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What I've Learnt - Rachelle Unreich · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've known Rochelle as a fellow journalist for many years.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes working together, and I've always respected and admired her.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In her new book, A Brilliant Life, journalist Rochelle Unra interviewed her mother Mira, a Holocaust survivor in her final months of terminal cancer, and discovered stories of human goodness and love which would impact her own life for the better.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mira's incredible survival through World War II and the Holocaust is because of human goodness and the goodness of people.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Her survival is due to people of all races, religions, ages, and circumstances, helping her live to the next day.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lesson Rochelle holds, dear.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: The historical background is late hours of 30th of April 1945, Mira Blumenstock was liberated and the camp's camp gates opened.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was also her 18th birthday.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: She'd survived four death camps, including Auschwitz, and a death march.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a mystery to Mira's survival.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Seventy years would pass, a life lived joyfully in France and Australia would start to wind down.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: After Mira was sadly diagnosed with cancer, her daughter Rochelle, a journalist, would interview her to distract Mira from her illness.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: What she discovered about her mother is astonishing.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: The incredible bond of mothers and daughters.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: This story traces both Mira's relationship and her mother Jenya as well as Rochelle's with Mira.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jenya guided Mira through the Holocaust while Mira helped Rochelle through tough experiences like a near-death motor accident.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds us that one of the most powerful forces of the universe is a mother's love.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, all her strange, inexplicable, mysterious occurrences that took place around Mira and her family.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: A brilliant life looks at the role that fate, destiny, and chance plays in one's life.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Caring for a parent at the end of their life, Rochelle explores the inverse relationship of a mother and child at the end of life when the child becomes the carer.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Understandably, Rochelle was bereft after Mira's passing.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: During the Melbourne lockdown, her job opportunities looked dwindling, and feeling unsure she would ever write a book, Rochelle bravely began to write Mira's story in what would become a brilliant life.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So Rochelle is somebody that has always been a great storyteller.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And with the world spinning on its axis and anti-Semitism on the rise again, weaving Holocaust stories into our present is so important for many among Rochelle's generation.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So many echoes of the past have been heard within the present, and it's more important than ever that we learn from history.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So, Rochelle, welcome to the What I've Learned Podcast, a timely and poignant time in history.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Deb.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: We have such a long history together.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: It is really special to join you here.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very thrilled to have you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did love this book.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: At times it was tough to read, but many rays of light shine through some of the darker episodes.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So congratulations on this brave journey.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: No doubt Mira would be so proud.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your story resonates so powerfully right now, capturing the normality of life before the unleashing of the systematic atrocities of Nazi Germany and Europe.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your mother, Mira's story, is one of hope, strength, and courage.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what lessons did you learn on your journey through her survival story?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I really wrote this because during the pandemic is when I wrote it, and the world seemed incredibly bleak.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that people could really benefit from her lessons of how to get through trauma.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And even when it seems like there's absolutely no light in the darkness at all, you can actually, you have to believe that there is still light on the other side.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't see it, your essence has to be the light.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I really felt like her lessons of believing, having faith in a future.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And more than that, she really believed in the positive positivity of humankind.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: She just, you know, you would have come across one of the stories where decades after the Holocaust, she did a series of video testimonies, one of which was at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And in it, she recites just a litany of horrors, one after the other, the incredible cruelty that she witnessed and experienced.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the interviewer said to her at the end, Do you want to add something?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think saved you?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, without even a moment's pause, the goodness of people.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And she said it to me many times in my life.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: The Holocaust taught me about the goodness of people.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when you first hear that phrase, you can't believe it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: You think, how's that possible?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: How could she not have focused on man's capacity for cruelty, but instead focused on individual people who helped her and intervened and saved her?
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's actually what it's all about.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can't believe that everybody is cruel and horrible.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have to really believe in your fellow man and that they will stand up for you and help you.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what I really cling to at the moment.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I've had, even though it's a really hard time, I've had so many people reach out to me, you know, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And um, certainly we see the case with world leaders standing up for the Jewish community.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that makes all the difference.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree with you, and I've had a similar experience.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why when I was reading the story, I was really, I suppose, impressed, but also comforted by the story that your mother maintained this, and my mother's also a I'd say a chronic optimist, actually, which is is something that I also have, and that I can see how our mothers imbue us with a type of resilience that you, I mean, your mother's experience was, as you say, so traumatic.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, she yet she remained, she remained sort of optimistic, but also, you know, little little stories you told about how, you know, she she held on to things, even in the face, like that story of her with the soldiers marching through her town, and how she starts giggling.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's a sense of she just tries to hold on to herself in the face of this utter horrible, terrifying experience, knowing that her life is about to change and their family's life is about to change.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: In that case, she was, I think, giggling more out of nervousness, but yeah, and anxiety, but and she was told as and was dealt with accordingly as it's as as we read.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it's true that she sorry, it's true that she did hold on to um her optimism.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a choice that she made again and again.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And do you feel that that's helping you right now and certainly all of us need some of that in the face of what's going on?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And do you feel it's something that is innate or something learned?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: I do think we need it.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think of how she really believed that it was about small acts of kindness that added up.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And in what there's a scene uh which I relay where she arrives in in concentration camp, the first plush of.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And very soon afterwards, it's the Jewish, two Jewish holidays.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Jewish New Year and it's the Jewish Day of Atonement.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And she decides to observe both of them.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: She says prayers with other women, she tries to collect extra rations from her lunch to say for dinner, so she can pretend that she's having a New Year feast.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when it comes to the Day of Atonement, she doesn't drink her soup, she fasts instead.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it there were people around her aghast saying, How can you do this?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who's praying to?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is you believe there's a God?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Yes.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And she really believed that not only would it make other people feel better, those who believed and those who didn't, but that maybe her singular prayer could make a difference in a collective sense.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what we have to remember.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: You you feel sometimes so hopeless, just alone.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: What can I do?
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you just have to have faith that doing one thing, doing a good deed, can really make a difference.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, do you want to think that's innate?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to know.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: She, when I paint her picture from the beginning, I think she was her default was a really optimistic personality, like you were talking about with your mother and yourself.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think so.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You think there's an innate, but is it something that people can learn in the face of extreme trauma?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, she also held on to her faith throughout, which I thought was also interesting.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that example that you've just described, but also still honouring her faith and her belief in in her religion, which I think is quite challenging for many.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some chose to not hold on to their faith after their experiences in Europe.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you think that came from?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, historically, I know her background from what you wrote, but holding on to faith is an example that she showed for you and for your family.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: But to me, her faith is not necessarily a religious one.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's that tomorrow might has the possibility that it can be better than today.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think that's that can be a learnt behaviour because I'm not built exactly like her, but I do often have her her voice in my head.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I do know that when I've encountered really hard situations, when when it was during her life, she counseled me.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I still hear those words today, which is to really hold on to the positivity and to not act with hatred, not act with judgment, but to act in the purest way of kindness and generosity you can.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, she was more inclined that way than anyone I knew, but I do try to really remember that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's very poignant and very relevant, particularly right now.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love this quote from the book.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: I truly believe that as children we pick our parents, that somewhere our souls are up in the sky, choosing the very best parents for us, ones who will teach us what we need to be taught and who are the exact right fit for the exact path we are meant to follow.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's no other explanation.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, how did I get so lucky to have you as a mother?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: I must have pushed everyone else out of the line to get you first.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: That just gave me goosebumps, I have to say, and I feel very much like that with my mother.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me, your relationship with your mother was so special, and this book honours her legacy so beautifully.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But how hard was it to write with with you know the very raw and often difficult subject matter, but also because she was going through her own trauma again in another way?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: How hard was that to hold on?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I will say that I knew you would relate to it because of the relationship with your mother.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's really true.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the book didn't come out as me wanting to necessarily write her life story, even though I always had that in my mind.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: The reason I felt really compelled to write it when I did was because I was dealing with so much grief and trauma of having lost her.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I just didn't know how to package that up and sort of move forward accordingly.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, as with you, I know you're a woman of words, as I love words and books, and you go by quotes.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Words comfort me in in the worst possible time.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there were times when I had, after she had just died, that I wrote what I felt and it felt I could finally explain what I really meant.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I remember um somebody, I bumped into somebody maybe a week after she died, and they said, How are how are you doing?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I'm not gonna just say good, you know, that that thing.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, Well, actually.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I went on to say that it felt like I had arrived in a completely different foreign country.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even though I'd anticipated going to this country, I'd gotten the right visa, I'd packed the right clothes, I'd done my research, when I landed there, it felt so unexpected that I just I didn't know what I was encountering.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't read.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: The atmosphere in this new place was different.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I actually described it that way, I thought I've actually, I'm actually using words to really encapsulate how I feel.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this is helpful to communicate to others and maybe others will relate.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so words were my way through that.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yes, it was, there were difficult things when I was writing about her camp experiences, about her war experiences.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: I sat there several times with tears streaming down my eyes, but I actually felt like I was paying such tribute to our love and how I felt about her.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was honoring the people who she lost around her, and I was giving voice to her legacy.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: That that felt so gratifying.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: It did overshadow the hardship of writing it.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's really like a catharsis, and I think your description of being in another country, a feeling like you've landed in a foreign land, is really powerful and very potent, which is an example of how of how words can actually take us there.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm like you.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Words are a catharsis, it's a place I go as you you're similar.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and that it makes a lot of sense to me, to be honest.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing it does, which I love, is the universality of what you and I do and what you've done here is somehow you've brought people into that space and said, I'm gonna share this very private and intimate space with you.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope you learn and grow and heal from it in your own way.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you said that because um that's exactly what I wanted to do.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't want it to be an exclusive space because my mother's the way my mother lived in the world wasn't an exclusive place.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she was she she had many people of lots of different ethnicities, religions, backgrounds in her life, and she lived over the world.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And even when you were describing how we feel about our mothers, I understand that not everybody has their relationship, that relationship with their mother, but even those people, I hope that they find something there because it is really about connection with other people that to me keeps going even after the person dies.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's about, and there's there's other you know, themes about the sort of magic that I always felt was around my mother and spirituality.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I do hope it's not that people don't, and that's why I've really actually not wanted to myself call it a Holocaust book, because there is a little bit of cost, but there's a great amount which is all about life for her in Czechoslovakia before the war.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's about her life afterwards in the kind of the glow of Paris, embracing the fashion and culture, and then in Australia, where she really learned how to become this independent, formidable person, and then again just being with a parent at the end of their life.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's all those things.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a very important clarification because I think people, when they see a Holocaust book or story, it creates anxiety to some degree because either they've got a family member who's been through it, and so they find it challenging to address or read.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: What you've done here is much more than that.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really glad that we've pointed that out because it is really also about a mother and a daughter and what we learn from our mothers.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of that, she did love to cook.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: You reflect how entwined her cooking was with her practice of Judaism, and I love this bit.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: You write, she reflects.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: My children and grandchildren love to come on Friday nights.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it is a gathering of family.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: We are together.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: In the same breath, Mira also recognized that it was very easy for Jewish people to become assimilated in Australia, losing sight of the importance of their religion in the process.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: She said, if you don't keep up the Jewishness, assimilation grows.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose the cooking and the it's really about ritual, isn't it?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think it matters what the rituals are.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's, you know, whatever ethnicity, it's irrelevant.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's about the repetition of tradition, which I think from what I'm hearing, your mum was very much about tradition, as is my family.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: And those traditions are really what we want to also carry forth.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: How, first of all, have you embraced her cooking prowess?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be interested to know.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And do you carry on those traditions?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, why?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And how how are they reflected in your own family?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so she is right.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: She was um, she did love the sort of rituals that were observed, and she had different levels of religious observance through her life, but she always kept observing the festivals.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, I realized how important that was when I moved overseas to LA and New York because suddenly your parents aren't doing things for you, and you're you realize, what's my identity?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like what, what, what took, how do I feel less alone in the world?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of her cooking, I she used to joke that um, you know, I picked up none of her skills for a long time because I really, even though I had to peel potatoes and crack walnuts in her kitchen, I hadn't cooked dishes.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't until my 30s that I learned how to cook.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: But what we did that was so beautiful, I think, and you'll appreciate that list, is that as she got uh more ill, she couldn't cook.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So when uh a few years before that, my nephew kept had gone to her place every Friday ahead of the Friday night Sabbath meal, and he learned her recipes.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: He watched her do it and he wrote them down, took photos.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had this vast cookbook of all her recipes, and we started to as she deteriorated it, deteriorated.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: So suddenly, um when we got to our Friday night dinners, we would all cook and make things, and we would, you know, we'd have her trollant, a beef stew, and we'd have her poppy seed cake with its chocolate glaze.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there is so much in that that makes um something memorable.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually urge people two things when they have somebody olderly in their life.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I say, get their stories.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's so important to get your family history, and by that I don't mean just what happened to them, I mean who they were as a person.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is get their recipes because there is nothing that conjures up a person as much as the food they cooked.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Totally agree with you.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my mum's minestroni is just like famous, and I know that recipe because, like, you know, at the end of the day, you're right.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think we hold on to much more than just the the linear story, it's about the essence, is what you're saying.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that in your situation, and certainly in mine, is the cooking or the recipes which have their own lineage, I suppose.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Which is important.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love that story.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: I agree, write down that Ministralian recipe too.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I will, don't you worry, we'll be sharing.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the other thing that I thought's interesting, also you know, the rituals, I was thinking about it.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: The rituals of the Jewish faith, and it's in other faiths as well, we have signposts that help us along.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this is what you do, whether it's the Shabbat or whether it's when you're grieving and when you uh you have loss, those signposts are quite important for us.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you're necessarily religious.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is what is confusing for people.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can be honoring those aspects of tradition, but it not necessarily be a religious statement.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: It could be actually just an honoring of such as the the Shabbat.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love that your nephew wrote all that down and then it was continued.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there are there other signposts of faith that you drew on during this difficult time?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think for me, the Jewish religion has a lot of um common sense in there and a lot of one of the things I often I was telling, I had a close friend, unfortunately, die recently, and I was telling this to his sister and they're Hindu, but that we say in Jewish religion, when somebody dies, may their memory be a blessing.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what we mean by that is when that person is no longer on this earth to continue their own good deeds, if we do the good deeds that they would have done in their name, then the memory of them does become an actual blessing.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: They continue to live on through that legacy.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I did find um so much comfort after my mother died in doing things like going to synagogue.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, that was a connection also with my ancestors.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: When I didn't have any grandparents growing up, um, they were all killed in the Holocaust.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I realized as I got older that when I go to synagogue in a synagogue that looks very much like the one they would have gone to in Eastern Europe, you know, 150, you know, more than 100 years ago, 150 years ago.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the same synagogue, I think, you and I.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite beautiful.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a connection with your ancestors.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: You do the same things that they did, and you can feel a closeness to them through that.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I love actually, I love hearing about um, as you say, signposts of all faiths.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I I love nothing more than learning about other people's religions and see how they observe things.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing about religion is as much as it divides people, it shouldn't, because we have so much similarity with other religions.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so many people who do have some sort of faith.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very similar things.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really good point.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we went to an Indian wedding recently, and it was so similar in so many ways to what we do.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just so warm and so beautiful and so a celebration of all the things that we celebrate.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I just hope as we move forward in this crazy world right now that there's a sense of drawing on our common ground as much as possible without sounding glib, because obviously things can be pretty tough right now for a lot of people, but we just have to hold on to some of these elements that make us feel sane and connected.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: If people remembered who's, you know, the human out the human element in this, I believe it would be so much better.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just on that topic, I mean, I really took pains to make sure that this was an accurate account.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just did not want to um not turn over any stone because I thought I'll always have that to go back to, no matter what.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I spoke to historians, academics, museums, foundations, individuals all around the world.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, in terms of Holocaust museums, I dealt with the Melbourne one, the one in Los Angeles, Gafashim in Israel, um, the Stered Museum in Czech in Slovakia.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: I had historians help me everywhere and you know met with, communicated with descendants from that time who were living in the same place as my mother.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I really, I didn't just I use the words of her story, but I did my utmost to verify everything as well.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in that I found some incredible material that even my mother didn't know in her lifetime.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it was really almost like an archaeological dig through history.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I can see that it's a very detailed account, and you've got very clear names and dates, and you know, it's quite it is quite historical in that sense, and you can see the research.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, generational trauma, which is a confronting topic, that must have shaped you in your own journey.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because, in effect, I know, I mean, I know plenty of people who are affected by that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Has how how has that shaped you?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: If if it has, I'm assuming, based on what I've agreed.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I guess I would um argue with that label, generational trauma.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I would call it generational experience.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because what my mother told me was to grab on the life and not let it go.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: She lived life joyfully, she didn't waste a second, and she's just a happy person.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, no one laughed harder than her, no one enjoyed a joke, even at her own expense more.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she threw herself into life and she, you know, she attracted so many people to her side because of that joyfulness.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I got this, um, it's in the book, but I got a letter uh after she died.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: A neighbor slipped, who didn't know her, slipped a note under her door.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it said, I'm very sorry to hear about Mira's death.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know her, but I would see her on the street and smile at her.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I at that time she didn't want to go up to her because my mother was ill.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: But she said, I always felt a special kind of magic emanating from her and from her home.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so beautiful because that was what she was like.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: She drew all sorts of people to her side.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: She really did.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting because I was one of the questions I was going to ask you, which you've just sort of answered, you entered a very intense and intimate story, which is also full of hope and warmth.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Are you an optimist?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think this was your mother's superpower?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly was my mother's superpower and is my mother's superpower.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's something that you've also acquired?
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: That so, one of the superpowers I do talk about in terms of her and why I actually wanted to.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really set out thinking I want to interview her for a book.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: I did it when she was dying to distract her from her illness.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess I did want to have some sense of what were all these strange things that kept happening around her that perhaps some people would call strokes of luck or coincidence or serendipity, and other people might say divine intervention.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: But um, to me, there was being in her presence, it always made me feel like there was more to the universe than just me here right now, that there was something bigger that I couldn't explain and didn't even want to try and put words to.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, that was her superpower that I felt her, her faith actually pointed to something else.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so many, so many of those weird but unbelievably um, you know, hope-filling moments happened around her that I think I just still hold on to now.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: That makes me feel like she's still watching me.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so therefore you're a person of faith.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are you a person?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Are you do you think you talk about serendipity?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are we talking destiny?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are we talking all of the the notion that somehow the journey is laid out?
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you saying that choices made reflected how that the path that she took?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: What or do you think it's a hybrid?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, I would I wouldn't say that anybody has their life um mapped out for them.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think in in the Jewish religion, we believe that man always has choice.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can choose a lot of different paths.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I believe that if you are really tuned in, you can feel guided in a way that, and whatever you call that too, that could be called gut instinct, some people call that.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you talk about her intuition in the book, don't you?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And how she'd get that sense.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I don't think she would have labeled it either.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was just how she was built and uh maybe a bit about how I'm built too.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, in answer to the question, are you an optimist?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not as much as my mother.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I am, I am an optimist.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do actually love people.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I really get a lot from the energy of other people, and that's why I was a journalist for so many years.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you're the same.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: You you must love finding out about people because of what you do on this podcast and beforehand.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be you, I'm really interested in people and I I love them.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do I?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I am guilty of not being like my mother and thinking um there's always the possibility I have to remind myself of her lessons that tomorrow can be better sometimes.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, one of her uh she had incredible optimism.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And once um she wrote, she used to write the most effusive and beautiful birthday cards, like really elaborate, long birthday cards.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in one of them, she wrote, um, oh, I was a sort of a bit of a down period in my life at that time.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly, apropos to nothing, in the middle of this birthday message, she writes in capital letters, the happiness is near, exclamation mark.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I just didn't, I didn't read it that closely.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: And after her death, when I looked at it, I wasn't even sure what that meant.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is it meant to be a prophecy?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is it um what does it mean?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I came to realise that her belief is that the happiness is always near.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: The happiness is right there, even if you can't see it.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: You might have to actually grab it, it might not come to you, and probably it won't come to you.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have to actually reach out and have the courage to grab it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: But you have to actually also believe that it is there even if it's not within sight.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I do believe that.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: I have learned to believe that.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so to answer your earlier question, maybe it's not innate, but I have that is learned behaviour for me.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and something you've learned from your mum.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm the same with from my mum, I've learned very similarly.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think the world will see your book in a different context now as opposed to when you started this project?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because our world's transformed so quickly at the moment.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And when you started this project and this book, clearly you would have absolutely no notion of what you'd be really you're sort of in the epicenter of something that you probably hadn't planned to be, just by virtue of the topic.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: What's your thoughts on that?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And do you think because it's something that you probably are trying to process?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I never thought about where the book would end up when I wrote it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote the book because I was really interested in capturing my mother's legacy.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: I really thought she had lessons to share, and I wanted to write it at the very least for my family.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had delayed writing it for decades, really, until I felt like I could really write it properly.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then all these things came together where there felt like there was an urgency behind it.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I never wrote it with a a reader in mind.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, will this be commercial?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: I actually thought it, you know, it I had no idea.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: I thought there was a chance that it could just sit in my top drawer, like lots of writers' manuscripts.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: But in fact, very early on, it got an incredible result.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I wrote it in six weeks, the first draft.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Incredible.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know, I've never written like that before.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: I really believe that something was happening in that time.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: I had an agent by the time I finished, and it was the subject of an eight imprint auction um when it went out.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and then it got picked up, you know, by HarperCollins in America, it's with Hashette here and and um by Bonnier Books in the UK.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that there is something, I don't, I think that forget all that stuff, forget what's happening in the world, forget um that this sort of group of people is against this group of people.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: That is not what this book is about.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not about even even in the whole the lessons of the Holocaust is not um for me in this book that either.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is about human mind and it's about how to get out of the most bleak moments and still retain your goodness.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's what it that's what it is.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, however it lands, I can't, I'm not in control of that.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very true.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it's really got a very strong humanist theme, and that's what I loved about it when it really is multifaceted, and as you say, it's not just, it's not only about a very traumatic time in history, it's much more complex.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Legacy is a powerful tool, as is story storytelling, something both you and I have dedicated our lives to.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: What are your hopes for your children and the next generation?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Gosh, that's uh that's more than a that's not a sound pipe, honey.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: I changed my acknowledgments.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I write to my children, I thank them for what they did because I didn't um I didn't want to sound too earnest.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: But what I actually had written in the first draft was um remember to be be of purpose and live in service.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I took that out because of how it sounded, but that is what I want for them.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: I want them to realize that they have a responsibility to be good people on this earth, and they have a responsibility to act as their parents, their grandparents, their great-grandparents have tried to act, which is to just be a good person in the world, don't do anything that causes harm, and in fact, look to help and be good instead.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's my wish.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a beautiful wish, and it's very fundamental to Jewish faith, tikkun alam, and the sense of giving back and making sure that you're part of a universal community, not just for oneself.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's very important and what you have reflected in that.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, Rochelle, it's interesting because the interviews that that were done with your mother, you did most of them.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: But tell me somebody else, very important and very pivotal in both our lives, who was involved.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so uh Elliot Pellman, who we were both at school with, and I remember you were very friendly in high school, he did my family a great service by interviewing my mother over a series of interviews, about eight hours worth.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I had that as material, as well as two interviews she'd done with the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I interviewed her, I guess I didn't really have to ask her so much about her Holocaust experiences.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: I could ask her about who she was as a person because Elliot had done so much of that work as well.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for those who don't know, and most would, um, Elliot's a very renowned author and a very good friend of ours.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something really um, I love the community of writers and journalists as we talked, Rochelle, because in a sense, we share that passion to help others, including ourselves, tell their story, like I'm doing with you now.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had Elliot on the podcast.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you also mentioned that Elliot thanked your mum in one of his very, very best-selling books.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to just relay that too?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and me too, actually, in um in the street sweeper.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it was this incredible thing.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was uh working on that book when he decided to interview my mother.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't he only interviewed her because he said, she's got more of a story, and I think I need to uh find it out in detail for your family, not for his use.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he knows the questions to ask.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: He's been immersed in Holocaust study himself.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: So they sat down over a series, and at the end of one of the interviews, he said to her, uh, I've been trying to find out about this resistance woman, Rosa Robota, who was in Auschwitz and she was hung for being part of the attempted uprising.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he had, I think, traveled over the world to try and find somebody who knew about Rosa who had witnessed it.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe he'd been in Poland trying to find somebody.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when he said that to my mother, she said, Well, I was there, I witnessed it, and he had literally gone overseas in search of somebody, not to realize that there was a witness in his own backyard.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so he did a little separate interview with her about this event that she witnessed.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it the circularity of that, you know, here he is, this guy I know from high school, and then comes across my mother while he is writing about the Holocaust, needs to interview her.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: That stuff then informs my book.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really full circle moment.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: It certainly is, and the interconnectivity of it all is a great comfort to us, I think, that we are all there to help tell each other's stories, and that's what you, Elliot, me, in whatever way we can.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think we're very blessed to have that sort of connection.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all connected.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: That is, you know, not even in our community.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: It is really that six degrees of separation.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: We are all connected.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we're connected by our common humanity, and that's what you and I are focused on, and that's what let's pray for peace, and hopefully, that is what the future holds for everyone.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Love dear.