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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged
DALLAS — “How’s your dad doing?”
My friend Anna Salton Eisen, executive producer of the new documentary “In My Father’s Words,” made sure to ask me that when we talked recently.
I couldn’t help but smile at the irony.
For over a quarter-century, the 67-year-old Reform Jewish synagogue founder has worked hard to uncover — and share — the secrets of her own father’s Holocaust experience.
In fact, that’s how we first connected.
In 2004, I met Eisen and her late father when I did a piece about a surprising discovery she made with a fellow Holocaust survivor’s daughter.
Over two decades ago, this was the lede on my Associated Press feature:
SOUTHLAKE, Texas (AP) — In George Lucius Salton’s view, it’s nothing short of a miracle.
His daughter, Anna Eisen, called him at his home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., with a question that sent his mind racing back 60 years to the hell he survived as a Jewish teenager.
Eisen, named after the grandmother she never knew, wanted to know if her father remembered a man from his native Poland with the last name Waks.
“Ignatz Waks?” Salton replied without hesitation.
Yes, his daughter said.
Of course he remembered him.
“He was my friend and we were together in all 10 concentration camps and then we were liberated and separated,” the 76-year-old told his daughter.
Salton wrote a 2002 autobiography with his daughter titled “The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir.” I still recall how riveted I was when I first read it.
After Salton’s death a decade ago, Eisen’s journey to tell his story — her family’s story — kept going.
This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.
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