need to come to terms with who I am as a result.
“But things that were concerns 40 years ago, and which I believed we had made progress in combating —especially Holocaust denial, and anti-semitism, but also racism, misogyny have exploded. I hope that readers will feel compassion, and connectedness —not just for the victims and the survivors, but that they will open or re-open their hearts to the Other, however that is represented in their lives and circumstances.”
email: kzehnder@newspress.com
FYI
Santa Barbara resident Jana Zimmer’s “Chocolates from Tangiers” is sold at Chaucer’s Books, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara (Loreto Plaza); amazon.com and doppelhouse.com.
