Raya Czerner Schapiro: 1934 - 2007
Trauma formed life's work

Leaving her grandmother and doctor uncle to flee Czechoslovakia after
the Nazi invasion influenced her career choice -- psychiatrist -- and
mission -- Holocaust ed
By Azam Ahmed

Tribune staff reporter

August 10, 2007

When Raya Czerner Schapiro's mother and father fled Prague after the
Nazis stormed Czechoslovakia in 1939, they could secure only three
visas, enough to flee with their newborn son to the United States.

Raya and her sister, Helga, remained behind, left in the care of their
grandmother and uncle.

As the months wore on, the girls' parents worked frantically so their
daughters could join them, a struggle chronicled in letters sent
across the Atlantic. After six months, Raya, 5, and Helga, 7, landed
on America's shores.

Mrs. Schapiro would become a psychiatrist, author and Holocaust
educator. Her grandmother and uncle would die under German occupation.

"I would say the biggest trauma of our lives was leaving our
grandmother and uncle, who we never saw again," said her sister, Helga
Weinberg. "People always ask, 'Wasn't that terrible when your parents
left you?' But we sort of sensed there was always a reason. The trauma
was leaving the people we loved so much, who took care of us all those
months we were there."

Mrs. Schapiro, 73, died Sunday, July 29, in Chicago of complications
from ovarian cancer, her sister said. After finally making it to
America, sailing from Holland across the Atlantic on a trek to St.
Louis, Mrs. Schapiro would remain in the Midwest.

Encouraged by the memory of her uncle, a doctor, she pursued medicine
after attending the University of Wisconsin. At the University of
Illinois Medical School, she was one of only a handful of women who
were studying to be doctors in the 1950s.

"I think the memory of our uncle prompted her to become a doctor,"
Weinberg said. "He would let her clean the instruments and do little
things in his office in Prague when he was still allowed to see
patients."

Like the memories of working alongside her uncle, Mrs. Schapiro's
childhood experience living under Nazi rule would shape the rest of
her life.

"I think by giving her such a sense of the fragility of her own well-
being, and the dependence of everybody's well-being on luck and
chance, in that way it helped her to be more compassionate toward
others," said her daughter, Tamar Schapiro, an assistant professor of
philosophy at Stanford University.

In her work as a psychiatrist at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital, her
talent and disposition won the affection of her patients. It also made
her a loving mother.

"She said of all the things I least expected to find the most
satisfaction in, being a mother is the one," her sister said. "She
said that was the most fulfilling thing in her life."

Her daughter recalls the perspective she offered, wizened bits of
advice she passed on as effortless little quips.

Things like, When answering a child's questions one should: make sure
the answer is true, only answer the question asked, and give your
answer in 25 words or less.

"Her outlook on life was very realistic and very honest, based on
accepting human strengths and weaknesses and seeing them both for what
they are," her daughter said. "She was not one to idealize other
people, but she very much believed in people."

In the 1980s, Mrs. Schapiro became involved with a project at Yale
University to create a video archive of Holocaust survivors' stories.

Using her skills as a psychiatrist and her own experiences, she helped
design and improve the interview process. After her death, her family
discovered pads filled with her detailed notes critiquing the
strategies of other Holocaust interviewers she had watched on video.

"That was very important to her because she was afraid the memory
would be lost," her daughter said. "People who had memories of what it
was like were dying every day."

But it was after her parents died that Mrs. Schapiro and her sister
found a packet of onion skin letters written in the scripts of their
grandmother and uncle. The letters, sent from her family in Prague,
recorded the girls' journey to the U.S. and the deteriorating
conditions of Czechoslovakia after they had departed.

The women decided to preserve them in a book.

"It was painful, but it was really healing," said her sister, who co-
wrote "Letters from Prague 1939-1941."

"When we read the letters, we could almost hear their voices, and it
really brought home how much we were loved," she said. "We were so
grateful to be able to share them with the world, or whoever happened
to read the letters."

The book won praise from critics, including the Tribune, and was cited
by Michael Chabon as a valuable source for his Pulitzer Prize-winning
novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay."

At the end, the two sisters who barely escaped one of the world's
worst atrocities sat together in a hospital and reflected.

"We had a couple of nice days of talking to each other and about the
prospect of her dying," Weinberg said. "But when she was really at the
end, she couldn't talk very much and I leaned over her and sang some
little Czech songs we knew as children, and she was moving her lips
perfectly with the words.

"And then she put up her hands and stroked my cheek. That is something
I'll carry to my grave."

In addition to her sister and daughter, Mrs. Schapiro is survived by
her husband, Joseph Schapiro; a son, Andrew; a brother, Tom; and two
grandchildren.

Services have been held.

www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/chi-hed_schapiroaug10,0,212167...