Sons of Survivors: Exploring Legacy and Healing from Holocaust Trauma – Seekers of Meaning 11/21/2025
On this week’s episode of the Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast, Rabbi Address engages with authors Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura about their book, Sons of Survivors: Making Peace with Inherited Trauma.
The conversation delves into the complexities of inherited trauma from Holocaust survivors, the authors’ personal journeys in writing the book, and the impact of their family histories on their identities. They discuss the conspiracy of silence surrounding trauma, the therapeutic nature of writing, and the importance of sharing these stories with future generations. The episode concludes with reflections on the potential for history to repeat itself and the enduring hope for humanity.
About the Book
The authors of this dual memoir are second-generation Holocaust survivors. They did not live through the trauma of the Holocaust, they inherited it. Whether survivor-parents revealed what they endured or erected barriers of silence, the horrors they experienced permeated the lives of their children. Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura grew up in the close-knit community of Yiddish-speaking refugees in America. After meeting in Los Angeles as high school students, the two became fast friends with much in common including the fact that they were both conceived in the same displaced persons camp in US-occupied Germany. This memoir traces their colorful growing-up adventures through fast-paced alternating passages. Though the Holocaust formed the backdrop of their lives, they didn’t talk much about it—until, as older adults, they embraced the imperative to bear witness. They set out to discover everything they could about what happened to their parents and other relatives in Poland during World War II. For Aron, the most powerful revelations were contained in a nearly forgotten memoir written by his uncle fifty years earlier in Argentina. Marty’s breakthrough came after participating in a Zen Peacemakers immersion retreat on the killing fields of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Navigating through this haunted terrain together, the friends realized that the love they inherited from their parents transcends the trauma. Their joint memoir attests to a legacy of love against hate.
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About the Guests
Aron Hirt-Manheimer
Aron Hirt-Manheimer was born in the Feldafing D.P. Camp, U.S. Zone, Occupied Germany. His family immigrated to the U.S. when he was three, residing in Cleveland, Ohio before moving to Los Angeles in 1960. He received a BA in psychology from UCLA and an MA and honorary doctorate in Jewish education from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He founded Davka magazine (1970), a West Coast Jewish quarterly credited by the Encyclopedia Judaica its role in “fostering a Jewish cultural renaissance.”
Aron served as editor of Reform Judaism magazine (Union for Reform Judaism) from 1976 to 2014 and as URJ editor-at-large until 2021. He co-edited with Irving Abrahamson Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel (Holocaust Library, 1985.) Wiesel described Aron as “a writer possessed of a rare blend of integrity, persuasiveness, and good literary sense.”
Aron co-authored Jagendorf’s Foundry: Memoir of the Romanian Holocaust, 1941-1944 (HarperCollins,1991), described by Publishers Weekly as an “extraordinary, riveting, heartrending story of a genuine hero…” (translations published in German and Romanian). He is also coauthor with Arthur Hertzberg of Jews: The Essence and Character of a People (HarperCollins, 1998, published in nine languages: Hebrew, Italian, Czech, Slovak, Spanish, French, Polish, Dutch, and German).
Aron lives with his wife of 52 years, Judy, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Marty Yura
Marty Yura was conceived in the Feldafing D.P. camp and born after his family arrived in New York. He grew up in the Bronx before relocating at age sixteen with his family to Los Angeles. He graduated from UCLA with a BA in psychology (1970), immigrated to Israel, and was inducted into the Israel Defense Forces. He became an officer and served as a field psychologist in an infantry brigade at the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Upon completion of his military service, Marty returned to the U.S. and completed his MA in psychology at California State University – Los Angeles (1976).
Marty has worked as a management consultant, founded and headed a computer-based learning company, and supervised more than 50 registered representatives in the financial services industry. In 2009, he and his wife co-founded Vista Yoga, where he teaches yoga and meditation. He also teaches yoga at a program for veterans with PTSD at Emory Healthcare, one of four such programs in the U.S. Marty lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife of forty years, Marti.
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