Rita, Welcome to the Lake.

Dennis, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Good afternoon Rita and Dennis and welcome to FDL this afternoon

Rita, I have not had an opportunity to read your book but do have a couple of questions and please forgive me if these are answered in the book.

Were you in touch with your father prior to finding his things?

How has this knowledge of your father changed your reporting work?

Bev, I am so thrilled to be here. “Quiet Hero: Secrets from My Father’s Past” is the most important and deeply personal story I will ever tell, and I hope it inspires others to reach out to their parents and learn their own history. This was well beyond a book, it was an incredible journey for me… and I hope for others too. For more information, you can all go to http://www.quiethero.org.

I look forward to hearing all of your questions, so please fire away now on this post! I am so happy to share this wonderful story with all of you today.
Rita Cosby

Dennis will be here in a second.

I had very little contact with my dad prior to this book, as he left the family suddenly one Christmas. He was very emotionally detached from us and others.

This book has made me more sympathetic to others and made me realize there are often deeper issues at hand as to why some people simply cannot share a story that as in my father’s case, the pain is too deep…

Luckily, now I have a wonderful story and more importantly, a wonderful father.

Welcome to Firedoglake – glad you could join us today!

Rita, it’s a plleasure to have this opportunity, and I apologize for the delay. I sometimes think I’d be better off with carrier pigeons! But my first qiestion is almost banal: how long was the time between your father’s leaving and your finding the suitcase?

I am so excited to be here!!!! I hope all of you get a chance to read Quiet Hero—I have loved sharing this story, and perfect before Father’s Day!

Dennis,
My father left Christmas 1983.. and we found the old suitcase that opened up this story and my father’s life in late 2008… so 25 years later.

Did you do any background reading on Poland in WWII, especially at the early stages of your journey into your father’s past?

welcome ms. cosby — this is a wonderful book.

i’m still reading it but find i put it down, and wander off mentally, thinking about how much i don’t know about my father’s service in the navy during ww2, korea, and the start of viet nam. i find myself shifting back and forth between your book and memories of my father, who passed in 2002.

thank you for sharing your story with us, ma’am.

Why do you think you r father encysted his memories? Was it a function of his war experiences, or a sense of a fresh start–if you will, the “American dream” of reinvention and rebirth?

Rita, I can relate to your story, my father was in WWII, Army, he never talked about it much, a few general comments, he died in 1982. We still have his army uniform in the closet and a few photos.

I am a voracious reader–so the answer is yes!!! I did extensive research and reading on Poland, the Polish Resistance, POW camps, and WWII as well. I learned so much, and also met with others who survived or are considered some of the top historical experts in the world.

I had teams in Germany and Poland, and I also went to Poland with my father last November. We met with now the late President Lech Kaczynski who perished in the recent plane crash. His father and my father were in the same Resistance unit for a brief time.

Thank you for your father’s service. I pray this book is a great tribute to him and so many others who were so courageous and fought for freedom. I am giving proceeds from the book to a new USO program called Operation Enduring Care designed to help wounded soldiers and their families, a terrific and important cause.

Rita,

Thanks. I’ll definitely read this book.

My late husband was a WWII vet. He was a German Jew whose family left when he was 13, after Krystallnacht. He enlisted in the U.S. army 5 months shy of his 18th bday (another story) to ‘get back at those Nazi sons-of-bitches.’ Because of his fluency in German, he was assigned to POW interrogation ‘in all the known methods.’ (Now that U.S. considers torture just fine, I regret not having asked him about that.)

As you can tell, he had certain stories about his experience that he felt comfortable telling, and I can repeat them verbatim, having heard them numerous times.

I found a shoe box full of snapshots Herb took when he was in the army. I asked him about it, and he said he did not have the emotional fortitude to look at them or talk about them. I didn’t probe.

Glad you got farther with your father than I got with Herb.

Dennis, I think the memories were too painful, so it was easier for him to compartmentalize the pain, and change his name and “make a fresh start.”

I picked the title “Quiet Hero” because he still, to this day, wants the attention to be on his comrades, he says they are the real heroes. My father’s quiet humility and unwavering loyalty to his country and comrades are so indicative of that great generation and so inspiring.

The response” the real heroes were the other guys” seems universal. Americand, Brits, Germans, Russians, Vietmanese–in over 50 yers, I’v heard it hundreds of times. That said, as an outsider, your father’s story can be processed in a “Triumphalist” context–a survival epic, even a quest myth. There is no sense in his narrative of objectively “culpable” or shameful behavior. Why do you think he rejected that perspective, even in a limited form

Bev,
Hold onto those precious things from your dad! I feel so lucky that my dad has finally shared his story. My dad is so grateful for the US troops, like your father. He believes the world owes America a debt of gratitude for all it did in WWII.

I wish I had met Herb, sounds like he had some powerful experiences.

As you know firsthand, getting those who endured so much to talk is so difficult. It was very emotional going back to Poland with my father recently, we retraced his steps, and several times he broke down in tears. it was very hard to watch as a daughter.

my dad always refused to talk about the dark days of the wars. instead, he would veer off into crossing the equator rites of passage, or stories about being a cook — all innocent stories appropriate for children even when i was an adult.

his military records were destroyed in a big fire in the 60′s and there was not a suitcase to find.

what roadblocks (official and/or personal) did you find in your path while doing this research? were folks still unwilling to talk about those days and how did you get them to talk?

I think my father still wishes he could’ve done more. There is always that sense of, “could I have saved some others more? What else could’ve been done?”

You bring up in your introduction, the Russians standing back on the Vistula River, as I have learned so much about what happened in Poland in WWII, it’s incredible the scheming and plotting against this country and its people.

After he died, I had his sister take me & my son to Germany a couple of times, to show us where they grew up and to share memories. It took her a a long time to go back (she’d made at least one trip there before our joint effort), but once she got back she felt quite at home. Given the Jewish issue, that surprised me a lot.

After Herb died, I put the snapshots in order as best I could piece them together and put them in an album. I sent it to his commanding officer for more info, but he claimed to remember nothing much about them. Another blank wall.

I do have a picture of the house they built in 1928, of it as a pile of rubble in WWII, and a picture of it as it was reconstructed after the war.

The format of your book is classically therapeutic: your father recognizes, confronts, works through, and achieves catharsis. Dd you find it easier to accept a “patient” than the “villain” who walked out that Christmas Eve?

I do feel fortunate to have found that tattered suitcase with his war relics.

One of the biggest roadblocks I encountered was time. Sadly some of his comrades, including the best friend he made in POW camp, had died. I had really wanted to reunite them after all these years. Also, many men who fought in the war had health problems and died early, so they never shared details with their families.

Yet the ones I did locate were very kind and so emotional when I told them my father was alive and finally sharing his story. The Polish government was also incredibly helpful with research and what few archives existed. Remember Warsaw was essentially burned to the ground in WWII. So I feel if I could’ve done this background search, given the extreme conditions, there is hope for anyone else trying to do the same!

Remember their national anthem:”Poland is not lost while yet we live!” There is some interesting material in the Red Army’s “halt at the Vistula,” presenting it as a combination of supply shortages and an unusually successful local counterattack by the German panzers. I remain skeptical!5

I’d like to have known more of my own father’s WWII history from him. My parents divorced when I was 4, and then my father died at age 9.

Many years later I heard from a former boyfriend of one of my sisters some information about why my father received a section 8 discharge (I knew he had the section 8 because I was able to get my undergrad on a child of a disabled Veteran scholarship). He spoke with my father on the eave of his boat camp prior to deployment to Vietnam.

My father had a degree in psychology, and was tasked with evaluating personnel at German concentration and death camps. Finding that they were in most respects ordinary people caused a profound break in his ability to serve. I’d like to track down his reports someday; I imagine they could serve as footnotes for the Millgram experiments and the Stanford Prison Study.

Knowing that his “combat stress” came from learning that monstrous behavior could be trained into ordinary people was a revelation to me. That he lost his mental (moral?) ability to serve in the armed forces afterwards indicates a strong character that I wish I had know in more depth.

I had a lot of anger toward my father for decades. but now after learning what he went through, I have learned he did the best he could emotionally given the incredible trauma he went through as a teenager.

It did help me tremendously, and I think it can help others, to step back and see the bigger picture and see the real history. I talk about in my book how I called a POW expert one night and it went from being a reporting/author call to a house call, when I realized the signs and symptoms he was discussing from POWs were ever present in my own father.

regarding the russians stopping, my father and his comrades are very skeptical. He and his fellow fighters physically saw them in their binoculars sitting back and relaxing, while they were fighting for their lives and while warsaw burned on the other side of the river, not far away. When I recently went to warsaw, I saw the distance, it is not far.

We live in an age of recovering and processing memories. But is this a general panacea? Can a case be made for “Getting on with it”–especially in the context of a massively abnormal trauma like a war? Is it possible that seeking to work through those memories throws people into an endless feedback loop, constantly reopening wounds that might well heal, or at least scab over, if left undisturbed?

Your father sounds like he was an amazing and deeply principled man.

My father also saw some of the worst of humanity firsthand. But he also had incredible moral values. One of my favorite lines in my new book Quiet Hero is when his mother offered to buy him out of Warsaw in WWII, sneak him out of the country on the black market possibly, and my father, at app the age of 15 told her no, “I’d rather die with friends, than live with strangers.” He said he wanted to stay with his comrades and fight for his country. That is so inspiring to me.

The consequences of my late husband scabbing over the Jew-boy taunting he underwent before his family left Germany, and whatever trauma his war experience created, left a long legacy of family trauma, which would be off-topic here. So, sample of one, I think his dealing with it would have been better off for all those around him.

I took away a few things from that revelation:

My father didn’t go crazy from the stress of combat per se (nor was he Yossarian)

Ordinary people can be led to do monstrous things.

The latter leads me to skepticism and to have heightened awareness of group think.

The former just makes me think better of my father.

This story, and the larger narrative of Poland’s betrayal by their Western allies deserves to be heard as well.

Although Poland had mutual defense treaties with Britain and France, they received virtually no assistance when Germany invaded from the west, and Germany’s not-for-long pal Stalin invaded Poland from the east.

In fact, the Soviet Union murdered 10,000-20,000 Polish officers held as prisoners in the Katyn Forest massacre…then later tried to hang this monstrous atrocity on the Nazis. They actually thought they could get away with it. It was a crime to even suggest the real truth about Katyn in post-war, Soviet-bloc Poland.

It’s good to hear from you, Rita…and your father’s story deserves to be heard as well.

There is a massive body of literature on this subject. The work of Chris Browning, especially Ordinary Men, is invaluable. My most compelling insight came years ago, discussing the subject in a night class. One student said he could understand very well how the camp staffs behaved as they did–he worked in an animal shelter, and a couple of time a week they “processed” those whose deadlines had run out. The informal reactions and coping mechanisms were almost identical!!

I think in some cases it is too painful to open up possibly. But I think in many cases, and I have been told in many cases, that getting them to share their story is the best catharsis possible, especially if it’s done by a loved one. I thought the book would bring my father and I closer, but I had no idea how much this experience has changed him as a man, a father. He has said now he plans to participate in life more. It allowed him to move forward. I hope it allows others to do the same.

I’d like to have known him as an adult. Having only childhood memories… well a few conversations with him where I had the maturity to comprehend his experiences would be great.

I’m glad I’ve had that chance with my own son.

I am so glad you brought up Katyn. My own father’s uncle (an officer) was suddenly taken one day and years later they found out he was murdered there. The deception by the Soviets in this case was astounding. I am so glad the world is learning more about Katyn now.

Should we start calling you Rita Kossobudzki?

It is incredible how anyone followed Hitler and his Nazis. If you study that era, you see how economically and emotionally desperate were, and also how brutal his force was.

During accepted student’s weekend at my son’s college, the parents had a choice of various activities at one point in the schedule. I chose to attend a ‘class’ of a visiting prof on writing. He was a VN vet and was working on a writing project together with NVN vets on writing about their experiences from the opposite POVs. Sounded like a great idea to me, and wanted to hear more about it, but he had planned writing exercises for the parents, so he didn’t go into much detail on his own project.

In Polish, it would be Rita Kossobudzka… They change the last letter to A for women…. I write in my book that thank goodness my dad changed his name to Cosby before I was born, can you imagine my MSNBC show would’ve been called Rita Kossobudzka Live and Direct??? haha

Characteristic of warmaking by mass citizen armies is the premise that “any man can” go through the experience and return with no worse than reparable or sustainable damage. THE current approach seems to be “no one can”–check out the books on Amazon under “combat trauma. does this reflect recognition of war’s realities, basic changes in those realities n the past century, or the mentality of a therapeutic culture where everyone’s a victim?

You mean like Mika Brzezinski?

That sounds like a fascinating project–to hear it from both sides! It’s always interesting to learn how and why the other could’ve occurred, what information they were getting, or not getting, the indoctrination, etc. In my dad’s case, he saw right away how the Germans shut down Polish schools, stopped any books that had anything other than flattering things about germany in it, the indoctrination process, etc. Yet, in my dad’s case, that only emboldened him and his comrades to fight against the Nazi regime.

Welcome Rita, and thank you so much for writing this book.

The parents of one of my best friends were both in the camps in Poland. Much of her childhood was inexplicable, even to her, without knowing that. There was terrible insecurity about certain things (food being one of them) that just didn’t seem normal in their fairly affluent California context.

I can imagine it filled in a lot of gaps to finally understand what had happened.

I have to say, I like “Rita Kossobudzka Live and Direct.” It has a certain ring — kinda catchy.

Welcome to the Kossobudzka & Brzezinski Report. America’s top names for news.

Taking a jest seriously for the moment, an important aspect of your book is that it shows “Crosby” was as real as “Kossobudzki.” Your father did not live an inauthentic life in the US–it’s rather that, with your love and help, he completed himself. Any father with a daughter like you is blessed whatever else happens to him.

There’s a lot of variability in how the combat experience gets processed.

I’ve worked with combat veterans that had no observable damage from the experience, my son being a case in point. And I know other veterans that have clear psychological damage from the experience.

I think it’s recognition of war’s realities. In my father’s case, at that time, there was no phrase called PTSD, and my father certainly experienced it, as did many others. I think there’s been a sea change where people are realizing the effects of war and how to help in some form. To think that seeing the horrors my father endured, and so many others did too, and not be shaped by that, is unrealistic.

On the other hand, my father also feels he had to deal with the hand his country was dealt in history. That it was his country’s fate and his fate. I think few veterans feel sorry for themselves, they weep for others.

There’s a lot of variability in how physical illness affect people too. Those are underinvestigated parts of medicine.

Can there be a question of Expectation? If societies expect and accept trauma as a norm, is it more likely to be manifested? Compare perspectives on PTSD in Iraq with Omaha Beach or Okinawa–even Chosin Reservoir and Hue?

Jane, so glad to talk with you my friend!

It’s interesting you bring up the behavior in the home while growing up by your friend.

I write about how my father was very unemotional, and once when I fell and got a bad scar as a child, I showed the scar to my father and he basically said, “that’s all. carry on!” Now, after learning about all his scars, visible and not, no wonder mine was a pale comparison!

And gang–Rita Kossobudzka certainly would be memorable. No one would steal the name!!!!

Based on my academic research, I agree the last sentence of your posting nails it! Indeed they do “weep for others.”

Dennis, thanks for the kind words. I feel I have helped my father, but he and this journey helped me too.

Just out of curiousity, have you given a free copy of your book to your MSNBC colleague Pat Buchanan, who has written a book arguing that Britain should have let Germany have Poland?

Great point—when I called one of the former POWs at my dad’s camp, just the mention of the words Stalag IVB where my dad was also, made this gentleman, now in his 80′s, break down in tears. Everyone handles pain, mental and physical, differently.

At the risk of going back too deeply into the dialogue, there is a very good Polish film on Katyn, English-language version available through Amazon.

I expect that DoD is very interested in both. Viz the studies on rhinovirii and exposure to cold/wet conditions for physical illness.

Research is likely being done to identify or prescreen those that are more resilient as well as how to re-integrate those susceptible to being psychologically shattered by combat trauma.

gives me very mixed feelings; the pre-screening aspect could lead to My Lai events becoming more prevalent. Or not depending on moral indoctrination.

Work on re-integrating those shattered seems to me to be a more clear cut good.

Regarding Pat B…. maybe I need to send that book to him soon!

I hope this book makes many see what happened to Poland in WWII, sadly many people could not talk about their experiences candidly because as we know from history, the Communists took over till 1989, so many went to their graves without ever talking.

Working on eliminating the need for the military would seem more productive than the alternatives you suggest.

And even afterward, silence gets to be a habit as well as a survival mechanism. Orwell was right about those who control the present controlling the past–but only for a time. Truth has a way of emerging somehow.

The return of Vietnam veterans marks the change in expectation.

The damage was likely present in WWII, Korea etc… Hell morphine addiction was known as the Soldiers illness from Civil War veterans self medicating from their PTSD.

VNV didn’t get the hero’s welcome and had to fight on their return. That exposed the invisible wounds. I think that popular culture also had an influence; without MASH the VN vets wouldn’t have had as much success in getting help.

A point often made in my milieu. But here’s a question. What happens to a “trauma-oriented” society confronting one that is, let us say, insensitive, or transcends trauma temporarily, through political ideology or religious zeal? Can societies be too “exquisite” to surive?

Regarding Katyn–yes, you can watch the film by acclaimed director Andrzej Wajda called Katyn, it has English subtitles, and is well done. He also did one called Kanales, where he talks about the resistance fighters, like my dad, who escaped through the sewers.

At one point, my father was surrounded my Nazis in August 1944 and the only way for him and his men to escape was through the sewers, as above ground was impossible. Nazis at times knew they’d try to escape through sewers so they threw down hand grenades or opened the water, trying to kill them below. I cannot imagine how terrifying that must have been for my father.

I agree. Alas we haven’t transcended our need to be better than others or to covet what others have.

Your Q is well beyond my pay grade.

very true. and often the truth comes out decades later. I think it’s critical we learn from history don’t you agree dennis?

THey used gas candles too, then and in the Warsaw Ghetto’s destruction. After the AK surrendered Hitler ordered Warsaw’s destruction–and the “clean shield” Wehrmacht obeyed enthusiastically

I assuer you the question was not so intended. It’s sort of my fundamental problem teaching and writing about war–and I appreciate any input.

i highly recommend this book. i’ve always thought that a sign of a great book is that it leaves the reader wanting more and wanting to know more about the subject. i’ve not finished it and am hesitant to do so because i know i will want more.

and i want to know more about my dad’s experiences. thank you, ms cosby, for reigniting that desire to learn more.

Yss I agree about learning from history. But Clio is not an easy pickup or a cheap date. Te question of WHAT conclusions may legitimately be drawn from a mass of often-conflicting evidence keeps me in business–and a lot of others too, judging by this dialogue.

My father also describes the scene one day, when he staggered outside his makeshift hospital, and he saw the Nazis literally going house to house and torching everything in site. When we went to visit Warsaw recently, the only building left standing that my father recognized, and that was original, was that makeshift hospital/an old apartment building where they hid injured Resistance fighters. Incredibly, the day the Nazis went to torch it, it rained, so hence the builiding, or at least part of it, still survived.

THere is a LOT of good, accessible material available. If you’re interested, get in touch–I can make some suggetions. Good luck in any case–and this is a HELL of a book!

Thanks so much. I am so glad to hear you the love the book. My favorite chapter is the last one. Let me know what you think when you finish it.

Considering humans are primates & primates need alpha males to lead them, and that means continual conflict, I think my suggestion about working for eliminating the need for the military is fatuous.

I’m so glad to have you here. I saw you the other day across the room somewhere, can’t remember where, but by the time I made my way over there you had disappeared.

So good to see you again!

I think few veterans feel sorry for themselves, they weep for others.

Very true for all my uncles who saw combat. Most of them were ok but one who was 19 in the second Marine wave of Iwo Jima was never quite right… He told me some stories but only some…None of the others would speak about it..

Not fatuous–just complex and problematic. Stay with it–there are too many who say it cant be done, and dismiss those who disagree.

Do we know of any societies that don’t fight or experience the trauma of wars?

I’m hard pressed to think of any.

Jane,
Thanks for having me here with your great bloggers and Dennis.

As you know firsthand, this has been such an eye-opening journey for me, and I have received so many notes and letters from others in the few weeks since Quiet Hero has been out, that has been so inspiring to me. I think as we go through difficult economic times, people search for what matters, and that includes family and a search of our own selves.

Read the book at my link & see if it changes your mind.

It may be interesting to see if any of your uncle’s comrades would open up now and tell you what happened. Some times the passage of the time makes all the difference to have someone speak. In my father’s case, he is 84 now, and although he used to run marathons–33 in his day (yes 33 marathons!)–I think he is sensing his own mortality and that played a big role in his wanting to speak now to me I believe. And I was quite determined too!!!!

As we hit the home stretch, did Freud have a point when in Civilization and its Discontents he said trauma is the price we pay for civilization? Without Rita’s dad, the 19 year old at Iwo Jima, and all the men who never talked about it–well, I think the idea is clear.

I’ve been looking all my working life and never found one. Neither has anyone else in my craft.

Could be time matters. My sister-in-law, just in the last year, told me she suffers from survivor’s guilt. She is 86. Don’t think she could have admitted that outloud before.

Thank you for writing the book. What a journey, or number of them.

I went to Berlin a few years ago. I also visited Amsterdam and Oslo. Berlin was incredibly depressing to me, just the vibe. I tried to see it from a variety of perspectives, but it was just overwhelming.

The resistance museum in Amsterdam was interesting, but the one in Oslo was truly incredible.

It is difficult to be immersed in this, I can’t imagine your father’s life or your delving into the past like this. Very hard.

There are certainly societies which suppress any traumas of war, i.e. that you are weak to show trauma or fear.
In the case of Soviet prisoners of war, they were often mocked by their own people, that they were so weak to get captured, etc. My father said the Soviet prisoners in his camp were worried when they learned the Soviets were close to their camp, fearing what could happen to them.

There’s a yearning in most societies to have the civilization without the trauma. I’d say that a lot of religious or spiritual work goes towards that end.

That those works are often warped into new traumas is a bit of irony.

Check out Ivan’s Warby Catherine Merridale–also there’s a very good new book on the experiences of Soviet veterans whose title escapes me.

Thanks so much. It was very gut-wrenching at times. Also, if any of you go to Warsaw, be sure to see the Warsaw Rising Museum, which has amazing replicas from WWII and the resistance. We reunited my father there with other comrades, in fact, one of the guys who escaped right in front of him in the sewers. It was really special.

Also, if you want more information on the museum, and my book, be sure to go to my site–
quiethero.org we have lots of information there. The rising museum is a gem for history.

The physical scars of WW2 are everywhere I have been in Europe, and I have not seen much of it. I recall a street in Paris where it looked like people had been put against a wall and mowed down by machine guns. The scar on the wall told the story.

As we come to the end of this Book Salon,

Rita, Thank you very much for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book and your Father.

Dennis, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

If you would like more information about organizations and supporting the troops, here is Rita’s website.

Thanks all.

Thank you Rita and Dennis.

yes, I have heard about that book. Also, at one of my father’s POW camps, 30k russians died alone. the numbers are staggering, some before and after “liberation”

A couple of other titles: BArbara Ehrenreich’s Blood Rites presents war as socially integrating. Martin van Creveld’s Culture of War depicts the ways societies and military systems process the realities.

Bev, thanks so much. Dennis you were terrific! I loved being with all of you on line and hope you share the book with your family and friends. It’s a great Father’s Day gift and may open the door to many of the stories you have just shared with me here. So many of you had great stories of your own past that deserve some digging into. My journey has been a real blessing.

It is the most important story I have ever done, and I know this Father’s Day for me will be a very special one.
Thank you all so much.
Rita

Jon Walker is upstairs!
Valuing Natural Allies over Existing Animus: Lessons from the Anti-Saloon League, Part Three