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AVIVA-BERLIN.de 3/25/5768:

Interview with Vivian Jeanette Kaplan Sarah Ross AVIVA-Berlin talked to the famous Canadian Jewish author whose book ´Ten Green Bottles´ has recently been translated into German.

In her book ´Ten Green Bottles. The True Story of One Family´s Journey from War-Torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanghai" that is now available in German titled "Von Wien nach Shanghai", Vivian Jeanette Kaplan tells the story of her ailing mother Nini Karpel, and her young brother who both left Vienna in 1939 after Germany invaded Austria. They flew to Shanghai, which became occupied by Japan, and later immigrated to Canada. Vivian Kaplan, who was born in Shanghai, has written this memoir in the first person voice of her mother. AVIVA-Berlin talked with the author about this remarkable book. AVIVA-Berlin: Why did you decide to write this book in the first person and in your mother´s persona? Vivian J. Kaplan: My mother was alive when I began to write the book. She was eighty years of age and a lonely widow. I thought of her recalling the memories of her life, the many traumas that she endured throughout her numerous experiences resulting from historical and personal catastrophes. She was a victim but she struggled against that and made every heroic attempt to regain control. I wanted to capture more than a documentary in dry impersonal terms or write an inventory of dates, and places. Instead, it was my intention, from the very beginning, to find the woman behind the story and explore her feelings, using every one of her senses. If I could do that and allow my reader to take each step along with her, I would succeed at my goal. Her life would be recorded as a real-life experience and more than that, I would guide the reader into her mind and body to truly feel her sensations of exhilaration, sadness, love, terror, melancholy and despair. AVIVA-Berlin: What is told in your book is not your life story. It takes place before the start of your own memories. How did the experiences of your family and especially of your mother who grew up in Vienna, fleed to Shanghai and immigrated to Canada, influence your own life and especially your writing? Vivian J. Kaplan: I am the child of refugees - that is always a part of me. I am different from those who were born in Canada. My parents were immigrants who had been forced to flee from Nazi-occupied Austria because they were Jews. I take nothing for granted because of what they endured. My freedom was hard-earned by them. They suffered for me, so that I could grow up in a land that was free of discrimination. I am comfortable with my native language, English. I am aware that I can write with fluency in the language that is my own because I had the luxury and good fortune of living a safe and secure existence. I did not have to run from my homeland as they did. I was able to tell the story as they could not because I was a generation removed from the painful circumstances that they endured. Their alienation, wherever they went in the world, was never far from the surface. They were outsiders, speaking with accents and unfamiliar with the place where they lived. Although I had a far easier life, it was through understanding their experiences that I gained sensitivity to the plight of refugees and to Holocaust survivors in particular.   Vivian is wearing her grandmother´s gold chain and watch. Vivian´s grandmother lost her life in Dachau. AVIVA-Berlin: What was your mother´s relationship to Austria before and after the Holocaust? Vivian J. Kaplan: It was my intention to really express the nostalgia and longing that my mother felt every day of her life for the country that was so much a part of her. German was her first language. Towards the end of her life she spoke in this, her mother-tongue, more and more. The Viennese culture, which is renowned, was a source of pride to her, the rich cuisine, the depth of the music and art. She had that connection in her youth but it was stolen from her. I made a conscious attempt to capture the love affair that she had with the city and country. She told me over the years that the air itself was cleaner and purer, that the mountains were the loveliest and that there was nowhere as perfect. I had to establish that love in the book. When it was all taken away by the Nazis and she was sent into the unknown world, finally landing in the unsavoury sea-port of Shanghai in the thirties, I experienced her anguish and wanted my readers to relive and understand the misery that she endured. After the revelation of the death camps and atrocities of the Holocaust were exposed to the world and my parents learned about the extent of the hate-crimes, my mother was sickened. She never wanted to visit Austria again and had a revulsion for the German people and all that was a part of the Austrian-German culture. AVIVA-Berlin: How did the publishers as well as the readers react to the unusual style of your book, which is actually an autobiography in the form of a novel? Why did you choose this genre? Vivian J. Kaplan: I found some difficulty in getting publication of my book in the format that I had chosen. I was advised by several publishers to rewrite and revise the method that I had used. They wanted a more typical and widely acceptable version. If it was a true story and non-fiction, they argued, how could I include dialogue? If I, the writer, was not there, how could I describe the scenes in such detail? They suggested a documentary style of narrative with photos of my family sprinkled throughout. I could not accept their suggestions. My book was nothing like that and my vision for a walk in my mother´s shoes, going with her, step by step, could never be realised in that way. Only by doing it my way, the unconventional, untravelled path, could I achieve my goal. In the end I was fortunate to get acceptance and publication, now in four languages and released in a number of countries where tens of thousands of readers have been able to decide for themselves whether I achieved my objective. I am very proud to say that the book won the Canadian Jewish Book Award and that I have had an amazing outpouring of positive feed-back from literary reviewers and readers alike. They were amazed by the genre but in the end found that it gave them exactly the personal feelings and emotional response that I had hoped to achieve. AVIVA-Berlin: Regarding the material you worked with - anecdotes, memories, oral history and historical facts - could you have written another genre? Vivian J. Kaplan: Yes, there were many options. The facts could have been presented in any number of ways but none of them would have offered the in-depth revelations of the bizarre and convoluted life in the same way that I decided to write. AVIVA-Berlin: How long did you collect all the tales of your family? What was your family´s reaction to your project? Please describe your process of writing. Vivian J. Kaplan: The project was not something that I had visualised for years and years. One day I just decided that my mother´s life was an amazing collection of events and I sat down at my computer and started writing. I began by slipping into her thought process. If she had written the memoir herself she would have begun in her childhood. She would go backwards and relive the events in the present tense, placing herself into the places and settings that she knew. Thinking and writing in her persona it was necessary to consider myself actually in her skin. I became my mother. I knew her feelings intimately. I was keenly aware of her reactions and motivations to small or significant happenings having witnessed them every day of my life. This, added to the stories recalled at family gatherings over the years, created the framework and essence of the story. My family was glad to know that I had recorded the saga that they lived. The writing process itself took six years from beginning to publication, and for most of that time I did not reveal anything to anyone. I wrote in a very private and personal way, remembering the words of my late father, and of my mother, blending the memories and stories that I had in my mind with research information garnered from books and from the Internet, from correspondence with others around the globe who gave me additional insight and clarity when my own knowledge was limited. The people whose lives had an influence on my mother became true-life characters to me. For example, I never knew my grandparents but as I explored my parents´ lifetimes and experiences I "met" them and they reached out to me, giving me the benefit of their wisdom and guidance. In some spiritual way they directed the writing process. Fortsetzung

Juedisches Leben > Juedinnen erstellt: 07.08.2006 Sarah Ross