(upbeat tones) (upbeat music) - Reagan said, hey guys, guess what?

We've got a transfer.

- He was my fraternity brother.

- Sacrificed the Iraqi people.

- Hospice communities of healthy migrants.

- Trust me, she would have been trafficking for four years.

- I really felt for a lot of reasons, I felt them but I didn't have the guts to say anything.

- Pat Black-Gould has had a fascinating and disparate career path.

First, theater as an actress, director, producer, and playwright.

Then, as a clinical psychologist working with veterans and the culturally deaf population.

And now it's act three, children's book author.

She has written a powerful story about the Holocaust in the form of a children's picture book entitled, "The Crystal Beads Lalka's Journey".

We welcome Pat Black-Gould, to Conversations.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- No, thank you for having me here, Jeff, I really appreciate it.

- What a fascinating, fascinating story in this children's book.

Tell me how this came about.

- Yeah, it was quite a process actually.

And it sort of weaved its way through a long time period.

But to start it, it came about many, many years ago when my rabbi told me a little bit of a story about a young girl during the Holocaust.

And it was the type of story that just haunted me.

I couldn't get it outta my mind.

And that was in my acting days in New York and I never wrote anything before.

But I was an actress, so as an actress, I wrote a monologue, first thing I can think of doing, right?

I'll put it in the form of a monologue.

And then I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with it, but I had it there.

And then I changed my career from directing and then producing and playwriting.

But it sat, haunted me for a long time.

It sat, it sat actually until a few years ago when I moved down to Florida.

I semi-retired from psychology, although I do work in a small private practice, but it gave me a little bit of time on my hands.

And so I decided I wanted to join a writer's group, not theater, maybe just something different.

What if I tried writing something differently, you know?

And so I needed some material to bring with me to a group and out comes that, all up searching through some of my things and out comes, this story of, this monologue.

And I says, this is gonna be it.

And there's some wonderful writing groups in Pensacola, fantastic.

And they really help you hone your craft.

And I really didn't know very much.

So I had a lot of work to do with it.

And I kept saying, something, gotta do something with this.

When I felt like it was at the point where I had a story to tell.

I needed to bring it somewhere, I needed to do something with it.

So I submitted it to a journal called Jewishfiction.net.

And they're an international journal and the only English-speaking journal that it works exclusively in publishing Jewish fiction.

So it got published and I was really honored that it was published there.

And then I was very pleased to find that it also won a first place in a statewide competition and then first place in the national competition.

And so something said to me, okay, you know there's something about this that still needs to continue and I need to find another way of doing, what do I do with this?

You know, I've got this to this point.

So I belong to another group, it's called the National League of American Pen Women, and they're outta Washington, DC, and they actually formed way back, I think it's in 1897.

They're almost 150 years old.

And they started out because for woman journalists back then, they were not accepted in any men's professional organizations, so they formed their own.

- [Jeff] Right, right.

- And it includes artists, writers, musicians and everything.

So I belong to the local branch and I connected with an artist, a collage artist, Barbara Dunham.

And she created this beautiful collage based on my story, so we do a lot of collaborative work.

And so the two of us started doing presentations.

And I do a reading of the story.

She would talk about her collage, we would talk about our collaboration.

And then there was a discussion period at the end and the questions that came up about the book, the questions of, oh my gosh, you know this happened, you know, and how do we take care of each other and ourselves?

And just so many discussions would happen that I just said, okay, this is telling me that it's gotta go somewhere else.

So I said, all right, what can I do with this?

What about a children's book?

And I joined another group called Women in Publishing, which is also a national group as well as international.

And I started connecting with other writers and other children's book writers and a publisher, Purple Butterfly Press, and said, okay, I know nothing about this, but I'm gonna turn this into a children's book.

That was the start of the journey.

- Because really the story, it is such a powerful, powerful story.

So I can imagine that the influence, the positive influence that it would have on children.

Were you thinking about that, that you wanted it to resonate with people while they're young, to be able to make a difference in?

- Exactly, exactly.

This was the one age I was not reaching, too.

All my presentations so far had been to adults and they are still, because it's also a adult book as well as children, it's for all ages.

But I wanted the younger generation to be able to, especially in today's day and age, where we're just filled with so much hatred and let's focus on how we can be there and take care of each other.

So I thought maybe if I could put it into a book that kids can start reading about age eight and up, I would say it pretty much fits for, that we can get a message out of taking care of each other despite our differences.

Can we do that?

- So kind of a double barrel question here, from a standpoint, I'm curious to what, when you first exposed it to children, what their response was.

But before you answer that, tell me initially, what kind of response would you get when you would go out and read to groups and what kind of feedback did you initially get from the audience?

- Yeah.

A dialogue.

A dialogue in how could such things have happened in the world?

Oh, wait a minute.

That was back then.

Oh, but wait a minute.

Things like that are happening now.

And well, what do we do about that?

How do we prevent that?

So that's when it started pulling in all those ideas of what do we need to do as a country, as a group, that can continue to help each other?

So the response was always very positive and the connection to the people in the story, 'cause it's inspired by a true story.

And the story involves a sacrifice that a mother makes.

A very difficult sacrifice.

But to keep her child alive, she had to let go of her child.

She had to let go of her religion to keep the child safe too, from Judaism, to try to move the child, to keep her safe, to become Catholic.

That might protect her.

So sacrifice, bravery and what we have to do.

And when we're dealing with such hardships and how do we be brave under such difficult times, what does the sacrifice look like?

- Once it was exposed to the children, what kinda response did they give you?

- Oh.

They really connected with the characters.

And they connected with Lalka.

She's seven.

But I've done this for various different age groups and their responses are always, comes to what happened, what happened to mom, what happened to the dad, what happened there?

And almost the same kind of things as the adults too.

You know, how does somebody make a sacrifice like that?

How does somebody give up a child?

And how did this girl stay brave and what was it like to be separated from her mother and have to be in a whole new world where she knew no one, but fortunately she found kindness through the nun, through Sister Teresa in the story who takes her in.

And that was the point of it.

You had to leave what you knew in your family and go someplace else to be safe and hopefully stay safe.

And as part of the book, we see that there was some times where it was very uncomfortable because she was found, but the nuns did her best and their sacrifice and the risk that they took because they were always at risk as well.

- [Jeff] Yeah, absolutely.

- So you see those themes.

Empathy, collaboration, connecting with others that are different than us, tolerance, understanding.

Those themes on all levels came through even from the little ones on.

They all came through at various different points.

So what I did, because there were so many questions, was that I wanted the book to be a lot more than just the story.

I had to put those questions in.

So I designed a set of questions for children and with the help of some amazing people and a principal and a curriculum coordinator and just a real good group of people and based it on layering the questions for the depth, depending on how old children are.

So they can take this with them and look at them, teachers can take it with them.

And I did the same thing for adults.

I designed a set of questions for adults too.

The book clubs, they wanna meet in various organizations, churches, synagogues, whatever, so that they can continue discussion and continue a dialogue.

- You're by training, a psychologist.

So you've obviously studied the mind.

When I think about the characters in this book, in this children's book or even in the adult book, you have people who are willing to sacrifice, they're giving, loving, caring, but then there's the evil over here, right?

- [Pat] Yeah.

- What drives that evil?

How can somebody reach that level of hate and evil?

- Yeah.

When I was a psychologist, one of the other things that I also did was work with the forensic population.

I worked in prison and I worked on a forensic unit, and this was pre-book, so I wasn't really looking at this yet, but I would just watch the people there and watch where their focus was.

'Cause my goal was always to, let's look in you, which I do in psychology in general.

Let's look in you, what do you like about yourself, what do you wanna change in yourself, what you wanna make better, but there's sort of a group that is, oh it's not me, them, them.

If it wasn't for them, if it wasn't for him, if it wasn't for her, it wasn't for that group, whatever that is, okay.

That just couldn't seem to have the ability to go and say, I can do this to be better.

That it was, I would say, almost easier to stay in the blame world?

Because then I don't have to change me.

I can stay there and not do anything.

And that hatred just fuels all this energy.

I would watch people talk when they were angry and blaming and attacking others and it fueled this energy like a drug.

And I'm just saying, if you could just take some of this energy and put it to good use and be creative and the kind of response I would get.

Yeah, but.

Them.

And he and that one and that group.

So no matter how much I try to pull in, I would see that.

And I sometimes, I think that that's one of the places where we are stuck, not looking at ourselves and not having that connection with somebody that's different or looking at another person.

Empathy is lacking in a lot of people.

- Where do you think that comes from though?

Is it something that is triggered in childhood?

Is it something people grow into?

How do you get there, I guess is my question.

- Yeah, I think it's a mix.

I think it's the nature nurture question is sort of that mix.

Who were you with and who were you influenced by at those very early ages?

And it could have been bad and people could have had bad childhoods.

But not everybody is gonna turn out to end up in prison or whatever.

Some of them move again past that and just say, okay, that was then, this is now.

- Right.

- I can make changes with my life.

- [Jeff] Right.

- And sometimes you almost feel like if we had gotten to them earlier, if they hadn't gotten to this point, if they had had some experiences somewhere in that.

Positive influences, enough of them, or if they did and then were knocked back down again and so you see a lot of that, I think it's so many combinations of things.

- And maybe a book like this being exposed to a young person, if nothing else will make them think as they go through life, right?

- That's how I sort of see it.

That we're divided as a country now and these books, 'cause there's a lot of books now out, kindness, caring, empathy, right now are very popular for children's books.

And I think that if we can say, look at this other person, what they're facing, don't start a label.

Because as soon as you start that.

A friend of mine, Jean Williams is a teacher, a former principal and she just told me that she used this book at Piedmont Union College.

I'm thinking that might be in Tennessee in a course on diversity.

Diversity and inclusion and on microaggression.

Which I thought was really fascinating.

- [Jeff] That's interesting.

- And just sort of starting, it's starting with calling somebody a name and where does it go from there?

And the interesting thing that was right after that, I saw something on Instagram that pointed out exactly to that, it starts with a label.

It starts with a name.

It didn't get to the Holocaust right away, or it didn't get to somebody who is a minority or in the LGBT community.

It started by somebody putting a label on them and constantly being attacked with that.

And then it blows up and others around buy it and buy it and buy in, you know?

And so that the idea is that, and I say this through the nun in the book, we are all the same in here.

If we can focus on our similarities instead of these differences.

- I would venture to say people are more alike than they are different.

If you really get down to it.

- Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

- I've always kind of thought I've been fortunate enough to travel outside of the United States and meet a lot of people in a lot of different walks of life.

And I mean, when the day is done, most people really kind of always, they almost kind of want the same thing, right?

I mean, they want what's best for their family.

They want to enjoy life and so on and so forth.

I have to ask you about the Paper Clip Project.

- Oh yes.

Yes.

- Tell me about that.

Fascinating story there.

- Yeah.

And that's exactly a part of our discussion as well too.

In the book, there's the story in itself, okay.

But in the story I wanted to give not just the story and not just the questions and also talk to you about the illustrator, the other parts of it I have too.

But I wanted to give hope.

I wanted this book to sort of be like a curriculum guide.

You can take this book, a teacher can take this book, somebody can take this book and really study the whole book and find different things in here.

One of the things I found was this tiny little school in the middle of Appalachia that was, oh, probably half an hour outside of Chattanooga.

Small community, about 1500 people, white Protestant.

About 20 years ago, they wanted to study diversity and empathy.

And the way to do it, they decided, was to pick the Holocaust to study.

But how do you tell somebody that 6 million Jews died?

How do you talk to your kids and tell them 6 million Jews died.

So they had to pick something, an object to use.

That was the start of the paper clip.

The paper clip originated from a Norwegian.

A Norwegian designed it.

The Norwegians would use it on their lapels to show solidarity with the Jews.

So they would collect 6 million paperclips.

They'd collect them.

They would get word out to people and they'd collect and they would collect, I've only have 50 here, so can you imagine if this is what 50 makes up?

- Wow.

- Okay.

And they did it, they actually made their goal.

The whole community, this whole community pitched in.

They made it to their goal.

And they made it then past their goal for another 5 million, for everybody who wasn't Jew, all the others that were also killed in the Holocaust.

And this was the kids, this is a project, this became an afterschool project that the principal, Linda Hooper and the teacher Sandy Roberts, originally started with others as well.

And they had to figure out, okay, what are we gonna do with all these paperclips?

They brought over a box car from Germany.

They transported it over here and the box car now is on their site and it contains 11 million paperclips on both sides of the box car.

- Wow.

- The kids counted that, cataloged everything.

Oh, everything is there.

So that is on their school site.

They have had donations from every, every country.

And there is a specific Holocaust program now, where one of the students, Taylor Kilgore, who was a student at the time when this started, got her master's in Holocaust education and is now the teacher, Sandy just retired.

And the new professor Josh Holk, the new principal, Josh Holtcamp, runs the program.

And I went there because I had to put them in the book.

- [Jeff] Absolutely.

- And I went back recently and I met with the new kids that were there that were just starting to run the program.

And they gave us the tour, this incredible tour in the library, the book that was in the library of all the resources that they collect there from survivors, from family members.

So we can't say, don't let everybody go around and have to collect paper clips, but what can you do?

There are enough actually paperclips that the school has actually given these out to other schools as well.

For if you wanna start a project like that.

There is one sculpture that is in Whitwell, the outside there, and you see a big paper clip on it and a butterfly on the top.

Butterfly's also the symbol of the Holocaust because a little child wrote a poem about never seeing another butterfly when he was in a concentration camp.

That sculpture contains 1.5 million paperclips to represent everyone who died during the Holocaust.

It's an amazing place.

And people, I put information in the book, you can tour it.

I give you the website of the place.

There is a movie made about it.

There is a book made on it, and anyone just can go to the Whitwell school and they can get a virtual tour or a visit there.

- It just really drives home the point, makes you think, doesn't it?

- Drives home the.

And these kids who never met anyone different than them.

And that was one of the reasons I, too, when I looked at who I could get to illustrate the book.

I wanted somebody who had a connection to the Holocaust.

I met some wonderful illustrators.

They were all fantastic.

But I wanted somebody who was, maybe could find, was connected some way another, you know the heck, I don't know what I'm doing.

What do I do?

This is a new world to me.

That's opening up.

So I began searching online and I came across a woman from Siberia who had recently, had moved to Israel just a few years before, Katya Royz.

So I contact her, she doesn't speak English.

So we actually had to communicate via the Google translate and everything of the nature.

She was so honored when I asked her about her willingness to do this, because she said, my grandfather's a Holocaust survivor.

And she says, I've been waiting to do a project about the Holocaust.

So she told me about Efim, Efim Royz, and as she was talking and telling me his story, he was from Ukraine and moved to Siberia.

And he, as a very young child with nine, eight or nine siblings, I think in the family, left this tiny little village of Ukraine heading towards Siberia.

Shortly after that, that village was destroyed by the Nazis.

I said, well, there's something else I want in this book because our survivors are going.

They're older, we're not gonna see them very much more, so here again, the connection back to the children.

What if a children reads the words of a survivor?

So I have Efim telling his story in the book.

A survivor himself, a first generation survivor.

I have someone in there also that is a rabbi who teaches Holocaust education, second generation survivor.

And I have Katya, third generation survivor.

And I thought, I have three generations here.

And it just turns out that there is actually an organization called 3G, which means third generation survivor.

So I contacted a specific group in Philadelphia and I said, I have a survivor and I have an author that is the granddaughter of a survivor, so I'd love to meet you.

So my husband and I took a trip to Philadelphia and I had the privilege of speaking to them.

And they're all over the country.

And I'm just starting to connect now with other organizations.

- Wow.

What do you ultimately, just in a few words, what would you ultimately like for someone to take away from this book?

- I want to open their eyes.

Just say that this doesn't have to happen again.

We don't have to have this happen again.

We can dialogue because the discussions that start, once you read this book, we can open up eyes of people and we can talk.

Is there time for me to just tell you briefly about the child in?

- I have about two minutes.

- Oh, okay.

I'll do this very quickly.

- Please do.

- Okay.

So a person, a mother bought this book for her daughter in Trinidad and Tobago.

The child without the mother, took the book to school with her and it spread through, Kayleigh, this little girl, took the book to school with her.

They read it in the classroom and it went around through the school.

The Holocaust is not taught there.

So it's getting the message in different countries.

- [Jeff] Where's the book available?

- It is available at Barnes & Noble, it is available on Amazon.

It is available in the local library.

And you can find it and pretty much order through any bookstore.

- And if say teachers or parents or anybody would like to reach out to you, or perhaps someone would like to have you come speak to their organization, do you have a website and a way for them to get in touch with you?

And how would they go about doing that?

- Patblackgould.com.

Just google me, you'll find me.

- Very good.

Very good.

And with about one minute left, just for the fun of it, tell me, you're working on something else too, a novel, right?

- I am working on a novel with Steve Hardiman, my co-writer.

It is sort of a coming of age story during the Vietnam War.

And partly based on a true story.

I lost a cousin in Vietnam.

And so we're telling the story.

And oddly enough, there's some similar themes in there about compassion and caring for each other.

- Thank you so much.

It was a real pleasure to talk to you.

- It was a pleasure to talk to you, too.

- I wish you all the very best.

Powerful, powerful book.

Very moving.

I mean, it's a children's picture book, but I promise you, you'll read the story, if you're an adult, you could be an old guy like me and it's clearly moving.

I would encourage you to pick it up.

"The Crystal Beads Lalka's Journey" by Pat Black-Gould.

By the way, you can see this and many more of our conversations on the PBS video app and also at wsre.org/conversations.

I'm Jeff Weeks, thank you so very much for watching.

I hope you enjoyed the program.

Take great care of yourself and we'll see you soon.

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