I REMEMBER...
32 • JULY 2019
...BEING TAUGHT TO REALLY
VALUE LIFE BY MY MOTHER. She
died recently, aged 93, but had been
in a concentration camp as a
teenager, and to say her family was
wiped out is too soft. They were
tortured, starved and finally put into
gas chambers. She didn’t talk about
it, but it gave her a decidedly
different world view.
My father abandoned us when I
was about six and my mother had to
work 12-hour days to provide for me,
but she made sure I had a stand-up,
be-proud attitude, and didn’t use
drugs, smoke or drink. Being alive
was too precious, she thought. You
only get about 80 years—and you’re
asleep for a third of that. And I have
yet to consciously get high, drunk or
smoke cigarettes....MOVING TO THE US WAS A
BORN-AGAIN MOMENT. My mother
and I arrived in New York when I was
eight. We had a hole in the ground
for a toilet in Israel and didn’t even
have a radio, but now I was in a place
with cars, refrigerators and a flying
man in a cape on TV. Anything
seemed possible.
I couldn’t speak English and had to
run the gauntlet of “What, are you
stupid?” But this gave me a thick skin
and, because I didn’t have many
people to talk to, I was able to spend
a lot of time day-dreaming. I’m now
connected to my subconscious andKiss in London,
May 1976© ANDRE CSILLAG/SHUTTERSTOCK