ALSO AVAILABLE: 2019-2020

2022

Photo by Lala Lyddon

On this episode, we hear from Denise Collins, whose husband, John, died in 2018, nine days after going on the antidepressant Citalopram, better known in the United States as Celexa. Earlier this year, her book, What Happened To John?: A memoir of enduring love, mental health, and suicide, was released and is available now in paperback and for Kindle. Denise spent three years researching, writing, and doing her best to recover following the tragic death of John and her experience of becoming a widow. The book opens on what Denise calls Day Zero, Monday, the 29th of October, 2018, a day that began "quite unremarkably," she says, but later that day, two uniformed police officers appeared at her front door. "In that moment," she writes, "I was blissfully unaware that life as I knew it had ended and that a living nightmare was about to begin." [Below are excerpts from the book.]

Staring at these strangers, these aliens so totally out of place in my home, I couldn't make sense of what they were telling me. From what sounded a long way off, I heard my voice pierce the white noise flooding my head, roaring so loud it obliterated every other sound, even the barking dogs. I was screaming.

His life was finished and so was mine. I was still breathing. My heart still beating. My body was alive, but life as I knew it had ended at the same moment that train hit John.

Simultaneously, I was in more pain than I’ve ever experienced and also numb.

For the rest of the world, this was just another ordinary day. Other people were absorbed in mundane activities. Waking. Working. Shopping. Looking after children. For me it was the beginning of a life I neither expected nor wanted. A life I had no idea how to live. It was the first day John was no longer in the world. He was dead. I was his widow. Everything had changed.

Denise Collins is an independent psychological therapist, coach, and trainer with over two decades experience. Since becoming widowed she also trained as a “Happiness Facilitator” using evidence-based positive psychology approaches, and as a grief educator, with David Kessler, using the principle that healthy bereavement requires us to grieve fully and also to live fully.

Her website, denise-collins.com, is aimed at what she terms "corporate clients." She coaches female executives on developing their authentic leadership style and building a sustainable work/life balance.

Her specialties are:
Guiding People In Discovering and Celebrating Their Unique Personal Power (UPP©)
Supporting Those Navigating Life After Loss
and Teaching Resilience And How To Embrace Change.

On this episode, Innocents at Risk Founder and Director Deborah Sigmund talks to Michael Camal, who currently serves as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign, the department’s national public awareness campaign to combat human trafficking. In this role, Michael leads the Blue Lightning Initiative (BLI) to address human trafficking within the aviation industry. Under his leadership, BLI has tripled in size, expanded its reach to airports, aviation businesses, and the general aviation community. BLI has trained over 200,000 aviation staff on trafficking indicators and how to report the crime. Michael also supports the newly established DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking
(CCHT), where he coordinates across 16 DHS components to further support the department’s domestic anti-trafficking mission. In collaboration with the U.S. Department of State, Michael engages foreign officials on public awareness, instituting a victim-centered approach, and recommendations on how foreign governments can improve their laws and strategies for combatting human trafficking. Michael has been with DHS for five years. He is originally from New Jersey and holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology with a concentration in Criminal Justice from the University of Rhode Island.

AKATHISIA STORIES

On this episode, we hear from Geraldine and her daughter, Cindy. In 2015 Geraldine's ex-husband, Louis, Cindy's dad, ended his life at age 63, the victim of prescription drug-induced akathisia.

Geraldine

[Geraldine] The fact that the doctors kept him on the drugs and didn’t – you know, they don’t brush up and figure out there’s got to be a better way. We can’t just keep doubling up the medication because this man is frantic and calling them at different hours, you know, all hours.

Cindy

[Cindy] He was never suicidal until the akathisia. You know, he did struggle obviously with the depression and anxiety but he never talked about not being able to go on or suicide or anything like that until it was ramped up with the akathisia.

Geraldine grew up in Brooklyn and, later, Queens, New York. Spending time in Manhattan, she developed an interest in the arts and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology. She got married and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where her son, Ben, was born. When Ben was 2, Geraldine returned to New York and her second child, Cindy, was born in Westchester. It was there that she raised her children and worked in a family advertising business. After retiring and moving to Sarasota, Florida, Geraldine studied and developed a passion for drawing and painting. Other interests she has pursued are yoga, tai chi, dance, philanthropy, and volunteering with children and seniors. She now has two grandchildren, ages 7 and 10.

Cindy grew up in the suburbs of New York City, and now lives in Oakland, California, working as a functional/integrative dietitian. Having lost her dad, Louis, in 2015, she’s been involved in suicide and akathisia awareness, education, and support ever since. As a former journalist, she's an avid researcher, and after her father's death, she found Chicago-based MISSD and resonated with its mission. Living in Chicago at the time, she thought it was a perfect organization to get involved in as a way to honor her dad's memory and spread awareness about potential medication side effects. She did her own extensive grief work and joined the board soon after her dad's death. She believes talking about your experiences and listening to others going through something similar helps with the healing process and from feeling isolated or alone in your pain. She adopted a rescue dog, Finley, within a year of her own loss and loves spending time with the dog on the many Bay Area trails. Cindy dabbles in a variety of hobbies in her down time, including traveling, cooking, yoga, learning the ukulele, and fiber arts.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear the story of Ida Paluch Kersz.

Ida Paluch Kersz. Photo credit: John Pregulman

Ida was born in Poland in May 1939, just months before Germany invaded Poland and the Second World War began. The Nazis immediately occupied the city she lived in, creating a ghetto that ultimately saw the deportation of 35,000 Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp. In the summer of 1942, with deportation imminent, her family tragically came apart, but Ida was given a new life, her Jewish identity known only to her new parents, a young Polish Christian couple anxious to start a family. Ida's twin brother was also saved, but the two would not see each other — or know the other's fate — for 50 years.

[Ida Paluch Kersz] I got this Chicago Tribune and there was this picture of this young man and I also have a picture of my grandparents, and when I looked at him and I looked at my grandfather, you know, I saw him in his face. And I said, I have to find out more about him. And the lady who interviewed him in Warsaw, I found her and I talked to her, and she said, “Ida, he does not have any memory.” I say, “Give me his phone number.” And I called Poland and one of his sons answered and I told him, “I want to speak to your father.” He said, “He’s not here.” I say, “Well, when your father comes, tell him to call me because I think he may be my twin brother.”

Ida Paluch Kersz arrived in Chicago in 1963, having spent the previous six years in Israel, where she had married and gave birth to her daughter, Esther. In Chicago she found work in a microphone factory and later owned a dry-cleaning and alteration business, eventually selling the business, divorcing her husband, and moving with her daughter to Skokie. She remarried in 1976. A few years later, Ida made a visit to the newly opened Holocaust Museum in Skokie, where she became a volunteer and speaker, contributing countless hours sharing the story of her survival with thousands of students and visitors to the museum. She currently serves on the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center's Board of Directors and lives in Winnetka, Illinois. In 2019, her memoir, Unveiled Memories, was published.

We spoke over Zoom.

AKATHISIA STORIES

On this episode, we hear from 24-year-old Marcello, who, prior to being severely injured by a prescribed antidepressant, was a healthy and happy college sophomore at The New School in New York City. Just days after starting the prescription, he suffered a catastrophic adverse reaction to the medication that led to akathisia, inappropriate polypharmacy, and years of suffering.

[Marcello] The experience for the sufferer during all of this is nightmarish. It’s unbelievable because you know what’s happening. You know that there’s incredible injury and you also know that there’s likely no help.

We also hear from Marcello's mother, Lisa, who has watched her son suffer the devastating effects of akathisia for more than two years.

[Lisa] What it looks like from the outside is like a horror show. It’s unfathomable. You know, he’s a very normal looking, functioning young man and suddenly he’s rocking, grimacing, in torturous pain as though someone were torturing him. I know that people with akathisia use the word torture a great deal, and it’s apt.

Resources and links:
MISSD’s new video (referenced in the episode)
Lisa’s Mad In America article, “Boy, Interrupted: A Story of Akathisia”

READ THE FULL EPISODE 14 TRANSCRIPT

(also includes a “podcast extra”)

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear from Ben Goldwater.

Ben Goldwater and his wife, Linda

Ben Goldwater and his wife, Linda

Ben was born in December 1938, in Brussels, Belgium. He was living in Eisden, a small city in the north of Belgium, near Antwerp, when war broke out in September 1939. When the German army attacked the French and British armies though Luxembourg and Belgium, his family fled to France. The French government was not friendly to refugees, particularly Jewish refugees, so after several months, his family returned to Belgium, settling in Mons, near the French border. Ben’s family lived under constant fear of denunciation as Jews and did whatever they could to avoid the local Gestapo. Ben's father was active in the Belgian resistance and used his underground contacts to find a woman in a nearby village who was willing to provide a hiding place for Ben and his sister.

[Ben Goldwater] We got to this woman’s house — her name was Josephine — and I realized that I was going to be left there. I started to cry bitterly. That feeling of abandonment was just overwhelming. I was devastated. My father promised he would send my sister the next day, which he did. He brought my sister to stay with me the next day. And that’s when my sister and I went into hiding with this woman Josephine, who lived in her home with her daughter, Denise. Her daughter, Denise, was a teenager then. So, anyway, she took us in and set up two rickety beds in an attic, which was neither finished nor heated. And that’s the area that was given to my sister and I.

[Andy Miles] Ben Goldwater arrived in Chicago on December 18, 1949, his 11th birthday, and enrolled in the 5th grade at Mason School on the West Side of Chicago. He later attended Chicago’s Senn High School, where he graduated in 1957. When he was a senior at Northwestern in 1960, Ben met his wife, Linda. They've been married for almost 60 years and have two children and two grandchildren. Ben earned his JD degree from IIT Chicago Kent College of Law and has been practicing law, to this day, since 1964.

We spoke in the Illinois Holocaust Museum Library just before his 81st birthday — and the 70th anniversary of his arrival in Chicago.

TURNING A MILLION EYES TO SAVE LIVES

On this third episode of the series we hear from Deborah Sigmund, Founder and Director of Innocents at Risk; Callahan Walsh, Executive Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC); and Cheryl Csiky, Executive Director of In Our Backyard. We talk about efforts made by all three organizations in combating human trafficking and child exploitation at and around the Super Bowl.

As major events in the U. S. attract more people, they also attract more sex traffickers and more buyers. Law enforcement faces overwhelming challenges to try to stay ahead of the traffickers. Unfortunately, the Super Bowl has become a magnet for traffickers. For the past several years, nonprofit organizations have gone to the host city of the Super Bowl to work with law enforcement in numerous ways. This year, with the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, Kevin Malone, former general manager of the L.A. Dodgers and the co-founder and CEO of The U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, is leading efforts to help fight trafficking during the week of the Super Bowl. Mr. Malone formed the Alliance Against Human Trafficking and Exploitation. Some of the organizations that are working with this alliance are A21, It’s A Penalty, Operation Underground Railroad, and Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich and his family. In addition, the NFL has given financial support for this alliance.

We also discuss the EARN IT Act, bipartisan legislation that was recently reintroduced in the Senate by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and co-sponsored in the House by Representative Sylvia Garcia, Democrat of Texas, and Representative Ann Wagner, Republican of Missouri. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act -- the EARN IT Act -- will protect children everywhere by eliminating blanket immunity for violations of laws related to online child sexual abuse material. Innocents at Risk believes that tech companies need to be held responsible and no longer turn a blind eye to child sexual material on their websites.

The EARN It Act will also establish a commission of survivors, technology representatives, and government stakeholders to create recommendations and voluntary best practices for tech companies to respond to the global pandemic of online sexual exploitation of children.

The EARN IT Act will finally introduce accountability for big tech. Please ask your senators and member of Congress to support this important legislation today. We need the EARN IT Act in order to make the internet a safer place for our children.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear the incredible story of Erna Blitzer Gorman.

Erna Blitzer Gorman

Erna was born in France but ended up spending almost two years of the war hiding with her family on a farm in Ukraine. In the tiny hayloft where they hid, Erna had to keep so still that she became mute and her muscles atrophied so severely that she temporarily lost the ability to walk. Just ten years old at the time she escaped this confinement, with the war still on, Erna and her family crawled in the snow near the Russian border with Katyusha rocket artillery lighting up the sky.

[Erna Blitzer Gorman] So because of those flashes in the sky and the shooting back from the other side of the road, the dirt road, there was an airplane raid and we scattered off, crawled off the road. And I was with my mom and my dad had my sister. And the airplane came; I imagine it must have been a German airplane that they must have communicated in some ways for it to be there. And they dropped a bomb. And all I could see was the blood running down her side.

Erna Blitzer Gorman has had, in her words, "a very eventful life, and a very interesting one." She came to the United States in 1953 and settled in Detroit, where she lived with her aunt and father. She initially found work in a sweatshop, where she did piecework in the manufacture of shirts, but soon left the low-paying job and found work as a salesperson at a wholesale jewelry house and, years later, sold real estate. Erna was married for 63 years, until her husband passed away about five years ago. She has two sons and three granddaughters, and in late 2019 moved to Highland Park, Illinois, to be closer to family. Erna began telling her Holocaust story in 1992 and has spoken to thousands of audiences, from Detroit's Holocaust museum to schools and churches throughout the Midwest. She has also been the keynote speaker at two university graduations and holds a pair of honorary doctorates of education. Erna is the author of the memoir While Other Children Played: A Hidden Child Remembers the Holocaust, published in 2010.

We spoke over Zoom.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear from Vera Burstyn.

Vera Burstyn. Photo credit: John Pregulman

Vera was born in 1939 in Budapest, Hungary. In 1942, her father was taken to a forced labor camp, sent to the Russian front, and never heard from again. When Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, Vera’s apartment building became a so-called yellow star house, and she and her mother struggled to survive, with the city under constant assault of Nazi bombs and day-to-day living conditions extremely difficult. That fall, her mother was sent on a forced march to Austria and eventually to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Left on her own, Vera lived in a Red Cross orphanage in Budapest until an aunt with Swedish papers found her and took her in.

[Vera Burstyn] "When I got to the Red Cross shelter, just by chance of fate, my cousin Judy was also in the Red Cross shelter. Now, her parents were still in Budapest. Her mother had some Swedish papers and her father was hiding, but I think they thought that Judy was safer, you know, in the shelter than to be with them. And so we recognized each other at the shelter and we shared our, you know, blanket and we hugged and we kissed and we were together in the shelter."

Vera Burstyn arrived in Chicago on December 26th, 1956 with her mother, dad, and younger brother, having escaped from the Hungarian Revolution. She had many jobs over the years, from working on an assembly line to owning a store and later selling real estate. In 1958 Vera married and she and her husband, Hyman, have four children, six granddaughters, and six grandsons. She says, "If the Great American dream is to educate the children, have a house and a car in the garage, I have done that." Vera and Hyman have lived in Skokie since 1967.

We spoke over Zoom.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear from Ernie Heimann.

Ernie Heimann. Photo credit: John Pregulman

Ernie Heimann was born in 1929 in Mainz, Germany, 30 miles west of Frankfurt.  During Kristallnacht, November 9th and 10th, 1938, Ernie’s school and synagogue were destroyed. In the aftermath of these events, his parents knew that they had to get Ernie out of Germany. Days later the British Parliament passed a bill that would allow the temporary admission of 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children into the United Kingdom. His aunt was in England visiting friends at the time and she made provisions for Ernie to come to England. On his tenth birthday he learned that in one week he would leave for England to live with a family in a suburb of London.

Before Kristallnacht, Ernie had been asking for a 26-inch bike, but he says that with all the events that occurred, a 26-inch bike became “not so important,” and that nothing greater could have happened on his 10th birthday than the gift of leaving Germany. It was February 1st, 1939, exactly seven months before the start of World War II, when he departed for England on the Kindertransport.

[Ernie Heimann] I tell you, it’s kind of surreal because all of this had been pre-prepared. In other words, this wasn’t a last-minute deal; this was all planned out ahead of time. They knew that England was an island surrounded by the sea, and across the channel, Germans.

In 1943 Ernie Heimann came to Chicago where he would eventually enroll at the Illinois Institute of Technology.  He was drafted into the 101st Airborne, serving out the Korean War at Fort Benjamin Harrison near Indianapolis.  Ernie made a career as a material manager in the furniture industry, and between he and his second wife, Roslyne, has four children, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. 

We spoke at his home.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear from Estelle Glaser Laughlin.

Estelle Glaser Laughlin. Photo credit: John Pregulman

Estelle was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1929. When she was 10 years old, her family was forced into the Warsaw Ghetto. The family hid in a secret room to avoid deportation during liquidations in 1942. Estelle’s father built a bunker in which the family hid during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. The bunker was eventually exposed by a bomb, and the family was sent to Majdanek Extermination Camp, when Estelle was 13 years old.

[Estelle Glaser Laughlin] We were with a group of women, and a group of men were sitting opposite us. And my father had TB at that point, and he was running a very high fever. His eyes were so filled with pain. I was so used to looking into his eyes for comfort and reassurance. There was such pleading in his eyes. So at some point, when the guards passed and were on the other end, I shoved myself through the first row and I dashed across. And my father wiggled his way to be close, and I ran across to him and kneeled down in front of him. And I said, “Dad, don’t worry, Tata. They won’t get me.”

Estelle Glaser Laughlin arrived in America with her sister and mother in 1947. With only three years of public schooling and brief underground tutoring in the ghetto, she entered college and earned a master's degree in education and taught in Montgomery County, Maryland. After retiring, Estelle found a new passion in writing prose. Her memoir, Transcending Darkness: A Girl's Journey Out of the Holocaust, published by Texas Tech University Press in 2012, was named a finalist for the 2012 ForeWord Review Book of the Year Awards. Her new novel, Hanna, I Forgot To Tell You, also published by Texas Tech University Press, was released last year. She’s currently writing another novel. Estelle has three high-achieving sons, seven grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. Of course, they’re all wonderful, she says.

AKATHISIA STORIES

On this episode, we hear from Kerri Lynn. Kerri says that she was taught to trust doctors, taught to trust prescriptions, taught to trust the assessments she received from hospitals. And she did, but, she says, this trust nearly killed her.

[Kerri Lynn] It’s traumatizing what I went through.  I never, ever in my life thought a person could feel like that.  I never thought a person could think like that, especially against their will. I just knew inside of my soul, this is not me; this is not who I am.

Kerri Lynn was born in Long Beach, California, but was raised and currently resides in the upper Midwest. She grew up in what she calls a dysfunctional home and early on gravitated towards addictive tendencies. At 13 she discovered drinking. As she matured, Kerri chased other self-destructive behaviors and relationships, until her self-described out-of-control nature led to an ultimatum from loved ones: she had to find a solution how not to be self-destructive. Pain and circumstances, she writes, drove her to seek help from 12-step recovery, which, as we'll hear in our conversation, led to her 13-year nightmare with prescribed medications. During these nightmare days, she says, her medical vocabulary expanded as she learned words like suicidal ideation, disassociation, delusion, profuse night-sweats, rapid irregular heartbeat, and agoraphobia. Kerri is now 11 years medication-free and stable and says that today she has a strategy for living that works. We spoke in mid-December over Zoom.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode, we hear from Judy Kolb.

Judy Kolb, courtesy of IHMEC

Judy's maternal grandparents owned a fabric and dressmaking shop in Swinemünde, Germany, a fashionable spa town on the Baltic Sea. Their daughter, Carla, met a cantor named Leopold Fleischer in January 1937 when he moved to Swinemünde and rented a room in the same building. Carla and Leopold fell in love and married in the spring of 1939. By that time, the Nazis had begun encouraging Jews to emigrate from Germany, and when Judy’s grandfather, Julius, was arrested and imprisoned for six weeks in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, his wife, Martha, insisted that the family leave Germany as soon as possible. She set her sights on Japanese-occupied Shanghai, an open port city which refugees did not need a visa to enter. To be able to afford passage there, Martha sold her house, clothing store, and some furnishings to a wealthy, non-Jewish neighbor. She bought tickets for the entire family on the German Lloyd Line. After obtaining exit papers to leave Germany, Martha presented the passenger tickets to the Gestapo at Sachsenhausen. Soon after, Julius was released from the camp.

In June of 1939, Julius, Martha, Leopold, Carla, and her brother Heinz embarked for Shanghai. The journey took four weeks.

In Shanghai they were immediately taken to a Heime, German for “home.” Many Heimes were converted barracks crammed with narrow bunk beds, sleeping anywhere from six to 150 people a room. Soon, the whole family moved into an apartment in a small area called Hongkew. On March 6th, 1940, Carla gave birth to her daughter, Judith “Daisy” Fleischer.

Then, on December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor happened. The Japanese were at war with the United States and formed the Axis alliance with fascist Italy and Germany.

[Judy Kolb] So the following spring, in 1942, Colonel Meisinger came to Shanghai. He was called the Butcher of Warsaw. So he came to Shanghai and tried to convince the Japanese to somehow dispose of all the Jews living in Shanghai. Rumors were that they were going to put everybody on ships, send them out to sea without water, food, or whatever. There was even talk about crematorium being set up. Certainly they wanted to get rid of us. But what happened — the Japanese would not go along with the plan. So one of my saviors are really the Japanese.

Judy Kolb arrived in San Francisco in January 1948, nearly 8 years old. Soon after, her grandparents, parents, uncle, new aunt, and her aunt's parents bought a home not far from the Golden Gate Bridge. In 1955, her father accepted a position in Chicago as cantor at a synagogue founded by German-Jewish immigrants who fled Nazi persecution. Upon graduating from Hyde Park High, Judy says she had "no inspiring ideas of what to do." A friend was taking the entrance exam at South Chicago Community Hospital School of Nursing and suggested Judy come along. She did and ended up taking and passing the entrance exam herself, and entered the three-year R.N. program at the school. After graduating in 1961 and passing board exams, Judy started working in pediatrics at the University of Chicago hospital. Two years later, she married Louis Kolb, a resident in orthopedic surgery. Their first child, Jeffrey, was born in 1966. They had two more children and she remained home, doing volunteer in the schools and the community, later working in her husband's office. In 2001, Louis died, and in 2003, Judy returned to working part time in a pediatric office, retiring in 2015. She started volunteering at Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center when it opened in 2009.

Ernest Fruehauf

On this episode, we hear from Ernest Fruehauf.

Ernest was born in 1929 in Kitzingen, Germany, where his family owned a successful café located below their second-floor apartment. As a young child, Ernest experienced the rising tide of hate and antisemitism in Germany. On November 10th, 1938, during the events of Kristallnacht, an angry mob ransacked the café. His father was arrested and imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp, and his family was forced from their home to live in a community building, or Juden Haus. Ernest's father knew his family was in danger. Following thousands of Jews, he arranged to flee Germany in 1941. Although arranging refuge in the United States was difficult, his father remained undaunted and, sponsored by a relative here, the Fruehaufs got out of Germany just in time.

[Ernest Fruehauf] "We were lucky. Exactly in May of 1941, two weeks before Roosevelt closed the consulates in Germany altogether, we got our visas in the city of Stuttgart. We were lucky. And I thought, if it had been two weeks later, we wouldn't have gotten a visa anymore."

In 1941, 12-year-old Ernest Fruehauf arrived with his family in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where his mother's sister and family lived. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin School of Engineering and got a job with the Amoco Oil Corporation, now BP, retiring in 1989. He and his wife of 67 years, Ursula, live in Deerfield, Illinois, and have three daughters, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

On this episode we hear from Ruth Gilbert.

Ruth Gilbert

Ruth was born in 1938 in Łódź, Poland. Upon Nazi occupation of Poland in 1939, Ruth and her family were forced into the Łódź Ghetto. Ruth’s father recognized how difficult things would continue to be and, with savings he had secreted into the ghetto, went to the black market and purchased fake IDs for Ruth and her mother. In 1941, he bribed a guard to let them sneak out of the ghetto under the barbed wire. His plan was to make his way to Russia and join the Russian army, while Ruth and her mother would hide with a family in Lublin, Poland, for the duration of the war. But after a short time, the Polish family was evacuated, leaving Ruth and her mother homeless.

[Ruth Gilbert] So there we were. And since my mother didn't know what to do, she got on a train. She bought tickets and we were riding the trains like the hobos do. And it was very difficult. We didn't have any means of bathing, and we had lice. The only food we had was what she could buy from vendors, farmers at the different stations. And we would eat raw eggs. And worst of all, Nazi officers would come on the train looking for Jews. And if they found a Jew, which they did frequently, they'd drag them off the train and shoot them.

Ruth Gilbert came to the United States in late 1949 with her mom and stepfather, first settling in Patterson, New Jersey, and later coming to Chicago, where her aunt lived. Ruth met a young man in high school, and as soon as she graduated college as a teacher, they got married. She taught middle grades in a Chicago public school and was able to help her husband through medical school. As soon as they were financially able, they moved to the suburbs with their two little boys. Ruth became a stay-at-home-mom, busy with parenting and active in the boys' school and their synagogue. "Life was good," she says," but "unfortunately it did not last." Her husband was diagnosed with leukemia and died at the age of 49. Ruth was 47 and her boys were college age. After her grief subsided, she made the decision to move to Evanston and got a job in a local synagogue office where she worked until her retirement. She met a very nice man and they spent 30 wonderful years together. He died two years ago at the age of 87. Ruth's boys are both married now and she is the proud grandma of many beautiful grandchildren.

RESISTANCE, RESILIENCE & HOPE

Now available: "Resistance, Resilience and Hope: Holocaust Survivor Stories," a podcast series hosted by Andy Miles which tells the stories of nine Holocaust survivors in the Chicago area. Each episode features a conversation with a survivor, each traveling back in time to tell their story as it happened in Hungary, Poland, Germany, France, Belgium, England, Shanghai, Israel, and America. During the Holocaust, the survivors in the series ranged in age from toddlers to teenagers, some of them held captive in urban ghettos and remote concentration camps, others in hiding and on the run.

"Resistance, Resilience & Hope" is a podcast co-production of Illinois Holocaust Museum and Studio C and is generously sponsored by Wintrust Bank.

On this second episode, we hear from Innocents at Risk Founder and Director Deborah Sigmund, and Nancy Rivard, president of Airline Ambassadors International (AAI). Nancy founded AAI to provide for orphans and vulnerable children in 1996 while working as a flight attendant for American Airlines. It is the only relief and development organization representing the airline industry. Airline Ambassadors International has hand-delivered over $60 million of aid to children in 62 countries in orphanages, clinics and remote communities, impacting over 500,000 children.

In 2009, Deborah Sigmund gave a presentation on human trafficking and Innocents at Risk's Flight Attendant Initiative at an Airline Ambassadors meeting in Miami. Deborah asked Nancy and her team to join the Innocents at Risk Flight Attendant Initiative, to which they agreed. Together, Airline Ambassadors and Innocents at Risk have trained thousands of flight attendants to identify and report suspected incidents of human trafficking. We hear about those trainings and much more in our conversation, which was recorded over Zoom on the last day of 2021.

Resources:
Innocents at Risk website
Airline Ambassadors International
Airline Ambassadors Human Trafficking Awareness Training (sign up now!)
DHS Blue Campaign
Blue Lightning Initiative

This week on “The Hard Question” Blanquita starts the new year by interviewing the outstanding and visionary human rights filmmaker Leon Lee. Lee’s new movie, “Unsilenced,” will be released January 21. It’s based on the true-life story of the crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party and what a group of students risk to fight for freedom. A very powerful interview and a must-see film.

ABOUT THE FILM

Based on true events, “Unsilenced” follows Wang, a Chinese student and Falun Gong practitioner, and his friends as they attempt to navigate the 1999 order that banned the spiritual practice in China and remains in effect to this day. New lies and coverups appear around every turn as the Chinese Communist Party attempts to quell the rising voices of dissent, deploying every form of propaganda and suppression that it can muster. With the risk of prison, torture, and even death looming over Wang and his compatriots, they must all make sacrifices to protect the truth and expose the government’s human-rights abuses. {Watch the trailer}

ABOUT LEON LEE

Leon Lee is an award-winning filmmaker who explores intriguing stories that help shine a light on human rights issues. His debut documentary Human Harvest, which was eight years in the making, exposed China's illegal organ trade. It has been viewed by millions worldwide and received a coveted Peabody Award. Lee's documentary Avenues of Escape(2016) was the recipient of four Leo Awards including Best Feature Documentary. His recent documentary Letter from Masanjia premiered at Hot Docs 2018 and has since won awards from festivals around the world. His goal as a filmmaker is to create an impact by bringing true stories to life in unforgettable ways, sparking vital discussion on topics of international importance.

On this debut episode, we hear from Innocents at Risk Founder and Director Deborah Sigmund and retired flight attendant Sandra Fiorini, who for many years has worked closely with Innocents at Risk in training aviation industry personnel and reporting suspected incidents of child trafficking. We'll hear about that work and several of those incidents in our conversation.

Resources:
Innocents at Risk website
DHS Blue Campaign
Blue Lightning Initiative

THE HARD QUESTION WITH BLANQUITA CULLUM

This week “The Hard Question with Blanquita Cullum” welcomes the founder of Voices Against Trafficking, Andi Buerger JD.

Andi Buerger is one of the world's most fearless fighters against human trafficking. Through her organizations Voices Against Trafficking and Beulah's Place she has rescued hundreds of innocents from the multibillion-dollar transnational criminal industry. Voices Against Trafficking (VAT) has published a landmark work, Voices Against Trafficking: The Strength of Many Voices Speaking As One. This searing publication tells the harrowing story of the criminal global human trafficking industry through the voices of both victims and rescuers. It is a painful story, but one that must be heard.

Bob Fiddaman

On this episode, we hear from author, blogger, researcher, and self-described humanist and humorist Bob Fiddaman. His eponymously titled blog has focused on drug company and regulatory malfeasance since making its debut in 2006. At the time, Bob, an Englishman living in Birmingham, was taking himself off of Seroxat, a GlaxoSmithKline-produced antidepressant known here in America as Paxil. After making a protracted attempt at tapering off of the drug, he eventually decided to go cold turkey, a course of action he strongly advises against.

[Bob Fiddaman] "Within 24 hours, I was pretty much in a fetal position, you know, suffering stomach cramps, head zaps, intrusive thoughts. It was pretty bad. And it took about three months of absolute torture to get through to the other side, but I pretty much knew once I did reach the other side — because I was getting all my empathy, for one; that was coming back, so I’d be listening to music that I’d never really listened to before and really focus in on the lyrics. So, you know, my type of music is rock, AC/DC in particular. I started listening to the Dixie Chicks’ “Travelin’ Soldier,” and was listening to the lyrics and the story and I was crying, and then Martina McBride “Concrete Angel.” I was just crying my eyes out at these lyrics. So for the first time in a very long time I was able to sort of, like, feel things again, feel emotion again."

Bob Fiddaman was born in London in 1964, the youngest of three children. In 1967, his family moved to Birmingham where he has lived since, though he now splits his time between England and his adopted home in Panama. Bob married in 1987, divorced in 2006, and has three grown children. In 2006, he created the SEROXAT SUFFERERS STAND UP AND BE COUNTED blog, later changing the name to FIDDAMAN BLOG. Bob has met with the U.K.'s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on a number of occasions but has now ceased contact with them. He has also been a thorn in the side of drug manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, reporting on numerous inquests and wrongful death lawsuits brought against the company by bereaved families. In our interview, you'll hear about some of these, including Dolin v. GSK, the 2017 trial that MISSD founder Wendy Dolin was the plaintiff in. Bob is the author of a 2011 memoir called The Evidence, However, Is Clear: The Seroxat Scandal, and has recently finished a science fiction novel called No Other Man. [Bob Fiddaman: “It's about angels, it’s about numerology, it’s about demons and it’s about love.] We spoke over Zoom.

AKATHISIA STORIES

In this episode, we hear from Heather McCarthy, mother of O'Shea McCarthy, known as Shea, who was born in December of 1988.

Heather McCarthy

Shea’s love of art and music was apparent from an early age, and by the time he reached adolescence, he had become proficient in a variety of instruments and was the recipient of numerous art awards. Shea excelled in his studies throughout his K through 12 education, especially in his love of nature and science. Upon graduation from high school, he was admitted to Purdue University where he was accepted in the Earth and Atmospheric Science Program. Prior to undergoing corrective surgery for a deviated septum the summer before his sophomore year, Shea was prescribed an extremely large dose of the antibiotic Levaquin. After a three-week course of this veritable atomic bomb of antibiotics, Shea's life would never be the same. Heather remembers that her son became a shadow of the “intelligent, curious, beautiful young man” he was as he was suddenly struggling with anxiety, cardiac issues, insomnia, and a host of other adverse effects caused by Levaquin. Despite telling his treatment providers that he believed his condition was the result of an adverse effect of Levaquin, they chose a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and subsequently prescribed a host of psychotropic drugs that included Risperdal, Lamictal and Ativan.

[Heather McCarthy] I think these drugs are so insidious on how they affect your spirit and your mind and, my belief, your soul, because it’s such a slow walk. It’s such a slow chipping away at who he was. And his anxiety was all the time. He, you know, was twitching a lot and he had so much anxiety. And I think he just got tired. And how degrading it is to not be listened to and to not be believed. I mean, we have medical records that says, “I’m afraid,” he’s telling his therapist, “I’m afraid I’m going to crash my car." In hindsight, it’s just this ridiculous, to me, belief that he was — you know, he’s going, he’s getting the treatment, he’s going to get better. Like, this is going to pass. This is a brilliant young man. You know? Like, this is going to pass.”

Heather McCarthy is an attorney from Northwest Indiana who holds advanced degrees in public administration and English lit. Prior to establishing a private law practice, she was an executive in the mental health industry. She served in the role of vice president at the administrative services organization for Regional Mental Health Center, the facility that treated her son, O’Shea. After his death, Heather pursued an eight-year legal case alleging medical malpractice of the mental health treatment providers in the wrongful death of her son. She also testified, with numerous other victims, at the 2015 FDA hearings that resulted in additional black box warnings for the antibiotic Levaquin and the acknowledgment of a disability, Fluoroquinolone Associated Disability, of which symptoms include cardiac issues, insomnia, restlessness, and psychosis, some of which can be permanent. Heather also supports the efforts of MISSD in creating awareness about akathisia, a condition that was fatal for Shea after receiving mental health treatment.

In this episode we hear two interviews with Heather, the first of which was recorded in late 2019, following the MISSD organization's silent auction in Chicago. At that time Heather's lawsuit was in progress and she was not permitted to make mention of it. Later, we hear an interview recorded just last month, following resolution of that litigation.

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Angela Peacock

In this episode, we hear from Angela Peacock. At age 18, Angela went into the United States Army, where she rose to the rank of sergeant. Five years into her service, the U.S. invaded Iraq and Angela was deployed to Baghdad. For a variety of reasons, the deployment took a physical and mental toll on her, and within six months she was medevacked out of Iraq to recover in Germany. A day after her evacuation, one of the soldiers in her platoon was badly injured, requiring medical assistance in the same military hospital where she was recovering.

[Angela Peacock] And he was like clearly traumatized; you know, it had just happened 48 hours prior. I don’t know how to explain it. I just felt, like, out of control. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to handle it. I just said OK, I can’t hear any more; I’ve got to go. And I just walked out of his room and I walked down the hall, and I didn’t have anything in my mind at that point, to, like, go get help; I just saw the sign; it said “Psychiatry,” arrow. I was like, I need to talk to somebody right now, and I just walked straight into the office and I was like, “My soldier just told me what happened; I don’t know what to do; I’m having a hard time as it is, readjusting to Iraq — or back to Germany. I feel like I almost died,” and then the answer was, here’s a prescription.

Angela Peacock is a former U.S. Army sergeant and subject of the documentary film “Medicating Normal.” Diagnosed with PTSD after one deployment to Iraq in 2003, she was overmedicated for it for over a decade and a half. She suffered from akathisia during a medically supervised taper and during withdrawal. Angie is part of the “Medicating Normal” outreach team, having already facilitated more than 150 post-screening panel discussions with communities worldwide. Her past roles include Veterans of Foreign Wars Legislative Fellow, Wounded Warrior Project Courage Award recipient, and finalist for Student Veteran of the Year with Student Veterans of America. She is a mental health advocate, writer, and YouTube creator who travels in her campervan across the United States with her service dog, Raider, in an effort to improve the mental health care system for veterans and civilians alike.

AKATHISIA STORIES

In this episode of “Akathisia Stories,” we hear from Colleen Bell, the loving niece of Stephen O'Neill, who died in 2016 at the age of 48. Stephen was a devoted family man who Colleen describes as having dedicated his life to helping others. A talented singer-songwriter and guitarist, Stephen was well known to pub-goers and nursing home residents in Northern Ireland, playing frequent gigs, several of which were abruptly canceled in the summer of 2016 when he had what was later characterized as a catastrophic reaction to the antidepressant Sertraline, also known as Zoloft. Within 48 hours of starting the prescription, Stephen experienced the scariest night of his life. His heart was racing and his mind was in overdrive with a relentless stream of dark and disturbing thoughts.

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Colleen Bell

[Colleen Bell]: He said that his thoughts were multiplied by a thousand. He could feel almost things crawling on his skin. And he felt like he couldn’t sit down. He couldn’t settle. I believe he went for a walk because he wanted to try and shake the agitated feeling that he had throughout his whole body, and he still didn’t feel any better. So he basically said that he just waited for the sun to come up so that he could go and get help.

Colleen Bell grew up in a small town in Northern Ireland and studied Law at the University of Ulster and went on to train as a lawyer at Queen’s University. She was admitted to the Roll of Solicitors in 2012 and shortly after emigrated to Melbourne, Australia. On the 29th of July, 2016, Colleen’s life changed forever when her Uncle Stephen died by medication-induced suicide. Returning to Ireland upon the devastating news of Stephen’s death, she settled into a career in local government, vowing to use all of her spare time to ensure some form of justice for Stephen was served. Using her legal expertise, Colleen led the family through the coroner’s inquest where it was agreed that Stephen had a catastrophic reaction to Sertraline and suffered akathisia. Following the inquest, Colleen founded Stephen’s Voice, a Facebook page that aims to generate awareness around side effects to prescribed medication and medication-induced suicide; she also launched Prescribed Harm Awareness Day [July 29] in 2020 and co-founded a pressure group, Families Bereaved by Medication-Induced Suicide, uniting families from all around the world to push for change. Her activism has found her a place on Dr. David Healy’s Politics of Care Forum. A busy mother of two wonderful children under three years old and a King Charles Cavalier named Buddy, she is supported by her husband, Patrick, who has been and continues to be an absolute rock to her. It is Colleen’s dream to one day be in a position to dedicate even more of her time and efforts to prescribed harm awareness.

We’re releasing this episode on July 29th, 2021, the fifth anniversary of Stephen O'Neill's death. It’s also Prescribed Harm Awareness Day, which Colleen and Stephen's Voice created in memory of of those who have lost their lives to medication-induced suicide, in support of their families, and of all those suffering around the world with iatrogenic illness. To find out more, please visit https://www.facebook.com/stephenoneillsvoice.

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