With a Ph.D. in French literature, Helen Waldstein Wilkes of Vancouver, born in 1936, examined her Jewish/Czechoslovakian background in Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery (Athabasca University Press 2010).

"My parents had done a lot of forgetting," Wilkes recalls. "It was their way of coping. The details of their trauma had always been a shadowy presence in my life. As I celebrated my 60th birthday, I knew it was time to unravel the mysteries in order to be present in my own life." In 2011, this book won both the Alberta Readers' Choice Award for best book published in Alberta (fiction or non-fiction) and the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.

Much of this sophisticated and well-illustrated material is derived from a treasure trove of letters received by her parents in Canada from family members in Europe from 1939 to 1948. Wilkes rescued this cache from an Eaton's Christmas box after her father died in 1959. As Nazis closed in on war-torn Czechoslovakia, her father had managed to escape from Prague with his young family in 1939.

In her foreword, Elizabeth Jameson writes: "Both the United States and Canada refused entry to most Jews in the immediate pre-war years. Both had admitted Jews through the early twentieth century. Canada, unlike the United States, had permitted Jewish agricultural colonies on the prairies. But neither welcomed Jewish immigrants during the 1930s. The United States severely restricted European immigration in 1924, and during the 1930s resisted appeals on behalf of European Jews. Canada separated Jews as a class from others who shared the same citizenship and then quietly restricted Jewish immigration. Britain, too, closed its doors, and prevented Jewish immigration to Palestine as well. Although Germany allowed Jews to leave until 1941, few escaped the Holocaust not because they could not leave but because no country would take them. Canadian immigration policy was more generous after the War, and thus most Canadian Holocaust memoirs have been written by survivors who emigrated after years in hiding or in concentration camps. Letters from the Lost differs from most narratives of the search for lost relatives because Helen Waldstein Wilkes was one of very few children to escape with her parents, and one of even fewer to enter Canada before the formal onset of the War. Her narrative speaks not only to the Holocaust, but also to her difficult transition to Canada as an immigrant Jewish child."

"I think involuntarily of Hilderl," Wilkes writes, "a relative on my mother's side. Hilderl was a beautiful child known to me only through my photo album. In the photo she is perhaps five years old. Poor little Hilderl. Neither her name nor the details ever varied as my mother told the story: 'Poor little Hilderl was a delightful child, sweet, bright, charming. One day as she was walking home with her mother, a Nazi tank deliberately drove onto the sidewalk and killed Hilderl. I don't know how her mother survived. We all thought she would go crazy.'"

For her second book, Helen Wilkes has encouraged people who are transitioning into a post-work identity to rekindle their passions and curiosity in The Aging of Aquarius: Igniting Passion and Purpose as an Elder (New Society 2018). She outlines practical steps to infuse life with a sense of purpose as an empowered elder. Wilkes, for example, has joined protests against the federal governments purchase of the Kinder Morgan pipeline project. "Despite his promises to open a new chapter in the Truth and Reconciliation process," she writes, "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has clearly failed to respect First Nations and their concern for the land. In addition, he has violated his promises in Paris to place Canada in the forefront of efforts to halt climate change. Instead, he has magically found 4.5 billion dollars to buy a pipeline from a private corporation who feared the venture might not produce sufficient return on their investment. 4.5 billion dollars! Your dollars and mine, suddenly available to a government that only last summer could not find a lesser amount to ensure safe drinking water for all Indigenous people whom previous governments had moved to reserves so that we, the immigrants to this country, might buy and own their land as our own private property."

BOOKS:

Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery (AU Press 2010) 978-1-897425-53-4 $24.95

The Aging of Aquarius: Igniting Passion and Purpose as an Elder (New Society 2018). $17.99 9780865718944

[BCBW 2020] HolocaustLit



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The Aging of Aquarius: Igniting Passion and Purpose as an Elder
by Helen Wilkes (New Society $17.99)

Review by Alan Belk

I have always wanted to change the world, to make it a better place. Perhaps you have, too. Lots of things get in the way: education, raising children, working in a job you may loathe, divorcing acrimoniously, and retiring. But if you are in the last of these life stages, then the good news is you still have a chance to do what you have always wanted.

Helen Wilkes thinks you have a better chance of being successful now because retirement will free you to use the experience you have gained over a lifetime of growth. We live in a culture that does not always celebrate age and the wisdom that accrues with it, as evidenced by the unflattering words available to describe those of us of pensionable age.

Wilkes, a retired professor of French literature, chooses to describe herself as an elder, a term that acknowledges that wisdom is a cultural resource, particularly in societies that do not primarily transmit culture through writing. But wisdom, perhaps, in the age of Wikipedia is not as valued as it should be. Elder is an instructive choice of term because it shows that we seniors need to define ourselves and reject the labels that are pasted on us. We must be active, not passive, and being an elder is an activity we can engage with and participate in.

But elders may be at a bit of a loss when it comes to changing the world because no one has given us a game plan, and it is difficult to break out from a life of conforming to social expectations. Fortunately, Wilkes helps us along the way with some practical advice.

Elderhood is not conferred by virtue of age; there is no greeting card, no welcoming party. We must choose to become an elder on our own and on our own terms. Becoming an elder requires self-examination and self-assessment. Do you want to do something you are comfortable with or do you want to take risks and extend your comfort zone? The key to being an elder is to offer your wisdom as a gift to other people, often in small ways.

Self-examination can be difficult, particularly if we view ourselves in terms of success or failure, and it is challenging because we may not want to see what we find. At the end of each chapter Wilkes provides a section on “Ideas and Actions.” For example, “Have you been hiding in a false self? Write down the names of any voices from the past (or in the present) that are making you feel small, unworthy, and incapable of further growth.”

The voices inside our heads are powerful and difficult to ignore. I suspect we pay more attention to the negative ones than the positive ones, to our detriment. But it is never too late to challenge and overcome them, and if we sit down with a paper and pencil and try to answer honestly Wilkes’s question, then we are made slightly better even by that action, because we have acted positively to address something that may have been bugging us for most of our lives.

Improving our own lives by knowing ourselves better and being honest with ourselves is one part of becoming an elder. The other part is to give to other people. As an elder, if you know what you are good at and what you like doing, and you have overcome your false self. What can you do? You must find your own answer to this question, but some activities that can have a great effect on other people’s lives can be simple to do. Reading for people, making music, having conversations with people, talking about your life history, teaching people, or protesting pipelines and dams. Some of the over 200 arrestees protesting the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion are retirees.

The thread running through The Aging of Aquarius is that improving ourselves through honest self-assessment and self-appraisal must be coupled with a desire to better the lives of other people, and we must act on that desire to be successful in bettering ourselves. This reflects the idea of Aristotelian virtue, which is that we must balance our responsibility to ourselves with our responsibilities toward others in order to flourish as human beings. If we concentrate only on our own wellbeing, or if we sacrifice ourselves to ensure the happiness of others, we are not living a virtuous life. And if we do not lead a virtuous life, we cannot be spiritually happy.

One possible downside of self-examination is having to face up to one’s own death. For Wilkes, who escaped Nazi Germany as a girl in 1939, coming to terms with death has heightened her own spirituality and made her more open to the possibility of an afterlife. For me, not so much.

But we do agree on one thing. Compared to the richness of life, and the unlimited potential of human beings to flourish in their lives, death is not significant. If you accept this view, you will want to become an elder, and Helen Wilkes can help you do that.
9780865718944

Alan Belk of Vancouver drove a school bus before teaching ethics, critical thinking, existentialism, and philosophy to students at the University of Guelph.

[BCBW 2019]
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