Transcript: A to BE Episode 21

Mimi Kwa (00:03):
People say life is a journey, not a destination. But how do you know you are on the right path?
Jo Stanley (00:10):
If only we could see the signs when they appear.
Mimi Kwa (00:13):
Well, I’m Mimi Kwa.
Jo Stanley (00:14):
And I’m Jo Stanley.
Mimi Kwa (00:15):
And On A to BE, we speak to fascinating people about how they navigated their way to be here now having profound impact on the world.
Jo Stanley (00:26):
We hope our conversations will help you reflect on everything you’ve been through to get here, the triumphs, challenges and bumps along the road.
Mimi Kwa (00:35):
And if you haven’t already, find your own map to what matters.
Rachelle (00:41):
And it was something she said to me all my life, “In the Holocaust, I learned about the goodness of people.” How could you be a firsthand witness to man’s cruelty and yet say that goodness was what you learned? And she took such comfort and such gratitude from those who had intervened to help her, to save her, to show her the smallest acts of kindness to the greatest ones.
Jo Stanley (01:09):
Our guest today has her own A to BE, but her book, A Brilliant Life, centers on her mother’s journey to survive the Holocaust. Mimi, it is extraordinary.
Mimi Kwa (01:21):
It is. It so extraordinary. And if you haven’t read it yet, it is a riveting story about finding the good even in the darkest of circumstances.
Jo Stanley (01:31):
And Rachelle is a riveting guest. She nursed her mom at the end of her life and interviewed her as a distraction from the pain of her cancer.
Mimi Kwa (01:40):
The tale that Rachelle’s mom told her could so easily have been lost when she died.
Jo Stanley (01:46):
But thank goodness it wasn’t. And I think our conversation today, Mimi, is such an incredible reminder that the stories of our parents are precious, if only we can take the time to ask the questions.
Mimi Kwa (02:00):
Rachelle, it is so wonderful to have you with us today because not only are you an accomplished journalist, you are now an author and it’s an extraordinary story because what you do is you exemplify the fact that our A to BE, which is obviously the name of our podcast and why we love having conversations about people’s A to BE. A to BE doesn’t necessarily just have to be the A to BE of one individual because your A to BE is so intertwined with your mother’s A to BE.
Rachelle (02:32):
It’s true. And I like to think my story is partly about second chapter chances, because I had a whole career as a journalist and I was 55 when I wrote this book, not knowing if I would ever write a book. And so to me, that gives people hope that you don’t have to feel like you’re stuck in some pathway at a certain point of your life.
Jo Stanley (02:53):
Preach it, sister. Oh my gosh. I feel like that’s the podcast. No, we’ve got so much more to go. But I just love that you say that because the telling of your story and your mom’s story came out of such a sad time because you started interviewing her when she was battling cancer. So you’ve kind of taken your story, reinvented it in this really difficult process.
Rachelle (03:17):
And I think reinvention is really the key because after she passed away, I was so low, I didn’t know where I would land. Then COVID happened, all my work dried up. I felt even lower and didn’t know where I’d land. And out of that rubble to actually decide that I could do this, when there was a voice in me saying, “No, you can’t.” When I published it, I met with a few publishers and somebody said, “Why haven’t you written a book before?” And I said, “I thought I couldn’t.” And he said, “Who told you that?” And I said, “Oh, I told me that.”
Mimi Kwa (03:51):
Wow.
Rachelle (03:53):
But I think when you were saying about transforming, what I really feel like this book was for me, just personally was I started off with a lot of grief and that feeling of loss I had after my mother died and didn’t know what to do with it, really wanted to look towards to find out how I should progress and what I could do to get myself out of that hole. And started so sad, and through writing it really transformed my connection to my mother. So now I feel a great joy instead of that sadness. So that was a really unexpected gift.
Mimi Kwa (04:29):
And you interviewed your mother, obviously before she died, and I’m just wondering what were you expecting to get from that interview and then what actually was revealed? Because it wasn’t what you actually set out to uncover, was it?
Rachelle (04:45):
No, and I wasn’t expecting anything. I interviewed her because six months before she passed away, she was really starting to lose her light and everything I’d known her to be, which was a vibrant, bright person who greeted you with a sing-songy voice had started to dull. And in that dullness, she became quite unrecognizable. She just spoke differently. Her whole demeanor was different. So my brother Fred suggested that I interview her just to really distract her and try to bring her out a little bit of that feeling of being ill. And I didn’t go in looking for material. I didn’t go in with any agenda. I just started asking the most random questions. Everything from what did you eat for breakfast as a small child, to just continually asking until I got too much more, the nitty-gritty.
(05:38):
So I had no expectation, but it was really incredible what I discovered because you don’t often sit down with your parents and really ask them who they are. You might at best ask them what they’ve done, what happened to you in your life, what did you do? Then what happened? But do we really try to find out who our parents are as people and what their values are, what made them the way they are? I don’t think we do. And in doing that, I really learned who she was and kind of fit in the psychological jigsaw pieces of my own life as well.
Jo Stanley (06:13):
Did she know that you were interviewing her for-
Rachelle (06:15):
Yes.
Jo Stanley (06:15):
… the purpose of a book though?
Rachelle (06:17):
Not really a book. I had always said to her, I started getting published when I was 20, and I always said early on, “I’m going to write your story one day.” And she didn’t think much of it. She said, “Great.” And I think that was an understanding, but I didn’t go thinking, “Well, now is time for my book.” I was aware that with her being gone, once she was gone, those details of her life would slip away. And this was my last chance and I wanted those. I can’t really remember if I wanted those just as a daughter or because I knew at the back of my mind I’d write about her. Probably a bit of both.
(06:54):
So I was aware of what I didn’t have in terms of her life. I knew a lot about her war experiences, but I didn’t know about her life before. And I thought I knew about her life afterwards because when we are witness to our parents’ lives, we feel that we know everything already. But it’s so untrue. I found that asking her things about how she felt about my father, even though I witnessed it, her answers were quite different. So it was really interesting asking questions.
Mimi Kwa (07:22):
And the detail that you bring to us in your writing, the beauty of it, the heart-wrenching nature of it, the heart stopping stories as well. Imagine if you hadn’t asked your mom the questions that you did.
Rachelle (07:38):
I do feel really-
Mimi Kwa (07:38):
Imagine how much history would remain buried.
Rachelle (07:41):
Yes. And also that experience. Sometimes people say they’ll get somebody to interview their parents and ask them questions, and I say, “Don’t do that because you’ll miss out on this moment of intimacy, which you wouldn’t otherwise get.” In the book, I describe it as if we got the chance to go on a last mother-daughter holiday where we laughed and loved each other fiercely. And that’s what it felt like. I feel grateful, but of course as a journalist, I think, why didn’t I still ask her this and that detail? But I know how she feels, which feels like the most important thing. Now I have her voice in my head. Whenever I encounter anything, a challenge or problem, even something I’ve achieved, I know what her response would be because I just got to know her so well.
Mimi Kwa (08:27):
So can we talk a little bit about Mira’s story, your mother’s story, just to put some more context around it?
Rachelle (08:35):
Sure. So my mother was a Holocaust survivor, which I had always known about. She had an Auschwitz tattoo on her arm, and she had come from Czechoslovakia. She eventually got deported to camp in 1944 when she was 17 years old. She ended up in four concentration camps, including Auschwitz and on a death march. And I felt like I’d always known those points about her story. What was always baffling to me was how she dealt with it, that she was really a joyous person, and I could never quite correlate that with her past. One of the astounding things I always felt about her was this one piece of information where she did a testimony with the Melbourne Holocaust Museum where she spoke about all the things she experienced for hours on end. And they’re very somber experiences. You are just reciting this litany of horrors, one after the other, people who’ve died, been killed, murdered, awful cruelty around you.
(09:43):
And at the end of it, the interviewer said to her, “Is there anything you want to add? What do you think saved you?” And she said, “The goodness of people.” And it was something she said to me all my life, “In the Holocaust, I learned about the goodness of people.” And that was so remarkable to me, and I just didn’t understand it. How could you be a firsthand witness to man’s cruelty and yet say that goodness was what you learned? But I really came to understand it through writing the book and going through her history where she didn’t focus on all the terrible things that happened to her. She didn’t look backwards, she looked to the future, and she took such comfort and such gratitude from those who had intervened to help her, to save her, to show her the smallest acts of kindness to the greatest ones. And that’s what really buoyed her through life.
Jo Stanley (10:40):
All the way through the book, there are just those moments where, and we talk about sliding door moments on this podcast because of the goodness she literally survived, and it happened again and again. I don’t know if that’s the way you wrote it, that that was your focus, to repeat that as a theme.
Rachelle (10:58):
Well, that’s what I think is the survivor story. To survive the holocaust, you had to have not just one lucky thing happened, but a number of lucky things when you saw how unlikely it was that you survive. But it was true that that is actually what happened. People did show her kindness, and it really taught me that it can be these tiny things that you do for someone else that make a difference. It doesn’t always have to be this enormous thing, and she had both. But I really try to live by that rule too. You can’t underestimate how small acts can really make a difference, especially a collective difference.
Mimi Kwa (11:37):
Can you describe one of those small acts that actually changed the trajectory of your mom’s ability to survive?
Rachelle (11:45):
Well, I think of one thing in terms of the collective good, which is more that when she went to camp, when she arrived at the first camp, Plaszow, it was about 10 days in when there were two Jewish holidays in a row. One was the Jewish New Year, and the next was the Day of Atonement. And for those, even though they’re in camp getting minimal rations under terrible circumstances, she tried to observe both of those holidays. She prayed with other women in secret because that was an act that was punishable.
(12:23):
And with the rations she got for the Jewish New Year, she tried to save some from lunch so she could have them at night and then replicate this feast that she’d be having. And on the Day of Atonement, she didn’t eat the soup that she was given. She took the potato from it and put it in her pocket so that she could fast. And other people around her said, “Why are you doing this? Why are you praying? Who are you praying to? Do you think there’s a God?” And she said, “Yes, I believe there is a God.” But she also said to me, “I felt that doing this in this way would make other people feel better, even if they didn’t believe in what I believed in.”
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:13:04]
Rachelle (13:03):
… people feel better, even if they didn’t believe in what I believed in. And I thought that maybe our prayers would be heard, and that that would make a difference. And I’ve come to learn that in the Holocaust, there were different forms of rebellion and one was the rebellion of observing your religion. And, to me, that act would’ve given her strength, but I think others as well. And to survive the Holocaust, I believe you couldn’t just be physically capable of surviving, you had to be mentally capable of surviving, too.
Jo Stanley (13:32):
Just unfathomable courage and resilience. And you really make it very clear, in the way you describe all of the horrors, that it kind of came down to not necessarily a person’s particular qualities in them. It was about just repeated cruelties, to the point where it just wears you down. And those that were able to maybe last another day just perhaps had something in them that another person, just on that other day, they weren’t able to sort of push through. It’s extraordinary how you described that.
Mimi Kwa (14:08):
But also the kindness of others. I mean, the examples that you shared, and there were probably many more that you couldn’t even fit into the book, I imagine, but what was the most profound kindness that somebody extended to your mum?
Rachelle (14:23):
One that involved somebody risking their life would’ve been the non-Jewish people who hid them and helped them hide before they were deported, her family. Because they were doing so at the risk of being carted off to concentration camps themselves and endangering their entire families.
(14:42):
And the housekeeper of my mother’s aunt took her family, as well as another family, and hid them all in the pantry of her home, even though her elderly father lived at home and he would’ve disapproved. So, she not only had to keep these two families hidden, but hidden from him. And to put yourself out like that, and to go against the majority of what’s happening in the country, the majority of the people around you, the government, and say, “No, I want to save these people. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to them, but I know it’s not going to be good.” That is remarkable.
Jo Stanley (15:21):
It really is. She also said, often when you asked her, “Why did that person help you, or why did that act of kindness come your way?” She would often say, “I don’t know why.” I found really kind of sweet in a way that she was, “Oh, just somehow the care came.” That’s true faith, isn’t it?
Rachelle (15:40):
That’s true. And we had a funny moment with the audio book. Rachel Griffiths recorded it, and Rachel knew my mother. And at one point she was reading that, and she stopped in the middle of the audio and she said, “She doesn’t know why, but I know why. I’ve been here sitting recording this thing for hours as well, and she’s made me do it as well.” Her belief was that my mother just had this way about her that you wanted to help her. So, it was just funny that she picked that up as well. She said, “I’m still doing it. Even after her death, I’m helping her story get out.”
Mimi Kwa (16:13):
It’s beautiful.
Jo Stanley (16:13):
Also, though, there is that element of faith which is ingrained in her. There’s a sense… She speaks about her ancestors being with her, the dead are with her, and also God. So, is that in you?
Rachelle (16:28):
I definitely think my belief system came from her, where I write about all the, for want of a better word, the woo-woo that happened around her, these sort of inexplicable, mysterious things that seemed to take place that I never knew how to describe them. Were they coincidence, moments of serendipity, or were they something bigger? And I couldn’t find explanations for all of them, either. So, for me, I also believed in that we are more than just here on earth, that something bigger happens to us afterwards.
(17:04):
But to me, her faith isn’t just religiously based. It’s a faith in humanity, which we spoke about, it’s a faith in a brighter tomorrow, and most of all, it’s a faith in herself, that she believed that she could get herself out of something. She believed in her own abilities so much.
Mimi Kwa (17:25):
Where did she get that from?
Rachelle (17:27):
I think when you read it, you’ll see her father was very much built that way, where he was really determined and really had a vision for his family and for himself. And one of the things he used to say was, “Help yourself and God will help you.” But what that means is, you don’t just wait to be saved. You just don’t think that, “I’m going to say these prayers, and the universe owes me being saved.” You have to do it for yourself and be proactive. Recognize that you’re in a bad situation, and try to do something about it. Change your circumstances, or others’.
(18:04):
And I think doing that gave her a lot of confidence in her abilities, because she was a really confident person in terms of her own abilities. She came to Australia with very little and didn’t know the language, was married, but set up this life for herself that was really hard and challenging, I think, after everything she’d been through.
Mimi Kwa (18:27):
Is it correct that Melbourne, or Australia as a whole, has the highest population of Holocaust survivors per capita in the world?
Rachelle (18:36):
Outside of Israel, yes, and most of those are concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney, with I think Melbourne having slightly more.
Mimi Kwa (18:44):
Did that have an impact — it must have done — on your mother’s life, to be able to have community?
Rachelle (18:50):
I’m sure it did, and a lot of her friends were Eastern European, so they were Czech, they were Hungarian, they were Polish, but she also felt really comfortable in the world. So, she spoke seven languages. So, she was able to really interact with people.
(19:09):
And I didn’t realize a lot of her friends were Holocaust survivors until I wrote this book, and I started asking our family friends about their parents. And they were such a joyous bunch that you wouldn’t have picked it, because you have this idea about people who’ve gone through great trauma, and you think that they might be carrying that sorrow a lot.
(19:31):
And maybe she was just attracted to the group of people who weren’t like that, but I just remember this group of people. And especially I have this very sort of ’70s image of them, where all the men were suntan, and all the women had these big bouffants that were starched with hairspray, and long red nails. And they would play these raucous games of cards at our house, and there’d be plates heaving with food, and cigarette smoke, and just so much laughter among them you would not know what their past held.
Jo Stanley (20:07):
Wow.
Mimi Kwa (20:07):
So, in an age of healing and therapy and every different type of healing modality available, how do you think it was that she and her friends were able to at least appear as though they were okay, after all of that trauma?
Rachelle (20:28):
I can only talk about her. I think that she did put it in a compartment, for sure. I thought that because when you asked her about her stories, which she was happy to share, but she didn’t overly share them, she would tell her stories in a very similar way from time to time, from each time to another. So, which meant to me that she found a safe way to recite them.
(20:51):
But I think it was just her way. She was determined that she wouldn’t let the past affect her future. She, I think, actively chose a future, and at some point decided that she wasn’t going to look at the past, knowing that it would’ve broken her, I’m sure.
(21:10):
And that was just her light and her way of being. She was positive by default, so I think that helped, but not everyone was like that.
Jo Stanley (21:21):
Well, I mean, I was just going to say, I think that it’s one thing, though, to say that you focus on the future and you want to compartmentalize that. But that doesn’t mean to say it’s not going to affect you as a person subconsciously.
(21:33):
And we hear stories about children of Holocaust survivors, and how that does impact the way that they’re parented, whether it’s really natural things like stockpiling food, or whatever the hyper-vigilance that might come from that extreme trauma. Did you not have any of that?
Rachelle (21:51):
I don’t feel like I did. And I often look back and think, did I, and I’m not aware of it? I definitely felt a strong connection to my identity, and maybe felt like I needed to be a proud Jew because of her history, but I often think of, instead of intergenerational trauma, more intergenerational strength or intergenerational joy. I think she really passed that on.
(22:17):
But I think that is partly what makes her story extraordinary, why I’ve written about her in A Brilliant Life and why people have responded to it, because she was unusual in that way, she didn’t carry it. And it wasn’t one thing, I think it was a lot of things: the way she looked at the world, the way she focused on the good, the way she believed in just better things would come.
(22:43):
One of the things I write about is that on my birthdays, she used to write these incredibly effusive birthday cards. She’d fill up both pages, and probably turn the page and fill that up, too, in beautiful handwriting. They would start like, “My darling, wonderful daughter, Rachelle.” She would just be… They’d be full of effusive adjectives.
(23:07):
And in one of them, I was going through a hard time and feeling low in my life. I think it was when I was newly separated. And in the middle of these happy birthday greetings, she wrote, “Don’t give up hope.” And then in capital letters, “The happiness is near.” And she finished that with an exclamation mark. And I don’t think I thought much of it at the time, but after somebody dies, you go through your things, and you look at them, and I was looking at this card. And I thought, “What does that mean, the happiness is near? Is it a prediction?” I didn’t know.
(23:41):
And through writing the book, I came to realize that what she meant is, the happiness is near because the happiness is always near. You might not see it. You might be cloaked in darkness and not be able to see one crack of light. But you actually have to believe that it’s there, looming above you. You have to believe that the happiness is right there. It might not descend on you. It might be that thing of, you can’t just wait for it to happen, you have to grab it, and have the courage to grab it, too. But that kind of outlook helps me a lot, I think.
Jo Stanley (24:13):
I don’t know if this is a spoiler alert for me to ask you this question around the freedom, the last few days before they were emancipated, basically, from the war, and she was really struggling by that stage.
(24:35):
I found it amazing that, actually, it was after they were released from the camps that she then descended into malnourishment. And probably, that seemed like the darkest time for her, was something around lasting to her birthday?
Rachelle (24:49):
Yeah.
Jo Stanley (24:50):
Can you share around that?
Rachelle (24:51):
So she, at the end of her eight months in concentration camps, she had reached a point of just being at the very rock bottom. At this point, there were very few rations. There was a lot of disease in the camps. She’d been in camps for eight months and had been on that death march as well.
(25:12):
So, she’d gotten to the point where she was called what they referred to prisoners as a muselmann, where, like the walking dead, you were skeletal in form, your body was withered away. And the muselmann denoted something else, that you also had lost a bit of your spirit to live. But she was very, very skinny. She was really weak. She could no longer get up and go to the appellplatz, the daily roll call. She would just lie in her barracks on her bunk, and other people would cover for her.
(25:45):
And she said that every tooth was wobbling in her mouth, that her gums were filled with pus, and she just had gotten to the point where she didn’t think physically she could keep going. And because she did believe that her mother, who she knew had been killed, was with her, she-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:26:04]
Rachelle (26:03):
She knew had been killed was with her. She was already ready to leave the world and be with her mother again. And so, she went to bed one night and decided before she went to sleep that she was ready to die. She decided to pray to God and asked him to take her, and she said in her prayer, “I want to be with my mother again.” And in that dream, when she slept that night, she had this really vivid dream where her mother came to her, and washed her with a washcloth, washed her body with long strokes, and fed her soup spoonful by spoonful and said to her, “Mira, I want you to hold on until your birthday. Just hold on those few days and on your birthday, I’ll come and save you.”
(26:50):
And so, my mother woke up to her surprise. She hadn’t died in the night, and she felt so strongly that her mother had actually found a way to cross that threshold between death and life. She felt nourished as if she actually had been fed. For the first time in ages, she had more strength. And she said, “Okay, well, it’s my birthday in four days’ time, I’m going to hold on. If nothing happens when my birthday arrives, I’m sure that I’m at the end and I can really let myself go, but I’ve made my mother that promise and I’ll hold on.”
(27:25):
And on her birthday, she was liberated, the camp was liberated, and it was her 18th birthday. That was a story that I knew my whole life. I told it actually sparingly because of the same with your reaction. It was always such a moving story for me to share and a private story, but it was the source of my faith in everything she believed in. She made me believe that her mother was watching her too in the same way that I believe that she’s watching me now.
Jo Stanley (28:00):
I really believe that too.
Mimi Kwa (28:02):
Yeah, totally. I think our ancestors walk with us, and I just think that’s just such a profoundly moving story.
Jo Stanley (28:13):
I mean, it leads you to think about the people who have passed in your lives, who you hope are still with you, I suppose, and that you have that faith that your family are with you and your mother now. Does that give you a resilience?
Rachelle (28:31):
I think so, and I didn’t always know if I believed it myself either. I wanted to believe it. I believed that story, but I couldn’t feel the same feeling she felt. And I write about a few different situations in my own life where I felt sure that people who had passed were with me. And I’m not trying to put my belief system on anyone else by doing that, but for me, it’s been a great source of comfort. And I just believe there has to be something bigger for me. It has really helped me, and guided me, and made me feel less alone in life.
Mimi Kwa (29:12):
What do you think, Mira, your mother’s purpose in life was? Did she have a sense of what her purpose was?
Rachelle (29:20):
She didn’t because she wouldn’t have seen herself as extraordinary in any way. She didn’t feel like she had this massive legacy to leave apart from her children. I think she would have said her children were her legacy, but I really believe that she had a legacy with her story. That she was so unusual in that she not only told her story. So many Holocaust survivors never spoke about it and don’t speak about it.
(29:48):
And also, she was so positive. There was something to learn through that. I decided I wanted to really write it, even though it was always at the back of my mind during the pandemic when I would go for walks with my neighbor, Diana. And my neighbor had received a really grim bit of news at the start of the pandemic. Her husband had been diagnosed with brain cancer.
(30:14):
And on our walks, she always wanted to hear about my mother that she could go through something really terrible and come out the other side. And I think she also liked all those spiritual stories. And one day we were walking and I was complaining about my work, and how journalism had all dried up, and I didn’t know what I’d be doing. And I said, “That’s kind of a throwaway line, I also want to write my mother’s story.” And she stopped me in my tracks and she said, “Well, isn’t that what your legacy should be?”
(30:44):
And it was something about that word legacy that just ricocheted off the pavement, and landed in my brain, and would not budge because I thought, “What legacy? First of all, what’s my legacy?” I’ve spent years as a journalist but haven’t done anything that I feel is really meaty or of substance. But more than that, what was my mother’s legacy? What should it be? Should all these things have happened to her, such unusual things? She was such an unusual witness of the Holocaust because she saw so, so many different aspects, historical aspects of it. Will that just die with her?
(31:24):
And I really wanted her legacy of that to be down on paper for future generations. And then I also wanted her legacy of joy, and going through a really hard, terrible, unimaginable bit of darkness to help people too. And I think more than ever, her lessons are relevant.
Jo Stanley (31:47):
I think what you are talking around there, for me, what comes up is so many people seek a purpose in life and think that it needs to be something grand, and I need to change the world with whatever actions I might have. And they feel a little lost because they can’t find whatever that might be. But in actual fact, isn’t every human’s purpose really is to carry the lessons of the past forward for future generations? That’s literally our purpose for living, isn’t it?
Rachelle (32:18):
That’s certainly a purpose in terms of a legacy you’re going to leave. You want to have an impact on the Earth you’re on while you’re on it. You want to, I think, always do good and be of service in some way as well. You want to make sure that you have an impact on others. But then, yes, if you want to leave something behind, it’s often not that tangible thing like the bequest to an institution, or it can be that. But those acts and the way you live can really teach and inform, I think, other people, as you’ve said.
Mimi Kwa (32:51):
Yeah, because a legacy, I suppose, it can just be a word that describes something being left behind, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s something being left behind that has the ability to impact a great number of people, and the potential of Mira’s story and your incredible A to B that you’ve kind of come through this journey of being a journalist, which has given you the skills to be able to put a book together. Not to say that not everybody has a book in them because I believe that they do, but not everybody has the skill set to be able to make it happen.
Rachelle (33:28):
Yeah. I do feel in this strange way that everything has led to this. I put a great deal of research in it, and I was just trying to speak to every scholar, and academic, and institution, and Holocaust Remembrance Center that I could to try and make sure that everything was accurate.
(33:47):
And I do think I couldn’t have done this earlier. I needed to have the gravitas that comes with life, the knowledge that comes with living. I don’t think I could have written this in my 20s, or 30s, or even in my 40s. So, it has all come together. Speaking, you were talking about legacy of people. I think that’s why I think it’s important to ask parents who they are for that legacy as well, because everyone will know what they’ve done. That will become clear, but it’s not the only legacy that people need to leave behind.
Mimi Kwa (34:23):
So, not every person has a great relationship with their parent as we know. So, what do you suggest around that? Because I believe that even if there is a very difficult relationship there, and if you’re not estranged, and you do have an opportunity to speak to …
Jo Stanley (34:42):
And you feel safe to do so.
Mimi Kwa (34:44):
… a parent and you feel safe and you feel safe to do so, that it can actually open up a lot of healing between parent and child. Even though you already had a great relationship with your mum, clearly, was there some healing that opened up as a result of that Q&A, that discussion, that conversation you went into?
Rachelle (35:07):
I think so. There were a few moments where I found out things that felt healing. For me personally, it was hearing about her relationship with my father, where I would have described it from a child’s perspective as just an ordinary marriage and sometimes less an ordinary, because I had seen them have arguments from time to time that left me feeling really isolated. And I was really nervous to ask her about their relationship because I was almost sure she wasn’t going to say something incredibly positive. And I was so surprised when she said that she had been madly in love with my father, that theirs had been a passionate relationship, and that she felt so loved and so cared for. And I found out that he used to leave little notes for her in her lunchbox for work and under the car windscreen wiper, and I didn’t know that because I didn’t see that.
(36:03):
And I remember saying to her, “Well, what about the arguments you had?” And she said, “Oh, that was nothing.” We were passionate people. And I do think that you can distort things when you remember them from a child’s perspective. Things can feel like they have a big impact.
(36:19):
When I looked back on it, those arguments may be a man of two, three in their whole kind of relationship. And what I had completely dismissed was how often I would find them laughing uproariously in the kitchen, playing cards. My father tossing the cards in the air because he’d lost a hand as a joke and they would just be laughing together so hard. And because that happened all the time, I didn’t really clock it. So, finding that out was really kind of healing as well.
(36:50):
And we had another moment where I asked her if she had any regrets, and she told me this story about how she really regretted not letting my brother, who was 19 years older than me, going overseas. He wanted to go overseas when he finished school. And she had said no because she needed help with me. And she was nearly in tears. She’d nearly, nearly never cried, but she was really upset when she told me this. And she said, “I should have let him go. He was such a good boy and such a good student.”
(37:19):
So, after we had that little interview, I called him up and I said, “Fred, I don’t know if you’re upset about this still, but just call mum and tell her it’s okay.” And he said, ” What trip? I don’t know what she’s talking about.” Something that had meant so much to her meant nothing to him. He hadn’t remembered it. And to me, that was a lesson about what we hold onto and how important it is to release it because we might be holding onto things that aren’t worth it.
Mimi Kwa (37:47):
And you can spend a lifetime doing that.
Jo Stanley (37:50):
Was it difficult to reach a vulnerable space between the two of you in these conversations? Because I think a lot of parent-child relationships, there are kind of barriers to that.
Rachelle (38:01):
I always felt comfortable being vulnerable with her. She was a great comforter. So, I know there were many times in my life where, especially when I was younger, when things take hold in your brain, in the middle of the night, I would wake her up crying about something and she would just hold me and sort of say, “Shh.” And sometimes sing to me and rock me. And just through that made me feel so good.
(38:27):
So, I always felt comfortable being vulnerable in front of her. Was she vulnerable in front of me? I don’t know. I didn’t feel like she was a person who felt like there were big breaks, if that makes sense, but I do think that she spoke of her life openly.
Jo Stanley (38:50):
How old were you when you first realized that she’d been through such atrocities?
Rachelle (38:55):
I don’t remember not knowing.
Jo Stanley (38:57):
Because I just wonder how you introduced that to a child.
Rachelle (39:00):
I don’t think she had to. For starters, I didn’t have any grandparents growing up, so all four of my grandparents were killed. My paternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz in September of 1944. They were taken away when they were told a rumor that there was an amnesty for Jewish people because it was one of the important holidays. And so they came out of their hiding place and were deported and killed together with their daughter, their oldest daughter and their two grandchildren. And my mother’s parents also didn’t survive. And so I think that’s a question you ask very early on when you watch cartoons or shows. I always knew that I didn’t have grandparents and that they died in the Holocaust and in camp. I was probably drip fed things along the way, what concentration camp meant. But I went to Jewish schools and it was just part of my knowledge base as far as I can remember.
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:39:04]
Jo Stanley (39:56):
I mean, it informs you as a person to be attached to something so monumental in the history of the world. Does that inform you?
Rachelle (40:05):
As we said before, there were a lot of Melbourne people who came from that background, so not my friends because I was younger than most of the people. My mother had me late in life, and so most people who were the kids of survivors were a bit older than me, but it was all that I knew. Didn’t inform me later on, probably it made me feel determined to really grab life like my mother did. She really grabbed onto life and opportunities. She lived after the war in Antwerp and Milan and then in Paris before coming to Australia. And she just sought opportunities in each of those places. And I, after university, went and lived in Los Angeles and New York and Sydney, I was away for 10 years. And I think that idea that life is there to be grabbed was passed on to me. And now I guess I feel the legacy of being a Jewish person in the world and what that means and really wanting people to not forget the Holocaust and not forget the lessons from that. Because if we can’t work together in a world of empathy and of humanity, there’s no hope for us really. We have to grab on to who we are as people and not put others in a compartment. So they’re not like me. They’re another. My mother taught me, and I learned this my whole life, we’re all people. We have to have empathy for each other.
Mimi Kwa (41:37):
Was there a point at which, because I get the sense that there was almost a normalization around what you knew because you never knew any differently, but was there a point at which you realized that not everybody in the world has that family experience and has that compassion for what happened in the Holocaust and that’s why the stories cannot be forgotten?
Rachelle (42:00):
I don’t know if I ever felt a lack of compassion, but I did feel, especially when I moved overseas, that unusual history of what I had. But no one really, I think at the time asked about it so much. It’s actually only been relatively recently that we’ve all started to read literature set in the Holocaust. When I grew up, I-
Mimi Kwa (42:23):
And I don’t mean lack of compassion from people who know what happened, I mean from people who were ignorant to the events.
Rachelle (42:31):
I don’t remember ever having to explain it to anyone. And I think it was more sort of a startling statistic like I didn’t have any grandparents that would usually stop people because that’s so unusual that you’ve had four people in your family so close to you in your immediate family murdered. I often think about it in terms of, imagine if we told that story as if a serial killer had done this. If I said, ” Oh, a serial killer came into my family home and killed my four grandparents and various aunties and uncles and first cousins.” You’d go, “How does your family ever get over that?” It’s so startling and sometimes I’m startled by it too, but I think I’ve come to learn it more and read more and really try to understand what it meant and what we can learn from it even as I’ve written this book more and more.
Jo Stanley (43:31):
So you say that your mother’s voice is in your head. You do a beautiful impersonation of her.
Rachelle (43:36):
I love that.
Mimi Kwa (43:36):
We did love that.
Jo Stanley (43:38):
It’s though a mirror was in the room, it was beautiful.
Mimi Kwa (43:40):
Maybe she is.
Rachelle (43:41):
Jo, you’re so lovely to say that.
Mimi Kwa (43:43):
I love it.
Jo Stanley (43:45):
What does it feel like to have your mother’s voice in your head like that? How does it inform you day to day?
Rachelle (43:50):
Well, I need it because that’s not my default. I’m not like her where I’m built with as much resilience as she was, and probably not as much joy, but I know that that can be taught because she has taught me that. I just really try to honor her by living as she would. There’s this beautiful thing that Jewish people say when somebody dies, which is the customary words of condolence are may their memory be a blessing.
(44:22):
And I didn’t actually even know what that meant properly until I had mourned my mother for three years, which is by Jewish law a year longer than I really should have. And my rabbi called me to offer me words on the anniversary of her death, and I said, I was feeling so stuck. And he said, “Actually, in Jewish law, you’re not meant to do that. What you’re meant to remember is may their memory be a blessing.” And what that means is now that the person’s not alive, you have to live as they would and carry out the good deeds that they would have in their place. So every time you’re doing that, you’re doing that in their name and you’re carrying on their name as a blessing in their honor.
Mimi Kwa (45:05):
So you’re emanating her light through this book?
Rachelle (45:09):
Well, I think that’s the goal. I hope that’s true. Look, I think there was magic around my mother as I said, with all those stories, there was something around her. There’s been a really strange trajectory with this book. I thought it might end up in a dusty drawer as a manuscript in my office, and instead it got pounced upon and people have found it and championed it.
Mimi Kwa (45:35):
And I too, Griffiths is reading the audio book.
Rachelle (45:37):
Yeah, it’s just had this really marvelous run. It’s just come out by HarperCollins in America. It’s about to hit UK as well. I don’t even take credit for that. To me, that is the magic of my mother insistence. She’s probably more insistent that my words get out, but helping it along the way. And I hope readers feel that. I hope that when they put the last page down, they feel a tiny little bit changed or a bit inspired, or that they remember her and remember what happened most importantly.
Jo Stanley (46:11):
Wow. We have a last question.
Mimi Kwa (46:13):
We do have a last question.
Jo Stanley (46:15):
I wonder. So the last question we ask is what is it to be, what is your be? But I wonder, is it a question get to ask Mira as well?
Mimi Kwa (46:25):
Oh, we get to ask Mira as well, yes.
Jo Stanley (46:26):
I wonder. We have two people in this conversation. So what was Mira’s… what for her to be her?
Rachelle (46:36):
I think it was to really appreciate things, everything. She appreciated having her family around for a Friday night dinner and seeing everyone in good health and laughing. She appreciated watching Wimbledon. She would shout her cheers with my father in another part of the house shouting his cheers and take joy from that. She appreciated reading and learning about people and other cultures. She couldn’t walk into Paran market without having every single stall keeper come out and greet her, and she appreciated that. So I think her be was really to use modern parlance, standing in the moment and taking whatever you could from that, taking energy from it, taking note of it and being joyful because of it.
Mimi Kwa (47:32):
That’s beautiful. It sounds like she was existing in a state of gratitude and appreciation to use your words.
Rachelle (47:40):
I think she was. And she was so vocal about that. She was somebody who named her feelings always, I love you, I’m so grateful for you. You do this for me. She really was ahead of her time that way where she really spoke to you about how she felt, and I’ve learned that’s so important. We often carry around these things in our head. You are great, thank you so much. But we don’t tell people how great they are and why we love them.
Jo Stanley (48:09):
Use your words. Just say it, I love that. What about your be?
Rachelle (48:15):
Well, I’ve learned to not say I can’t, which I should have learned earlier because it was my grandfather’s catch cry. And in fact, my mother used to say, “There’s no such word as I can’t.” That was the one thing she would say.
Jo Stanley (48:31):
Where did that voice come from that told you you couldn’t write a book?
Rachelle (48:34):
Life, I mean, a whole series of things where you start to get nervous about your abilities and you take a few setbacks and let it discourage you. I think it was fear of trying and then failing. I just didn’t want that. If I didn’t try, then at least I hadn’t failed and I revered books, so I really wanted it to be the best thing it could be. But instead of taking encouragement from the winds I’d had, I took discouragement from the slight setbacks I’d had. And now I’ve learned not to do that. I’m doing that even now where people say, what’s next? The old me would’ve said, “Well, I had my one book in me.” And now I’m like, “Nope, I’m going to write another book and I’m going to show you I can do this thing.”
Jo Stanley (49:22):
Yay.
Mimi Kwa (49:23):
So then what is it then? How would you sum up your be, what it is to be you?
Rachelle (49:29):
I think it is having faith in the world. And for me, that has come from this whole second chapter in my 50s because in the last few years I’ve formed a new relationship. I’m very happily in love. I’ve written my book that I always wanted to write and however people receive it. I’ve done the best job I absolutely can using all my skill set and all my heart and my be is believing there’s always surprises around the corner.
Jo Stanley (50:01):
Very, very beautiful, and thank you for the book. It is so beautifully written. It’s very powerful. It’s called A Brilliant Life by Rachelle Unreich.
Mimi Kwa (50:11):
And we hope that everyone reads it.
Jo Stanley (50:12):
Oh, it’s extraordinary. Thanks, Rachelle.
Rachelle (50:14):
Thank you. Thanks Mimi. Thanks Jo.
Jo Stanley (50:19):
Thank you for listening. We love you joining us for our A to Be chats.
Mimi Kwa (50:23):
Yes, we do. Please see our show notes for our acknowledgement of country and all the people who help us put this podcast together, as well as interesting links to our guests work and other references we’ve mentioned.
Jo Stanley (50:34):
We’re Jo-
Mimi Kwa (50:35):
And Mimi from A to Be. Rate, follow and get in touch on our website.
Jo Stanley (50:41):
And let us know who’s A to Be you’d like to find out about.
Mimi Kwa (50:44):
We can’t wait for you to hear our next conversation.