Episode #44
Podcast #144 From Hidden Child to My Name is Gitta:, a survivor of the Holocaust ,beginning Again at Every Age
Gitta was born Brigitta Spindel in Vienna in 1932. She was six when the Anschluss shattered her world, and nearly seven when she was put on a train with her sister and sent into the care of the OSE, the French Jewish organization that hid and rescued two thousand Jewish children. She spent six years in children’s homes, a convent, and farming families, losing her father, her grandparents, and much of her extended family. Her mother survived and was waiting in England. She arrived in America at fourteen speaking only French. Of those early years she says simply, “I existed. I didn’t live.” Decades later the past returned in her body. Through therapy she found a way to live fully: forgiving herself and giving the anger back to the perpetrators. “Now,” she says, “I’m living, not just existing.” At eighty-nine she retraced her wartime journey. At ninety-four her documentary My Name is Gitta premiered in Hollywood and won the audience award. Gitta’s life is a master class in beginning again — at every stage.
