Hanala Stadner Available to Talk About
Second Generation Holocaust Survivors’ Lawsuit

Los Angeles, August 3, 2007 – Word came from Israel this week that 20,000 offspring of Holocaust survivors are seeking cash reparations from Germany to pay for psychiatric treatment they say they require as a result of trauma suffered by their parents.

If you’re looking for a way to approach this unfolding story, we’d like to suggest an interview with Los Angeles author Hanala Stadner. Hanala's memoir about growing up as the child of Holocaust survivors has struck a deep chord with Second Generation survivors like herself.

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, Hanala quickly learned that nothing that happened to her could ever compare with the trauma her parents endured as Polish Jews who hid from the Nazis during World War II. Hanala remembers her mother’s scathing refrain, rendered in a Yiddish accent: “You’re scared? Vhat, is a Nazi chasing you? Do you live in a hole in da ground? Did your family die in da gas chambers?”

As she recounts in her memoir, My Parents Went Through the Holocaust and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt, Hanala’s parents, traumatized by their experiences in Poland, created a home life so terrifying for Hanala she became a psychological invalid. After moving to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, and to “escape” her parents, Hanala became involved with bad men, developed a serious drug and alcohol addiction and an eating disorder that almost killed her.

Unflinchingly honest, the book recounts how in her self-loathing and insecurity, Stadner hit rock bottom before embarking on an inspiring journey of healing. Thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous and psychotherapy, Stadner got sober and became a leading fitness instructor and the host of The Suzan Stadner Show, LA’s most successful local-access cable program. She also studied psychology at UCLA, becoming a member of The National Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselors. As an adult, Stadner finally made her peace with her parents, coming to see them as scarred survivors.

Other Second Generation survivors have told Hanala that her book captures their experience like none other. “I have read almost every book and publication that there is to read on the subject, in addition to every movie made about the Holocaust,” one Second Generation survivor wrote in an Amazon.com review. “My Parents Went Through the Holocaust and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt was THE book that hit deepest into my gut. I could personally relate to the insanity growing up and the amount of humor it took to get through it.”

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My Parents Went Through the Holocaust and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt: A Near-Life Experience
By S. Hanala Stadner
Matter Inc./Seven Locks Press (800) 354-5348
Price: $24.95/hardcover
ISBN: 1-931643-76-8
www.myparentswent.com