Brown University has seen division. A student and her grandmother see the need for dialog
We are in a time when the word “oppression” is part of the conversation – facing it, surviving it.
So I was intrigued to hear of a Brown University student with unlikely roots in two of history’s most tragic examples of it.
She is a descendant of American slaves as well as Holocaust survivors.
Her name is Naomi Umlauf, a 21-year-old junior, and her name comes up because of an extraordinary event happening in Providence on Thursday evening, May 2.
Now that almost 80 years have passed since the end of World War II, few actual death camp survivors are left.
Naomi’s grandmother, Eva Umlauf, now 81, is one of them, having been deported by cattle train to Auschwitz at age 23 months with her father and pregnant mother from their native Slovakia. Because of the cold efficiency of the Nazis, even as a 2-year-old Eva was tattooed with her new identity – A-26959. It remains on her arm today.
Her father was murdered, but she and her mother survived when, after three months in the Auschwitz barracks, they were liberated in January 1945.
It is a defiance of oppression that Eva is still among us, and so is the life she's lived, becoming a doctor and still practicing today as a psychotherapist in Germany.
A few years ago, she wrote a memoir called “The Number on Your Forearm is Blue Like Your Eyes,” and Eva herself will be at Brown’s Hillel Thursday at 6:30 p.m. for the launch of the American translation.
Her African American granddaughter Naomi will be part of the presentation.
Naomi was kind enough to talk with me despite scrambling during finals week, and, like all students at Brown, navigating upheaval around Palestinian passions and protests, including the tent encampment that was taken down a few days ago.
At one point, I asked Naomi where she stands on the issue, given her mixed background.
We’ll get to that in a minute, but first, I was curious about her heritage.
Naomi grew up in New York City, daughter of Eva’s son Erik Umlauf and her African American mom, Natalie Williams, both now working as executives at JPMorgan Chase. The two met when seated randomly at the same table at a Club Med in Martinique.
Naomi's mother went to Yale Law School and clerked with Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who officiated at their marriage in 1997 and 12 years later was elevated to the Supreme Court.
Naomi, an English major, is editor-in-chief of Brown’s campus Black publication, “The Black Star Journal,” a mix of news and creative writing.
“I identify as African American,” Naomi told me. “My passion for Black storytelling comes from a desire to learn more about that side of me. It was an identity I struggled with growing up.”
But she has also immersed herself in the lineage of her grandmother Eva’s side.
In the same way that most African Americans can trace their ancestry to slavery, most here with a Jewish parent have relatives who were in the Holocaust.
Yet Naomi is a rare case with a death camp survivor grandparent still alive, and, indeed, last Jan. 27, on the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Naomi traveled there with Eva – whom she calls “Oma,” the German word for grandma.
During that visit, Eva gave a speech to a gathering in a preserved former gas chamber. The talk was in German, but Naomi took in the emotion and symbolism of a grandmother still here to give testimony about oppression. Auschwitz, Naomi realized, was part of her own story.
“Being there – it was impossibly heavy,” Naomi told me. “I don’t know if I’ve fully processed it yet.”
And then there is Naomi’s other side. Although her family celebrated Jewish holidays and occasionally went to synagogue, they also embraced the Protestant faith of her maternal grandmother, Jacqueline, who grew up in the South during the Jim Crow era, then moved to Brooklyn, where her historic Black church was a huge part of her life.
It adds to Naomi’s mosaic – a descendant of slaves and Holocaust survivors, as well as having both Christianity and Judaism in her experience.
I asked her how that mix plays out in her view of the Gaza war, with groups like Black Lives Matter supporting the Palestinian side while most Jews align with Israel.
“In Nazism,” Naomi said, “Jews were othered in the same way African Americans have a legacy of being othered. As someone who was a part of those two experiences, it’s led me to recognize the need for dialog between two peoples in an effort for peace.”
More: How many students will attend RI's colleges and universities this fall? Here's what we know.
She puts it this way in the afterword she wrote for her grandmother’s book: “Although the experiences and struggles of Jews and African Americans are distinct, their shared experience as victims of horrific oppression and unspeakable inhumanity has inspired both communities to work in solidarity to obtain justice.”
Naomi admits the passions on campus around each side have been challenging for her.
“For me, these last few months have been super-draining,” said Naomi. “I’ve leaned on my friends and community for support.”
There were times in her life when Naomi felt her white, Jewish side detracted from her ability to be in Black spaces.
But as she writes in the afterword to her grandmother’s book: “My parents instilled in my sister and me an awareness that we had the blood of survivors running through our veins from both sides of our family.”
Naomi is looking forward to the book launch at the Brown-RISD Hillel Center with her “Oma.” It will be a striking tableau in this time of division – an 81-year-old Jewish survivor of Auschwitz sharing her memoir – and memories – with her African American granddaughter at her side on a campus that has lately seen much division.
The message will unavoidably be one of hope.
mpatinki@providencejournal.com
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Holocaust survivor Eva Umlauf speaks at Brown University with granddaughter
