The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Traveling Through the Cambodian Genocide and Our Search for Answers with Noah Lederman

Noah Lederman’s 15 month quest around the world eventually led him to reconnect with the stories of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and then a deep dive into the Cambodian genocide.

The stories of grandparents who survived the Holocaust
A 15 month trip around the world that changed things
Searching for answers in a Holocaust museum
How a visit to Portland reconnected Noah to his grandmother
Revisiting the difficult stories of our past
Why it’s important to keep stories alive and put them on display
Searching for our own answers to our own questions in life
The children of the Cambodian genocide
How 15 months of surfing and traveling world formed and revealed Noah’s creativity
Changing the perception of a grandmother through stories
An in-depth look into the Cambodian genocide and how it impacted the culture

Noah has a blog, Somewhere or Bust, that captures the essence of his travels and the stunning niches he has uncovered. He has written for a myriad of publications, including but not limited to the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Jerusalem Post, Gadling, the Economist, the Cape Cod Times, Eastern Surf Magazine, Tikkun, Draft Magazine, Snowboard Magazine, SUP, France Today. He is currently working on three projects: a nonfiction project about my grandparents’ lives in the concentration camps and my journey to understand their past, a novel, and a book about the Cambodian Genocide

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Duration:: 56m
Broadcast on:: 02 Jul 2014
Audio Format:: other

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Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. So, tell me a bit about yourself, your story, your background, and how that has led you to doing the work that you're doing today. Well, I am a writer. I'm working on a couple of books and I'm also a travel blogger. But the work that I'm doing today is, I just came out with a book called "Traveling the Cambodian Genocide" and that kind of all began with who I am. I'm a grandchild of Holocaust survivors. And basically, for my entire life, I was interested in getting the answers from my grandparents and getting to those stories. But they were very secretive about their pasts. I guess they had raised their children on those same stories and could definitely have an impact on young children. So they were just used to keeping the stories a secret from me and their other grandkids. And so, after growing up and going off to college, my grandfather, he had passed away and my grandmother basically just shut down. She was no longer interested in living and I realized that these stories were gone. So what I had done was I packed up a surfboard and a backpack and I just spent 15 months out in the world traveling around. And when I arrived in Europe, which was about 12-month mark, a girlfriend had met me there, my next girlfriend now. And we started traveling around Spain, Italy, Greece, and lo and behold, one day we went to take out money from the ATM and her bank account was quite clean. So at that point, I had already been traveling for 13-14 months at that point and I realized that if we were going to continue, I was going to have to pay for the rest of the operation and we were going to have to go someplace cheap. So we decided that we would go into Eastern Europe. But one of the commitments that I had made to myself on this travel was that I would not go into Poland and I would not go into Germany. Germany, for the obvious reasons that relate to the Holocaust and Poland was where my grandparents were from. And they had a greater distaste for what the Poles had done because these were their neighbors and these neighbors had turned them in for schnapps and sugar and potatoes, things like that. So we started moving through Slovenia and Hungary and when we got to Hungary, I ran into this building and I just paused where I was standing and looked up and just couldn't believe what I had seen. And it just said Holocaust Museum and I just, I'd almost forgotten about it in over a year because my trip was really focused on surfing and that was about it. And when I saw those two words, I realized that I needed to go in and I need to see what was being presented in Eastern Europe on the Holocaust. And obviously it was a very objective presentation and the museum was quite good, it was brand new, but I started to realize that I was very close to potential answers. So I sent my father an email and I asked him if he had any information before Poppy. That's what I called it before he had passed away and my grandmother, she had given any information or towns that the town that they had lived in or the camps that they had been to. And he actually had on a piece of scrap paper, which he told me about a few names of the camps, the ghetto that they had been in, which was Warsaw, and they're street addresses. So I considered that pledge that I had made to myself that I would not go into Poland, but then I realized how close this could lead me to some sort of answer. And I went back to their hometown, I took those addresses and I decided I would go into Poland, I wound up actually staying in Poland for three weeks. And I just explored their hometown, I went to the places that their houses once stood, and I went into the town's archives and talked to people and just tried to get that information. I kind of came away, not empty handed but didn't have much. I returned to New York to see my grandmother after the trip and come to an end. And when I saw my grandmother I had said to her, you know I went to Poland. And she looked at me and bit shocked, and then a big smile came to her face, and she asked me, did I go to see the Omschlin plots. And the Omschlin plots is not a place that really deserves a smile, because it's the site where all the Jews were, when the ghettos were liquidated, all the Jews were sent to the Omschlin plots to be sent to the camps. So it was just very odd that she had smiled, but then I followed, I told her I had, and I followed up with a series of questions, and from there we just got into her past. And over the course of, it would have been, I guess, the next six years she revealed everything to me, or as much, I guess, as she could tell a grandson. And I wound up working on a book about her and my grandfather and my own search to uncover these facts. And then we shift over to, I guess, Cambodia, which is what the Holocaust, in a sense, I guess, quote, unquote, inspired, for me at least. And what happened was, I needed a break. I was writing all the time on the Holocaust. I was writing all about hate and genocide and racism for a publication that I was writing for online, and I just needed to do something a bit less intense. So I started a novel, and the novel was about a writer, which seems to be what many writers tackle as a subject. And I realized it was trite and boring and came out all wrong. So I needed to switch, and I spent some time just thinking about who my protagonist really could be, because I liked the novel because of all the other characters in the book. And for some reason, I don't know how it happened. The character that I settled upon was an infant survivor of the Cambodian genocide. And from there, my interest in Cambodia just, I guess, took off. And I've been writing about Cambodia ever since, and that led me to travel there for my honeymoon among other countries. And when we were in Cambodia, my wife and I just spent our time traveling to all the sites of genocide and speaking with the people and getting a sense of how the 1970s, which is when the genocide took place there, how it affected the people who are survivors, but also how it affects that next generation. And there's a lot of kids there who are severely impacted by what happened when the Khmer Rouge was in power. All right, so perfect. I mean, there's a ton of stuff here, and I actually want to start with your childhood. It's interesting. I think you actually set up the thread perfectly when you talked about how something like a genocide impacts the next generation. You mentioned that your grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and I guess the question for me, when I hear that, at least the starting point, is how did that impact you as a child growing up? How did that impact your views on the world? And how did that impact how you were raised, especially when it seemed like these were stories that people didn't want to talk about and almost tried to basically shield you from? Right. Well, I guess it's changed over the years, but in the beginning, I think I've spoken to a lot of grandchildren of survivors, and I think grandchildren are impacted a little differently than the children. But a lot of the grandchildren I spoke to were very affected emotionally by it, and there was some level of fear with a lot of the third generation that I had spoken with. But for me, I was always just very proud of my grandparents. I always saw them as heroes in a sense. I mean, they were heroes when they were in the Warsaw ghetto. They were part of the uprising, but they never wanted to talk about it. So I don't know what they had accomplished in that month of fighting, but I always very proud of them. And I wasn't affected the way that a lot of the people that I had spoken with seemed to be affected. I wasn't scared, but it definitely might have not had the same trust in humans as people, I think, tend to have. Which changed a lot when I started traveling around. I think that barrier kind of crumbled a bit, and I started to trust people a bit more. But now I'm a recent father. I have a five month old, and that's also impacted me differently. I kind of look at life quite differently. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, the reason I always ask questions around sort of the past, because I feel like everything kind of leads us to where we're at today, right? The dots kind of connect, and there's patterns that sort of play themselves out. But I think the other thing is how we deal with stories that are difficult or parts of our past that are difficult. And so I guess the question for me is, I mean, this is not personally a thing for you as far as dealing with the past, it's difficult, but it's somebody very close to you. And I think that one of our tendencies is to try to cover it up or to just ignore it or let it be. And I'm really curious, you know, when it comes to something, especially like this, I mean, if there are things that are of a similar nature or troubled parts of a past, how do you suggest people deal with them? Well, I think for me, at least it was trying to get to these stories. And there's a few reasons for that. Besides selfish reasons of just being interested, I'm also a teacher. And when I first started teaching, I brought out night and I asked my students, Elie Wiesel's book, and I asked my students if they had ever heard of the Holocaust. And in five classes, one kid came close and he said, "Is it that Jewish thing?" So, you know, he wasn't being disrespectful. He really just didn't know. So, you know, the survivors are still around, very few of them, but, you know, in just a few decades, history almost begins to disappear. So, I think educating people is very important. So, to keep stories locked away, you know, it's therapeutic maybe for some people, but they need to be revealed. And just in traveling Cambodia, I spoke to a lot of kids. I was kind of interested in how the events that their parents had gone through and those tragedies, how it affected them. And a lot of the kids understood, and this was presented to me brilliantly by one of the Tuktuk drivers that was taking me around one day in a town called Batambang, but he told me that the kids knew what had happened. They just didn't know why any of it happened, which is a real problem when people are capable of propaganda, you know, I mean, the what could be explained and rationalized many different ways when the why is not clear. So, you know, I think there's a few reasons why that that is the case in Cambodia and why kids are not really learning partly it has to do with the people in charge. Some of them are connected to the Khmer Rouge, they were child soldiers, some did awful things, and I think they want to sweep a lot of this under the rug. So, you know, they're embarrassed maybe by their pasts and they're not, they're not revealing what had happened. I remember I was in this town, popular town that a lot of tourists go to CM Reef, which is the gateway to anchor watt, and I saw this kid selling a memoir. It was a pirated version of, I forget the title, it's popular book in Cambodia now, and in America. But it's about this child survivor whose father was killed, and I asked him, I said, do you know anything what this book is about? And he just told me whatever was on the back cover. And I asked him, do they not teach this to you in school? And he was explaining that they only teach about the temples, the history of the temples, because that's more profitable for them. They're not going to make any money being tour guides in the killing fields in the schools that were turned into torture chambers, because that's not what tourists demand, they want to go see what happened 1000 years ago, not what happened in the 1970s. So I think education and revealing these stories, if you've experienced them, would be most beneficial to society, however, if you've experienced something like that, who could fault you for never wanting to talk about it. So, interestingly enough, I mean, the ongoing sort of theme, and I've heard you say this multiple times throughout our conversation already, is this idea of a search for answers. And, you know, I want to actually talk about that entire concept, because I think that any journey, whether it's a creative one, whether it's a professional one, whether it's a spiritual one, and, you know, in the work that we do, I think all those three things seem to blend together. The search for answers seems to be kind of an underlying theme. The question I guess for me is, maybe, maybe not, you know, not the search for answers because I mean you had your questions, the question for me is how do you figure out what your questions are so you can begin your search for answers. Hmm, that's interesting. Well, in terms of the Holocaust, or in terms of people? No, I mean, in terms in general, let's take this kind of at a high level for anybody listening, regardless of what their sort of situation is. I mean, you know, the search for answers is a journey, but how do you figure out what the journey that you're supposed to be on is? I mean, you did, so I'm curious, you know, if you're looking at talking to other people, what your thoughts are around that. I mean, I guess it always depends on someone's own compass and what's guiding them and what they're passionate about and what they want to know and what they just have craved that information. So once they determine that, I think, you know, if it is something related to history, then obviously you want to have, I think, some sort of solid background, or just some basic ideas of what had happened. So you know how to form your own answers, you know, having the prior knowledge of what, or sorry not to form your answer, but to form your own questions. So having that prior knowledge will allow you to know what to ask. And, you know, it's from there, it's just about to get to these answers. If it is coming from people, and if it is a sensitive subject, then it's just about taking the risks and going out there and realizing that you're going to probably piss some people off and you're going to offend some people maybe. And there's going to be people who just don't want to talk about this topic with you. And, you know, you have to, I guess, accept, you know, accept their stance and their viewpoint and be as polite as possible when seeking out something of a sense of nature. But, you know, so that's, I guess, I'm getting a little bit more specific, but in the general sense, I think just having a background in something and then looking at your own compass. I like the idea of the compass. I mean, you know, that's something I always talk about, but I think to me, one of the things is always been what is it that makes you curious, right? There's almost a childlike curiosity, and it seems like for you, this curiosity about all of this has been there for a very, very long time, like it started at an early age. Yeah, I mean, for me, right now I'm completing three different books, and each of those books started with one question. And I think whenever you just have one question that gnaws at you, and is just this relentless query in your mind, then you're going to seek out that answer. So, you know, for the book that I'm writing about my grandparents, the question was what were their stories, you know, and I needed to know their stories. And then when I was removed from that book, and I started writing the novel, which is about the young Cambodian kid, I just thought, you know, what would it be like to be a survivor of another genocide and not really have any sort of knowledge of your own past. So, you know, someone who was an infant survivor of the Cambodian genocide, and then brought to America, you know, and removed from their Cambodian family and the entire population. I think they would be really, really struggling for some sort of information on who they were and what made them the person they are today. So, you know, those books really just started from one essential question. And spark something uncommon this holiday with just the right gift from uncommon goods. The busy holiday season is here and uncommon goods makes it less stressful with incredible hand pick gifts for everyone on your list. On one spot, gift that spark joy, wonder delight, and that it's exactly what I wanted feeling. They scoured the globe for original, handmade, absolutely remarkable things. Last year, I found the perfect gift for my nephew, periodic table building blocks. 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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. I love the idea of that whole concept of one essential question. If you think about it, what we do, I think maybe the one essential question that I'm trying to answer with every episode that drives this podcast is what is it that causes human beings to thrive? Or what is it that makes people stand out in such a world of noise? What is it that allows exceptional people to be exceptional? A couple of different ways of thinking about one question even the last three. Let's shift gears a little bit. I want to talk a bit about your travels. Obviously, the fact that you spent all that time surfing the world has tremendous appeal to me personally. But I'm really curious how that period of your life has sort of influenced and shaped everything going forward, how it shaped your creativity, how it shaped your views as a writer. And really, I think we can easily write that off as, "Hey, you just spent a year being a surf bum, but I don't entirely think that's true. I think there's more to it than that. And I want to get into that." Yeah. In terms of how it shaped me as a writer, clearly it's just been the topic of a lot of my content. Right now, I'm completing a memoir of that experience where I basically filled with my attempts to find good waves and really just walk away with a lot of misadventure stories. So it definitely delivered a lot of content. But in terms of how it shaped me as a person, I think that I can communicate with people in a way where I just have this interest in knowing about their lives because it's so different from my own experience. And it also allowed me to take a lot of chances, which for better or for worse, but I think the places that I had traveled, so it just so happens that a lot of great waves also are near a lot of areas where there's a lot of interesting history and separatist conflict. So I got a lot of interesting viewpoints from the people, from two sides and two extremes. So when I was surfing in Ireland, I spent a lot of time in the north or just along that border. And I went hitchhiking with members of Sinn Fein, which is basically the political wing that is somewhat associated with the IRA. And when I was down in surfing in Spain in Mundaka, which is a famous wave there. I went in the heart of the Basque country and I just spent all my days walking around the town, speaking to the people and trying to translate the graffiti, the political graffiti, that was all over the walls. I just, I found myself being very interested in people and trying to get at their stories and that's basically what I try to do as a writer when I, you know, on my travel blog somewhere or bust. I'm not always looking for, you know, the top five best things to do and, you know, this country or that country. I mean, occasionally I'll have one of those posts, but I'm looking for stories. And it's not always about place. It's, it usually is about the people. You know, I'm one of my favorite stories is about traveling in Lough and being taken around into all the Buddha caves with these three little kids and they were just really, I think, epitomized the culture and the types of people you'll meet traveling around Lough. So that, you know, it's, it's those kinds of interactions and experiences that I find more remarkable. And, you know, same thing with traveling. I actually got to the experience to travel with a survivor in, in Europe. And we went to all the camps together. I mean, I was in a group, but, you know, just visiting the sites I had done that already. But to stand there with him and to hear his stories and to hear the emotion in his voice and the quiver of his, you know, him trying to stifle this cry. It was, it made place enhanced. When it comes to weight loss, no two people are the same. That's why Noom builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology. Take Brittany. After years of unsustainable diets, Noom helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off. I was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight, gaining weight. And it was exhausting. And Stephanie, she's a former D1 athlete who knew she couldn't out train her diet and she lost 38 pounds. 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I remember one of the things that we had Tyler Colson, who walked a dog across America here. And I remember one thing very distinctly, when I asked him about the transition back to a normal life, he said that for the first probably three months, he had a tremendous amount of anxiety. He couldn't sleep at night, living in Chicago after spending almost a year just walking across the United States was actually quite stressful. Everything seemed too fast. And I'm really curious if you had experiences like that, how you dealt with them, and what are the implications for people listening from something like that? Well, I think this answer will touch on your previous question, and this one. Basically, I just, the trip taught me what was valuable in life, because when I came back, I got right into a PR job in New York City, and I would spend my entire day commuting, working, waiting for the clock to hit a reasonable hour to leave. Commuting home. I mean, I did my job, but all that time was spent either getting to work or working, and when I got home, I had maybe two, three hours before it was really time to wrap things up. And it was just not the life that I was accustomed to, and yeah, it definitely could have affected me negatively, but I just realized that it wasn't for me. And I took a job that fit my lifestyle a bit more, because I realized that I didn't want to work my whole life and realize that I had sacrificed so many things. So, you know, I took a job that paid less, but it gave me more free time and allowed me to satisfy my own needs in a way. And it was funny, actually, when I returned, it was 2004, and I saw all of these people walking around New York City with these white headphones that connected to nothing. It was just like in their pocket, and when I had left, the big thing was the disc man or the walk man. And so the biggest culture shock for me was that you had something the size of your wallet, or now the size of our iPhones that was playing music. So that was my big culture shock. Coming back and seeing that the iPod was ubiquitous. Well, let me ask you this. One of the other parts of this that actually I'm really curious about is the relationship with your grandmother. And you talked about coming back and how over the next several years, it sounds like you got into sort of a dialogue with her about the stories and how it all translated. And I'm really curious about what that was like, the process of it, how it affected your relationship with her. And what's it like to talk to somebody about painful experiences and having them relive that through telling the stories of it? Yeah. Well, I had a newfound respect for my grandmother. My grandmother growing up was very stereotypical of the Jewish grandmother. She spent all her time in the kitchen. She fetched when she would see spills or crumbs on the floor. She would yell at us for not eating. And to me, she was always just this character. And I kind of just always laughed at her lovingly, of course. And I always knew that my grandfather was the hero, the tough guy. And I just kind of wrote my grandmother off in a sense like, oh yeah, she was a survivor, but not like my, my poppy had survived. And actually, the way that the book first began, it's now called my grandparents Holocaust and shopping it around. But the way it first began, I was surfing in Panama. This was a separate trip, not related to the year plus abroad. And I was just sitting there. And I thought, I'm going to write a book about my grandfather, because he's this hero who survived five different concentration camps. And he was part of the uprising in Warsaw. So when I got home, and my grandmother had already started telling me stories, but all my questions were always about my grandfather. And what was great about my grandmother is she traveled kind of parallel to my grandfather throughout the war. So when he was in one ghetto, she was there too, just coincidentally. When he was in a camp, she was there too. So whenever she would tell me a story about him, because that's how my questions were slanted, they eventually evolved into, well, let me tell you what happened to me. And I just, I felt ridiculous. I felt very silly that I didn't, I discounted my grandmother and that she was as much of a hero as my grandfather or as much of a survivor. As, you know, she had gone through, I think even worse conditions because she was in some terrible camps and she watched too many people and from her family killed in front of her. So I think that, you know, my grandfather watched the train disappear with his family, but she watched, you know, she was holding her mother's hand when she was merged. So to hear all of these stories from my grandmother revealed to me accidentally almost because I was not asking the right questions was an incredible experience for me. And luckily, luckily, they had, you know, traveled similar journeys to survive. So I don't know if that answered the question. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. I mean, it's, you know, I figured that there had to be a sort of evolving relationship there to tell stories like this and to, you know, I almost, it almost makes me think of movies like the Joy Luck Club, but, you know, in a very different context, if you know what I mean, in which, you know, you're basically sharing stories across generations and, you know, a story in this case that happens to be incredibly painful to share, probably. Right. Well, actually, I should, I should tell you the happy spin on this. So like I had said before, my grandmother, when my grandfather died, she basically shut down, she gave up on life, she wanted to die herself. And when I came back from Poland, and I started to rekindle these questions on the Holocaust, it did something to her. And it really, and it became almost like a project that she looked forward to. And while every session ended or, or had a pause where she said I need to take my tranquilizer, because the memories were just so damaging to her in the past and affecting her now at that moment, when we were discussing, even after she took that pill, or even after she said, look, my hands are shaking. She jumped right back into, you know, wait, I have more to tell you, and she would just reveal story after story. And I don't know, in a weird Cobb sort of way, it rejuvenated this spirit that had kind of sunk away when my grandfather died. So, yeah, there's a, I guess, a happy ending in revealing these stories. Interesting. Well, let's do this. We kind of touched on the Cambodian genocide piece, but I want to go back to that because I still have a lot of questions around that. So all of this connects to, I mean, to me, it seems like, you know, like you said, they're sort of the one question that you're trying to answer throughout every one of these projects. I mean, talk to us in more depth around sort of this Cambodian genocide piece. I mean, what it revealed to you, you know, as a person, how it influenced, you know, your worldview. And what, you know, what do we not know about this? I mean, what, what it seems to me throughout this that you're trying to shine light on something that is kind of, you know, not not been given its do, I guess, by the media or by, by, you know, by history. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this. Right. Well, I mean, that was my goal for traveling the Cambodian genocide. I wanted people to see what was happening, what happened back then, though it's not a history book by any means. But what briefly what had happened back then by looking at Cambodia today and hearing from the people. And, you know, this is a country that still has about five to six million land mines and unexploded ordinance scattered throughout the land, making making the land unusable in some areas and crippling children and adults daily. This is a place that has the Khmer Rouge still in existence in terms of the, the people who were a part of the Khmer Rouge were not ever brought to justice like right now you have a few of the top members on trial, but they're in their 90s, you know. So basically neighbors have to look out at their neighbor and see that, you know, this was somebody who was a member of the Khmer Rouge. So it's, it's definitely unsettling, you know, the Jews pretty much left Europe, you know, or, or they left Germany. So they're not looking at the Nazis, but the Cambodian population, they all stayed, you know, the survivors state. So that's just, that's got to create emotional issues right there. You have, you have a government that's corrupt and also a government that's some that some members are culpable for what had happened in the 1970s. And, you know, kids right now are, are not getting the correct education because I think people would rather keep all this under wraps. And, you know, so that's kind of like the landscape of the country. And how, and how that time period still affects affects the people today, but just from traveling around. And, and, and talking with the people. There's, there's, I mean, I'm not trying to pigeonhole people into two groups, but there's the people who want to know and want to share their stories. And then there's the people who want to basically shut down that memory. So it's, you know, it's, it's, I think it's kind of goes with every tragedy. There's people who want to share and people who don't. So it was just about accessing the people who wanted to tell their stories. Well, you know, that makes me think of something that one of our former guests, a happiness researcher, Sean Acor said, he said, you know, there are some people who experience instead of post traumatic stress post traumatic growth, which is, which is actually fascinating. And I'm curious, you know, based on your observations, what do you think distinguishes those two groups of people based on what you saw and your own experiences? I'm not even going to believe to understand what, what, what sets one person into one category and what sets another person into the other category. I mean, I, I would have no idea. But I do think that the people who were who revealed their stories, they seem to have a different light. You know, they found ways to smile. And not to say, and granted, I didn't spend a lot of time with the people who wouldn't share their story because, you know, they didn't want to talk to me. So I don't know, I don't know them personally, but I think the people who were who were interested in sharing their story. It was therapeutic to them, in some regards, do, I mean, I'm not saying that with any sort of background in psychiatry or psychology, but, you know, just, it did seem to be beneficial to them in some way to talk about their experiences. Well, I'll add one sort of comment to that, based on, you know, one of the most important conversations that I've had with Greg Hartl, who works with me on unmistakable creative and some of you know him and some of you got to, it was based on a talk that he gave with the instigator experience. Is this notion of your temporary circumstances not being your permanent identity? And in my mind, I think that's the distinction between those two groups. Again, you know, like you said, neither of us are psychologists or shrinks, but I think that some people have an ability to separate what has happened to them from who they are as a person. Yeah, I mean, looking at Cambodia, the people there, I mean, for everything that they've been through and for everything that they're going through now, they're some of the most optimistic people I've ever met. There are groups of people playing volleyball all around the country, and they don't have legs. They're just sitting on tarps with their limbs, their prosthetics scattered on the sidelines, and they're just playing games, you know, with this positive spirit that sports can bring about. And the kids are smiling and then I watched some children who were trying to sell me these bracelets that every Cambodian kid unfortunately seems to have to sell. And, you know, they're smiling and then I see her run over to her father who doesn't have any limbs and, you know, it must be hard being a kid in that position. Obviously, she's out there. She's in this position where she has to support her family. And some in some regards on the father is incapable of providing the way that he probably wishes he could. So, just to see these smiling kids and to see these people persevering, it's really, it's really powerful. And I don't think I think there's something in the culture of that country that allows that to happen. Well, Noah, this has, this has been really interesting. I knew, you know, when you emailed me, there was something here. You know, as I always say, there's curiosity is kind of my driving force and the tone of your email and kind of the story was something that intrigued me. And so I really appreciate you doing this. But I'm going to ask you one last question, which is how we closed kind of all of our interviews here for the last several months. You know, our show is called the unmistakable creative, and we live in one of the noisiest worlds we've ever lived in. So, what is it in your mind and your experience and based on everything that you've been through that makes something or someone unmistakable. I mean, in terms of, I guess I'll answer that from a writer's perspective. But I guess it's applicable to anybody. It's just having, I would say, a unique voice and not following, I guess, the typical trends that are out there. You know, I mentioned before that in my world of travel writing, there's, there seems to be this trend of the top five, the top 10, the top this. And, you know, it's, I'm probably not. And to tell you the truth, my most successful posts are the ones that I happen to have written the top five, but I don't really like to continue that just because it's not the type of writing that I want to do. I want to tell a story. So I'm taking a risk and in the end, will it pay off? I don't know. But, you know, it's, it's just a way to, I guess, stay above the noise and to set yourself apart. You know, in all of the writing I do, I try to tell a story and I try to have that story focus on people, whether it's, you know, a novel or the story about my grandparents, you know, it's not about the Holocaust per se. It's about these two people doing incredible things to overcome that period in their life and it's about my questions and my search for their answers. So, yeah, I think just, just taking a risk and being true to, to who you want to present if you're going out there with, you know, going public with your craft. Well, no, this has been really, really interesting and definitely different than a lot of the conversations we've had here. So I really appreciate you taking the time to join us and share some of your insights and a bit of your story with our listeners here at Unmistakable Creative. Well, thanks for speaking to me. I enjoyed it. Yeah, my pleasure. And for those of you guys listening, we'll wrap the show with that. 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Noah Lederman’s 15 month quest around the world eventually led him to reconnect with the stories of his grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, and then a deep dive into the Cambodian genocide.

The stories of grandparents who survived the Holocaust
A 15 month trip around the world that changed things
Searching for answers in a Holocaust museum
How a visit to Portland reconnected Noah to his grandmother
Revisiting the difficult stories of our past
Why it’s important to keep stories alive and put them on display
Searching for our own answers to our own questions in life
The children of the Cambodian genocide
How 15 months of surfing and traveling world formed and revealed Noah’s creativity
Changing the perception of a grandmother through stories
An in-depth look into the Cambodian genocide and how it impacted the culture

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