Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

Celeb Expert Offers Unique Advice

With Britney Spears displaying more bizarre behavior by the day — not to mention last week’s legal bombshell granting custody of her children to her ex-husband, Kevin Federline — the toasted pop tart probably could use all the advice she can get.

But only one Hollywood commentator-cum-unsolicited-advice-giver can offer Spears some words of wisdom connecting the one-time A-lister’s troubles with, yes, the Holocaust. Hanala Stadner, a Los Angeles-based aerobics instructor, cable-access television host and substance abuse counselor who got sober herself 25 years ago, says that she understands Spears’s motives, and they’re not unlike her own. “It’s not like Britney is trying to be bad,” Stadner said. “She’s just trying to kill the pain.”

But Stadner, 51, goes further, tying her own fraught past — the result, she says, of growing up the child of Holocaust survivors — with the despair of attention-seeking celebrities. “I was told I shouldn’t feel bad. If there’s a Nazi chasing you, then you should feel bad,” she said. “The celebrities are told they shouldn’t feel bad because they have everything, so there’s a parallel.” Stadner expounds on her own demons, including eating disorders and agoraphobia, in her new memoir, “My Parents Went Through the Holocaust and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” published last year by Seven Locks Press. The origin of the book title? When Stadner asked her Polish-born mother how she survived the loss of her entire family and lived for years in hiding in the woods, her mother responded, “It was no vacation.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version