A

loving mother feels grateful her
children and grandchildren grow
up in comfort, but, at some point,
she wants them to know what she learned
in her own childhood. So, Gita Zikherman-
Greisdorf wrote The Shattered
Dreams, a slim memoir telling
her story simply and directly.
She wrote this book to con-
vey the values that sustained
her parents as they managed
to save their children from
the Nazis, remaining always
just a step ahead of disaster.
Inevitably, the book also conveys the
author’
s own personality. Dr. Charles Silow,
who works with survivors, such as Gita,
who serve as speakers at the Holocaust
Memorial Center in Farmington Hills,
describes the author as “honest, sincere
and sweet.”
The story starts in Daugavpils, Latvia,
where Gita enjoyed a happy childhood in
the same neighborhood as her grandpar-
ents, aunts, uncles and many cousins with
Jewish and Latvian playmates. Gita, the little
girl with a mop of golden curls, was a piano
prodigy. At the ripe age of 9, she won accep-
tance to the music conservancy. She never

got to attend.
The Nazis marched into Latvia June 22,
1941. Those Jews who could ran to the train
yards to try to go east toward relative safety.
Gita’
s father got his wife and children on a
crowded train, but it had no driver. He ran
through the trainyard and found a driver,
who refused to help them. Her father then
found a soldier, who threatened the driver.
So, a trainload of Jews escaped. Those who
stayed in Daugavpils were murdered by the
Germans. Gita’
s grandparents were among
those who stayed.
Looking back at that incident, Gita now
realizes that her father was a hero. He saved
the lives of a trainload of refugees.
When the family reached the Soviet
Union, along with tens of thousands of
other refugees, they could not stay in
overcrowded urban areas. At a kolkhoz, a
collective farm in a rural Russian village,
the Zikherman family lived with people
who had heard legends about Jews but
had never seen one. Villagers literally
checked these newcomers for horns.
Once the villagers realized that Jews are
just human beings, the good-hearted
peasants even shared what little they had
to help the family survive.

Gita’
s ever-resourceful father, trained as
a tailor, took up whatever trade or craft
he needed to provide for the family and
to share with the neighbors. When he
was mobilized, her fragile mother needed
12-year-old Gita to take charge.
Even in their extreme poverty, when
Gita’
s mother had enough supplies (flour,
bran and potato peels) to bake bread, she
instructed Gita to carry some to more
needy neighbors.
The story continues as the family moved
from place to place across Russia, as they
linked up with surviving cousins, as they
faced life-threatening dangers and still
managed to enjoy life.
After the war, the Russians put Gita’
s
father in charge of a tailoring shop. Three
German prisoners-of-war worked for him.
The Russians had little sympathy for these
defeated soldiers and did not give them
enough to eat. Gita’
s mother made sand-
wiches for her husband and extra sand-
wiches for the prisoners.
Gita did not ever become a concern
pianist — she still feels sad about that and
cries at concerts. She became a teacher of
Russian language and literature. She mar-
ried Gary Greisdorf in Russia, and they
have two children and four grandchildren.
The family moved to the Detroit area in
1972.
Summarizing her life story, the author
wants non-Jews to see what it means to hate
and to ask themselves the tragic question:
“How can a person come to such hatred?”
She wants Jews to feel proud of our peo-
ple, even when we have disagreements and
to remain united.
Without hiding from the horror, her
Holocaust story is both sweet and honest.

COURTESY OF GITA ZIKHERMAN-GREISDORF

Gita
Zikherman-
Greisdorf

16 | JANUARY 02 • 2019

The Shattered
Dreams

Author shares lessons learned
from her childhood.

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Jews in the D

LEFT: Gita at age 4, held by her mother’
s cousin
Rachel Brez, in 1935. RIGHT: At the wedding of
her aunt. Gita is the girl in the white dress. To the
right are Dora and Gita’
s grandparents, Avraham
and Barkin, who were murdered in the Holocaust.