My Grandma, the Raving Bitch of Buchenwald
- Author
- Mookie Spitz
- Published
- Fri 12 Sep 2025
- Episode Link
- None
What happens when the person who loves you most is also the person who terrorizes everyone else? In this 81st episode of No Hair, All Heart, Mookie Spitz dives into the wild contradictions of his grandmother Olga—a woman who could cradle him with tenderness while scorching the earth around her with a venomous tongue.
To Mookie, she was “Mimi”: a donut-buying, nickname-giving guardian angel who made him feel like the center of the universe. To the rest of the world, she was the “Raging Bitch of Buchenwald.” Holocaust survivor. Chain-smoking gossip machine. Apex predator of family drama. A woman who insulted strangers in Hungarian and then switched to English when they shipped her off to the mother country.
Across continents—from Poland to Hungary, Caracas to Chicago—Olga survived wars, exile, and tragedy, only to wield her survival like a weapon, cutting down relatives, neighbors, and shopkeepers with equal relish. But beneath the insults and manipulation, she occasionally revealed a flicker of deep humanity, She urged young Mookie to show compassion to his struggling mother, proving that even the sharpest tongues can sometimes speak truth and tenderness.
This episode is a brutal, hilarious, and oddly touching portrait of a matriarch who embodied the messy contradictions of love, survival, and legacy. If you’ve ever had a complicated family member—or been one—you’ll hear echoes of your own story in Olga’s.
