About Elana
Elana Israel is a psychologist and a relationship coach. She lives outside of Philadelphia with her son. She is also host Rachael Cerrotti’s cousin. In this final conversation for the first season of The Memory Generation, Elana and Rachael talk about their grandmother, Hana Dubova, and the legacy she left behind as the sole Holocaust survivor in her family. Rachael spent more than a decade researching and retracing Hana's survival story and this is the first public conversation she has had with any extended family member about this body of work. (Learn more at: www.sharethesamesky.com.)
Elana shares her experience living with Hana in the final months of her life and struggling with addiction in the years after. Rachael and Elana dig into their process making amends when Elana became sober and how addiction effects grief. They also share memories and reflections about Hana and what it felt like to have a grandmother who carried such a heavy life experience.
Elana and Rachael recorded this conversation on October 29, 2022. Elana was at home outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Rachael was in Portland, Maine.
Hana Dubova
“I know that I am extremely independent. I make my own decisions. I take my own consequences. When my grandchildren says, you know, ‘this isn't fair. Life isn't fair.’ I says ‘Nobody told you life is fair. Life is not fair that you have to deal with.’ You cannot put the blame on somebody else. You have to deal with it. If you don't deal with it, you succumb or you become a washcloth. Now, you might make wrong decisions, but then you have to take the consequences. I'm not saying that I'm smart. I'm not saying that I made always the right decision. But what decision I made, I took the consequences if it was wrong.” - Hana Dubova