2002WriterPolitics

Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie

Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis

by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.

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August 20, 2002

RED-DIAPER BABY

The WRITER AND POLITICS PANEL

PEN WASHINGTON

August 20, 2002

Richard Hugo House, Seattle

I have not spoken publicly or written about my experiences as a child of communist parents until now. Whenever I tried to write on the subject, I'd ask my mother about her early life with my father and about their life in the Party. But for a few exceptions, she'd say: "What you don't know won't hurt you." I'd answer: "Mother, McCarthy's dead; there's no HUAC. FBI agents aren't breathing down our necks." Invariably she'd come back with: "Don't think the same thing can't happen again! "I don't want you to know. I do not want you to have information that somebody might try to get out of you someday. This is for your own good." I never believed it was for my own good.

According to Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro, in their book Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left "The term Red Diaper Baby originated in the 1920s and was coined by CP activists to criticize those who relied on birthright rather than their own efforts to move up the Party ranks." But some say that mothers were so immersed in talk about communism when their babies were born, that the diapers they were washing turned red.

In the 1960s the John Birch Society tried to stop student activism at UC Berkeley by publishing names of Red Diaper Babies on campus. The attempt backfired when students found each other through the list, which helped their organizing efforts. Then some in the New Left glorified the term and the lineage, as if kids who were born of leftists had the inside track on the movement which was often true.

Many CP kids were a part of their parent's intellectual lives and their parents' activism. They grew up in Communist Party summer camps and sang along with Pete Seeger. They joined the Young Pioneers and the Young Communist League. They read the Young Comrade while their parents were reading The Daily Worker, they demonstrated against the imprisonment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, cried with their parents when the Rosenbergs were executed as spies in 1953, mourned for Robby and Michael, the Rosenberg children. CP kids whose parents were open about the repression they were experiencing shared in the family's history-making.

My parents were not open about their political work, most of which took place in the 1920s and thirties. My mother told us that she and my father met in a leftist bookstore in downtown Baltimore. They were looking through the stacks of books on their way to a Friends of the Soviet Union meeting held in the back room of the store. My father approached my mother, they began to talk politics, she fell in love with his idealism, he fell in love with hers. They married into a life of discord.

For me being a child of Communist parents means walking down the street without turning my head because an FBI agent or party member is watching from the opposite corner. It means I'm four or five years old. It's the 1940s and we live in East Baltimore. My father has an assumed name, I. Green. I is for Isidor, his real first name. Green is maybe for Greenhorn because that's what my father calls himself, a greenhorn.

Being a child of communist parents means my father holds my hand tight and pulls me along quickly when a strange man runs up to us and yells: "Mr. Green, Mr. Green." We don't stop and talk to the man. We leave him still calling after us, "Mr. Green, Mr. Green." I have no idea who Mr. Green is, and I don't find out until years later. All I know now is that my hand hurts.

My parents took us to CP picnics but never explained why we couldn't mention where we were. We went to hear the great Paul Robeson sing and Helen Keller talk. I knew what we were doing was suspect by mainstream families around us. Walking home from school one day, a classmate whispered: "My mother said Janet's mother said Harvey's father said Leslie's parents are communists." I knew darn well Leslie's parents were Communists. I played with him at a picnic over the weekend.

For me, being a red diaper baby means the books of Marx and Lenin are stored in a box in a closet under a mound of dime store mystery stories. It means it's 1952, I'm eleven years old and home from school sick. I'm standing in our living room doorway watching my mother being interrogated by two FBI agents one watching her and me, the other watching just her. Me wondering how I can protect my mother, how I can keep her out of jail, or if they are going to deport my father back to Russia.

What role writers play in helping to shape or comment on political events in the present often depends on how well our parents were able to communicate political reality to us in our growing-up-with-them years. Communication of any kind was difficult in my family. There were too many layers of strife. We didn't know what had to do with what was going on inside the home or outside. What had to do with the Party and what had to do with anti-Semitism, what had to do with my father's sense of failure, his losing another job or the phone being turned off. When I got home from school and saw him lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, another bout of what would be called depression today, I didn't think of the Party or the FBI, I thought how am I going to get Daddy out of bed so I can make it before Mother gets home from work. She was a dressmaker.

Children need to live in an intellectual world. They need to share historical moments with their parents. But survival takes precedence over semantics and politics, and children need peace in the home before they can find it outside. I can't criticize my parents for their shortcomings. I can only try to understand the human condition as they experienced it and as I experienced it with them.

My mother died at age 96, in 1996. My father died in 1964. Until a few years before my mother died, she'd ask me: "Why can't you write about something else? Why is it so important to write about my past? Why can't you leave it alone?"

"Part of your past is mine too," I'd tell her. And she'd answer: "Oh, write what you want!" I'd feel guilty for interrogating her and write nothing. Now that she's gone, I'm ready to write -- about a past that is both of ours, that is all of ours.

This page was last updated on: July 10, 2005



Psychoanalysis: The Magic and The Lie Diary of a Five Day A Week Analysis by Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D.
			home table of contents


	August 20, 2002 RED-DIAPER BABY The WRITER AND POLITICS PANEL PEN WASHINGTON August 20, 2002 Richard Hugo House, Seattle I have not spoken publicly or written about my experiences as a child of communist parents until now. Whenever I tried to write on the subject, I'd ask my mother about her early life with my father and about their life in the Party. But for a few exceptions, she'd say: "What you don't know won't hurt you." I'd answer: "Mother, McCarthy's dead; there's no HUAC. FBI agents aren't breathing down our necks." Invariably she'd come back with: "Don't think the same thing can't happen again! "I don't want you to know. I do not want you to have information that somebody might try to get out of you someday. This is for your own good." I never believed it was for my own good. According to Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro, in their book Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left "The term Red Diaper Baby originated in the 1920s and was coined by CP activists to criticize those who relied on birthright rather than their own efforts to move up the Party ranks." But some say that mothers were so immersed in talk about communism when their babies were born, that the diapers they were washing turned red. In the 1960s the John Birch Society tried to stop student activism at UC Berkeley by publishing names of Red Diaper Babies on campus. The attempt backfired when students found each other through the list, which helped their organizing efforts. Then some in the New Left glorified the term and the lineage, as if kids who were born of leftists had the inside track on the movement which was often true. Many CP kids were a part of their parent's intellectual lives and their parents' activism. They grew up in Communist Party summer camps and sang along with Pete Seeger. They joined the Young Pioneers and the Young Communist League. They read the Young Comrade while their parents were reading The Daily Worker, they demonstrated against the imprisonment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, cried with their parents when the Rosenbergs were executed as spies in 1953, mourned for Robby and Michael, the Rosenberg children. CP kids whose parents were open about the repression they were experiencing shared in the family's history-making. My parents were not open about their political work, most of which took place in the 1920s and thirties. My mother told us that she and my father met in a leftist bookstore in downtown Baltimore. They were looking through the stacks of books on their way to a Friends of the Soviet Union meeting held in the back room of the store. My father approached my mother, they began to talk politics, she fell in love with his idealism, he fell in love with hers. They married into a life of discord. For me being a child of Communist parents means walking down the street without turning my head because an FBI agent or party member is watching from the opposite corner. It means I'm four or five years old. It's the 1940s and we live in East Baltimore. My father has an assumed name, I. Green. I is for Isidor, his real first name. Green is maybe for Greenhorn because that's what my father calls himself, a greenhorn. Being a child of communist parents means my father holds my hand tight and pulls me along quickly when a strange man runs up to us and yells: "Mr. Green, Mr. Green." We don't stop and talk to the man. We leave him still calling after us, "Mr. Green, Mr. Green." I have no idea who Mr. Green is, and I don't find out until years later. All I know now is that my hand hurts. My parents took us to CP picnics but never explained why we couldn't mention where we were. We went to hear the great Paul Robeson sing and Helen Keller talk. I knew what we were doing was suspect by mainstream families around us. Walking home from school one day, a classmate whispered: "My mother said Janet's mother said Harvey's father said Leslie's parents are communists." I knew darn well Leslie's parents were Communists. I played with him at a picnic over the weekend. For me, being a red diaper baby means the books of Marx and Lenin are stored in a box in a closet under a mound of dime store mystery stories. It means it's 1952, I'm eleven years old and home from school sick. I'm standing in our living room doorway watching my mother being interrogated by two FBI agents one watching her and me, the other watching just her. Me wondering how I can protect my mother, how I can keep her out of jail, or if they are going to deport my father back to Russia. What role writers play in helping to shape or comment on political events in the present often depends on how well our parents were able to communicate political reality to us in our growing-up-with-them years. Communication of any kind was difficult in my family. There were too many layers of strife. We didn't know what had to do with what was going on inside the home or outside. What had to do with the Party and what had to do with anti-Semitism, what had to do with my father's sense of failure, his losing another job or the phone being turned off. When I got home from school and saw him lying in bed staring up at the ceiling, another bout of what would be called depression today, I didn't think of the Party or the FBI, I thought how am I going to get Daddy out of bed so I can make it before Mother gets home from work. She was a dressmaker. Children need to live in an intellectual world. They need to share historical moments with their parents. But survival takes precedence over semantics and politics, and children need peace in the home before they can find it outside. I can't criticize my parents for their shortcomings. I can only try to understand the human condition as they experienced it and as I experienced it with them. My mother died at age 96, in 1996. My father died in 1964. Until a few years before my mother died, she'd ask me: "Why can't you write about something else? Why is it so important to write about my past? Why can't you leave it alone?" "Part of your past is mine too," I'd tell her. And she'd answer: "Oh, write what you want!" I'd feel guilty for interrogating her and write nothing. Now that she's gone, I'm ready to write -- about a past that is both of ours, that is all of ours. copyright2002,2005Esther Altshul Hefgott .

		This page was last updated on: July 10, 2005