Beggars

We earned money by collecting charity for needy schools and orphanages overseas. My dad became a fundraiser of sorts, by getting authorization letters from small institutions (some that weren't even licensed by the government) that we showed to people when we went door-to-door asking them to donate a small sum to the institution. It was very embarrassing and I hated it, but my father would urge me to be the one to knock and walk in front of him because people would be more likely to give if they saw a little kid. They'd trust him more, and also think of the little kids who needed help.
Sometimes he woke me up at 5am to go and beg for money in front of religious places, when people were coming to or from prayers. There were times he told people we needed money because he was sick and was raising me alone. I felt so pathetic and it was so shaming. Some people would give me strange looks and I thought they were judging me, really they were judging my father for doing this, but they did nothing to stop my father from using me to make money.
Once, I sold some old coins to make money on the side of our begging. I felt a little better selling something, a bit more honorable. I charged people taxes on what they were buying, and they laughed when I added taxes to the cost. I got very upset at their laughter, and started crying, but I can laugh about it now. It is now a bittersweet memory.

Telling lies

I was taught to tell white lies, to tell people whatever it would take to get them to leave us alone. We told people in Philadelphia that we were from New York, and when we were in New York we told people we were from Philadelphia. The concern was that people would wonder why I wasn't in school, or start to ask questions about my mother. By making up these stories, people would be less likely to get suspicious.
If we were "just visiting," it made more sense that I was out of school for a few days or weeks and that my mother wasn't with us.
I was dressed as a boy for a while to get people off of our tracks. My father shaved off most of my hair and I became a little boy with a crew cut (I was given a boy's name to use). He got some boyish clothes for me, and I was told that I had to do this since my mother was hot on my trail and this way I'd be safer. I hated it, it was frightening to me. Another loss of identity, pretending to be someone I was not. Some lady yelled at me when I went into the girls bathroom once. I was too scared to go to the men's room so I continued going to women's public bathrooms, and I burst into tears and yelled "I'm a girl, I really am!! Leave me alone!" It only lasted a few weeks. I wonder if my father actually saw how much it was hurting me?
It was awful. Even worse than having my hair dyed red. That was also freaky. I was terrified of the dye, and screamed when my father attempted to dye my hair in a bathtub somewhere in Brooklyn. I was afraid of the dye getting into my eyes, but even more afraid of what it was doing to my heart and soul to constantly pretend to be someone other than me. I was just never good enough the way I was born.

Left alone

When I was really little I was left alone a lot. My father went off on his own, and I was left alone for hours at a time in wierd places. Shelters, dinky rooming houses, the car, wherever we were at the time. We stayed at cheap boarding houses and homeless shelters, at strange people's homes and slept in the car occasionally. My father wanted time to himself, I have no idea what he was up to but it probably was not good, so I was left alone in these places and it was scary. I hated it. There were times I screamed and cried out of fear and loneliness, shrieking at the top of my lungs if no one was around. Once, some neighbors came to ask me what was wrong and why I was crying. I wiped my tears, put on a smile and said that nothing was wrong. They left.
No one did anything. NO ONE DID ANYTHING! As I write this, I shake with pain and anger. How could people witness a 4,5,6 year-old little kid alone and scared, and later on some people knew that I was being physically abused, and not get involved? This is so painful, so incredibly painful for me today. I look at my own little boy, how vulnerable and innocent he is, and can't imagine that anyone can watch or hear a child suffer and be so passive? Perhaps it wasn't blatantly obvious abuse all of the time, but with a bit of thought it should have been clear to most that something was very wrong.
Parents are the primary abusers of children, and although most parents are loving and considerate, there are some that are not fit to take care of a child. It was clear to many people that came into contact with us, as I have had people contact me once they saw me in magazines or on TV telling my story, and the apologized for not doing anything. One couple actually told me that they knew I was being abused, but that their religious leader said that they shouldn't do anything "drastic" like go to the police. Huh? It makes me want to cry and scream.

Subtle abuse=depressed child

The insidiousness of parental abduction and alienation, a very real form of child abuse, is in part in the subtle messages a child is given about a part of themselves. It is in the occasional comments about the mother/father who was left behind, comments that are often about how they are mentally ill/ugly/racist, and always, that they were bad parents. And in linking that person to the child, as in "Oh you're just like your mother when you nag me about such and such," "Your father had horrible manners, too," or negative comments about the religion or nationality about the left-behind parent, makes a child feel like there's a part of them that is no good, and will never be good enough because the other parent can never be entirely erased from the child.
The abductor's / alienators goal, in part, is to eradicate the left-behind parent from the child´s life. A child will always be aware that they are a part of that left-behind parent, so it is a recipe for building self-hatred in a child. In my case, in addition to these types of comments, I was taken to Holocaust survivor conventions to impress upon me how much Jews have suffered in the hands of Christians. My mother is a Christian, and I learned to fear that part of me, the Norwegian, Christian part of my ancestry, that comes from my mother. I felt scarred, like I didn't truly belong anywhere and had to prove my worth to everyone, including myself.
Ironically, none of the Holocaust survivors said anything bad about Scandinavia. In fact, many of them felt it was wrong for a young child to be in attendance at something so intense. I remember a few talking admiringly of Scandinavia's actions during WWII. But my father wanted to use the war as another way to make me fear and turn my back on the Northern European part of me, and to fear Christians in some way. I was too young to assimilate what I was seeing and hearing. The pictures and stories were too much for me, and led to further terror. I hated the "other" side of me, everything about it, and tried desperately to make it go away. I fought with other kids who insisted that I had a mother. At one point I had decided that I never had a mother, ever, as it made it easier to cope with the self-hatred. I screamed at another child who told me that everyone has a mother. "No, NOT ME!" I yelled.

Meeting the stranger who was my mother

When I was six, after 2 years in hiding, my mother found us living in a basement somewhere in Brooklyn. She had hired detectives, contacted Interpol and others who could help, and came to live in the USA for six months to try and find me.
I cringe when I think of the basement apartment we lived in. It was dark and big and lonely. A young family lived upstairs, and I remember that my father went to Canada for a few days and left me with them. I cried when he left, but went reluctantly up the stairs and sat on the edge of the couch. It was strange to be with a normal family. I found a book on childbirth on the coffee table and looked at the pictures, fascinated. When the mother saw what I was reading, she grabbed it from me without a word but with a horrified look on her face. I thought I must have done something wrong but wasn't sure what it was.
I was introduced to my mother in the Brooklyn courthouse, and I was terrified. I didn't remember her, and all the good memories had turned into distant, negative ones with the passage of time. I was terrifed that I would lose everything I had if I was friendly to her. I remember feeling numb. She showed me pictures of my former life and tried to connect with me, but I was frozen with fear and confusion and did not respond much. We saw one another many times, but in between visits with her I was admonished to remain loyal to my father, and warned that I'd be sent to a strange land if I opened up at all, so my mother had no chance. I wanted to stay with what I knew, even though it wasn't very good. My mother took me to the park, gave me some beautiful toys and fed me, and I began to thaw the tiniest bit. That's when my father abducted me once again.
One morning before dawn, after the judge had ordered that I was to go to Norway for a visit that Summer with my mother, we painted our car from red to blue and took off into the sunrise. It would be 12 years before I would see my mother again. Now we were truly on the run. I'd pass through 34 of the 50 States and Mexico and Canada in those 12 years.

The conversion

The picture of me was taken in Norway about a month before I was abducted. I still look happy and content, as opposed to the pictures taken after I was abducted where I look withdrawn and wary. The outfit is so very 70's, and so cute. Whenever I look at this picture, it reminds me of the life I could have had if not for the abduction. My mother doted on me, and the outfit, lovingly hand-sewn by my mother, reminds me of the time and effort she put into her parenting. My father had no fashion sense, and I was always sloppily dressed, and parented, by him.
In this picture I am a non-Jew. That was soon to change, unbeknownst to my mother at the time.  Since my father is Jewish and my mother is not, according to Jewish law I was not considered Jewish. To be raised as a Jew, I would need  to undergo a conversion ceremony. My father became an ultra religious Jew when he abducted me, a smart move on his part as the tight-knit Orthodox community was a great way to hide from the police and Interpol, the international policing force who were looking for me to return me to my mother's care.
I was converted to Judaism within a year after we arrived in NYC. My father told some people that my mother was dead, that she didn't want me, or was mentally ill. There was always another story, depending on where we were and what would sound best.
The tight-knit Jewish community, especially back in the 70's, was not informed about parental child abduction and most didn't think to question my father's claims. Since he wanted to raise me as a Jew, they agreed to convert me to Judaism. I needed to go through a special conversion process to be a Jew. This required immersion in a ritual pool, called a "mikvah" in Hebrew, a small pool made of stone and filled with rainwater. In the Jewish tradition this is considered a process of renewal or purification, a form of rebirth for the person who is converting. I was going to be born again into the Jewish faith, and leave the past, my mother and my Norwegian roots, behind.
I have strong sensory memories of the mikvah. The physical memories are of walking the stone steps into a deep, cold pool with my father, and then getting unceremoniously dunked under the water 3 times in succession. There were strange men there, I am sure they were the rabbis who were supervising the conversion, watching from what felt like very high above me. There was an air of mystery, while the room smelled of sour water, and the feeling was one of vulnerability. It felt wrong to be in the dark water in a stone pool on the top floor of a synagogue somewhere in Brooklyn; to be so little and be doing something that felt so BIG, so huge. I was given a new name that day, Sarah Zissel, and I was told that I was a different person when I walked out of the mikvah that day. The implication was that I was a better person somehow, though it was not expressly said. Clearly, the old me was not good enough, and I was supposed to be happy that I had been admitted into the fold despite the fact that my mother was not Jewish. It was supposed to be a joyous day, my first day with a new identity.

New York City

I don't remember much from those first days and weeks. I was so young, and so much was going on. There was a lot to take in and digest. We lived with a family in Brooklyn who believed that they were rescuing us. They had a son who was a bit older than me and we would play together, be ridden around in an old-fashioned baby carriage. I learned English quickly and forgot all of my Norwegian. Later on I would fight with other kids about my mother.
I told them I didn't have one, that I never did. I cried when a little girl said that every kid has one. I DID NOT, EVER!! said I.
I was very sad. I remember having nightmares at night and feeling terrified of the dark. I remember seeing silhouettes of lions from my bed. I developed an anxiety disorder around then, and felt panic a lot of the time. My father did not take well to my questions about my mother. He threw stuff at me when I mentioned her. I cried myself to sleep. I wanted her, I wanted my father, I wanted them both to love me and I wanted and needed both in my life. But now I had to forget my mother in order to survive life with my father. I had no choice, so I had to leave her behind.

April 14, 1974, Oslo, Norway

I'm 4 years old and today is abduction day. Today, I will board a plane to my new life, a life that will no include my mother or her family, her country, her religion, or her love. I will live as a mini-fugitive for the next 14 years, running from the law, running from normalcy and from a part of me, an integral part of my identity.
Today is the day that will change my life forever. I will forever feel split in two, although I will merge into a whole, into an occasionally happy person, despite the stumbling blocks my father's actions will place in my path towards growing into a trusting, healthy adult. There will always be a wound, but it will heal to the greatest extent it can heal because I will fight to make that happen. I will survive, but I could have done without the unnecessary scars today will bring.
So today, a warm Sunday, my father Herbert told my mother Tone that he was taking me to Vigelandsparken, a sculpture park in Oslo. I loved my dad, still do. He has some good qualities and he's very smart, but on an emotional level he's not very grown-up. I wish it were different. If he hadn't taken possesion of me and justified his actions that ended up hurting me and him, we'd have a good relationship today. He tells me now that a father is allowed to travel with his daughter. Um, yes, but not when it means cutting the daughter off from a part of herself, from love and from security, and from the love of the other parent.
We go to the airport and board a British Airways flight to New York City. I dimly remember looking out the window, confused. I remember my childhood as one big confusing series of events, of running, of midnight wakings and packing quickly to get away immediately, to stay one step ahead of the stranger lurking in the shadows. Usually, that stranger was my mother.
We never did go to the sculpture park. Vigelandsparken is full of sculptures of children and adults caught up in the struggles and joys of life. It is always emotional for me to visit the park today. I love and admire the sculptures. They are intense, emotionally evocative, and I feel an attachment to them. I should have gone there, instead of to the USA.