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Hello, and welcome to Fearless Fabulous You. I am your host, Melanie Young, and I am so glad you're joining me today. It's June one, Rabbit Rabbit two. I live on the Women for Women Network, and you, if you're joining me for the first time, welcome, and if you're coming back, you are in for an amazing show. All my listeners, I can't even begin to tell you how excited and I am to have these two guests for myriad reasons. The show will be available permanently on iHeart and about
thirty five other podcast platforms. I encourage you to share it because it is going to be inspirational and I'm going to set it up. I have two guests. They're calling from the West Coast, and the inspiration is to having them join me. Is based on an amazing memoir called Bending Toward the Sun, a mother and daughter memoir, which is also now available on Amazon's Audible. This is
this is how I set it up. When I talk to people, imagine if On Fronk and her family who lived in sequestered in an attic during World War II, survived and came to America and had amazing and rich lives and beautiful families. That is, as I read Bending Toward the Sun, this all I could think of. Aut is the story that could have happened, and it happened. It's an amazing story of survival, family, faith, and motherhood. I'm going to set it up this way, and then
I'm going to bring on my guests. It is the mother and daughter So Rita Lurie was five years old when she and her family fled their home in Poland to hide from the Nazis during World War II. From the summer of nineteen forty two to nineteen forty four, she and fourteen members of her family shared a nearly silent existence in a cramped, dark attic, subsisting on scraps of food and negotiating with the people who own the
house to keep them safe. Through this long period of time, Rita watched helplessly as a child as her younger brother and then her mother died by her side. Motherless and stateless, Reader and her surviving family members spent the next five years wandering throughout Europe waiting for a country to accept them. I just want you to put that into context into
what's going on these days in the Ukraine. Decades later, mother is the matriarch of an amazing family in California, and she became a wife, a mother, and a businesswoman. And she is obviously a big important speaker as a Holocaust survivor, which amazing is in itself because there really aren't a lot of Holocaust survivors. She speaks to groups all the time because unfortunately there are people who still don't believe it happened, which just never will I will
never understand. Joining her is her daughter, Leslie Gilbert Lurie, who is a lawyer, author, philanthropist, former television creative executive and community leader, and a member of the International Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch in the Alliance for Children's Rights. Leslie and her sister went back to Poland to see where her mother lived and where the family me hid all that time nearly two years. So I
am going to introduce them. I've set this up. I'm going to bring them on and welcome them, and then we will start the discussion. So Rita Lurie and Leslie Gilbert Lurie, welcome to Fearless Fabulous.
You thank thank you.
So I.
Gotta tell you I read the book and NonStop. I am Jewish. My family came over to the United States in the eighteen nineties. But Rita looks like my aunt Rachel and told him for the show. He still has a beautiful accent. My mother, who is not well, I gave she likes to read. I gave her the book and she did not leave the chair. She read it in one sitting. It was incredible, So you know, it really helped her through what she's going through, which is
a difficult time. So Rita, I set this up. But you know in your words, I'm you know you were hiding with your family in an hour for two almost two years at five how vividal you know what was you know, how vivid are those memories today in your life? And which ones in particular?
Very visit ah, just remembering everybody being in pain for one reason or another, being hungry, being afraid that any minute we might be caught. It was a terrible existence. And then my course, I loved my mother and my brother, and that was just devastating.
I can't imagine at five, Yes.
Even then it was devastating.
Yes, you're right. So the book, just so for my listeners, is set up in voices. So the first part of the book is your voice, and then last and then yours together. And you bring in Leslie's daughter. You know, you had a sister, Rita who and you and you were your kids and you're trying to play, and what happened? They shushed you?
Right, we didn't try to play. We couldn't even try to play. We couldn't even try to talk. We had to be quiet, We couldn't talk.
So how did you pass the time?
I now, maybe maybe you could say what happened when you did try to talk?
Ye's exactly.
I got a pillow put over my mouth if I tried to talk.
Yeah, yeah, I I that was very when I read that I just gassed because I can't imagine. You know, your family bartered all their clothing and jewelry to be kept hidden because the you know, I think what my listeners need to understand and explain, And Leslie, maybe you can bring this in. Is it at that time in Poland the families who were not Jewish, who held hid Jews, they would be executed, correct?
Yeah, yes, the punishment for helping a Jewish person was death.
So it was a huge risk.
And and it was an elderly couple and you could hear them downstairs rita arguing about whether to let to kick you all out right right right?
I mean it was great. I mean that family was helped by my grandfather before the war. That's why we got help by them.
You know, what was you know? And then and then the war ended? And what was it like being released? I mean into into being sunshine? I mean there was no you were in a k attic five foot high ceilings. What was it like when you were released?
It was scary. It was scary because we've sensed the fear of the of my father because it was still possible that somebody would would kill us. We weren't sure. As we were walking to find our house, we walked a long way and I patidly walked. I got carried part of the way. It was it just it was, it was all painful. Everything was just very scary and painful.
What I didn't understand and learned because I've been really diving into this period for a while to learn more about vis if everybody's saying that we're facing potentially in another World war. So I'm obviously very concerned. I didn't realize that after the war the Polish resented the Jews because it because the I guess their situation was so fragile afterward, right, and so there was a risk. There was a risk still because of that, Yes.
Go ahead, was.
I just there was a lot of anti Semitism in Poland before the war too, and so but but then, you know, prejudice gets tightened when people are most insecure financially in any way. I mean, prejudice is about one group trying to feel better about themselves by belittling another group, right, I mean, there there's prejudices, you know, just sort of part of the human condition, and anti Semitism was fairly
prevalent in Poland, so it's not necessary. And then the war probably tightened that in a lot of ways because Germany invaded Poland and you know, their food, the Polish people's food was rationed also, and you know, they were compromised in a lot of ways. But it's it's not clear that the anti Semitism was worse after the war than before the war. You would just think maybe it would have been better, and that wasn't the case either.
What's amazing is that, you know, Leslie, how so so Rita, you your family kind of was you know, we're going from encampment and encampment to encampment for refugees. You lived in Italy for a while, which seemed a positive experience, but you were also hospitalized for a while because you had severe illness from being a questioned from no son.
No.
Yeah, it's amazing that you're you're a healthy, physically healthy woman, you know in the you know, uh and and we're able to have children, et cetera. Now throughout this your father remarried, so he remarried a woman that who lost
her family at Auschwitz and survived. And I think, what, really, I'm a cancer survivor, so I get surviving, but this is a different kind of cancer because this is a whole you know, I can't this is there's so I understand fearing your life, but this is your head extended for me those two years of fear. But your stepmother seemed very angry about what happened and had it was a It was a difficult relationship for you, and I think still and I you know was was through the book.
How did you know? How did you handle that? You and your sister, because your sister is very close, handle that when your father remarried. Knowing the loss of your mother was such a overwhelming experience.
My sister was not as uh uh, how would I say it, Not as afraid of her I should I should say, or not as in impatience, but as I was because I was not well, So I wasn't treated that was she. She was kind of not treating me well. And I was very sad, openly sad. Yeah, more more than my sister was.
It's a very prolonged period of sad. This and I'm really sorry that you had to go through that because you're you know, freedom after being an antic and then pasted in another type of uncomfortable you know, hospital, and it just it was a long period. What's amazing is that you and your family came to America, established yourself, and you feund love and you went you you went to school, you you repatriated here and you became a mother, and you said you wanted to be the best mother ever.
Talk to me about that, because I think, you know, I was very moved by that, as you know, in particularly these days where women are you know, multitasking like you know, have to go get Chris. The think you dedicated yourself to being a mother. What is it that you wanted to give.
I don't remember saying I remember feeling it, but saying it.
Oh, it was clear you wanted to be a very good mother, and you were. But you also had a career.
Well, I did many things. Actually I was a business woman. I I took class and at school. I uh, I and I had children, you know, so I was I was, I was pretty busy.
You're very busy. You're very busy. I was, you were traveling. I was impressed. And Leslie growing up, you and your sister, what did you know about your mother's past? What I mean, how did you how did it become more aware? To you excuse me.
I think little by little, I think I felt that I always knew that there was something different.
About my mom, something maybe a most sort of sad about her past that I just almost intuited.
And I think somewhere along the way, I knew that her mother had died, but I did not know very much about the Holocaust. My cousins from New York, the children of the people my mom hid in the attic with her sister, her brother, and her parents, and then cousins, three cousins who had lived down the street from her, and those cousins and their children came to visit us in Los Angeles when I was seven years old, and I think maybe that was the first time I actually
heard people talk about the Holocaust. My mom and her sister and the three cousins all sat in the family room, and I'm sure in one way or another we caught bits and pieces of it, but really, until I was in my late TEA mean, I think what I really knew is that my mother's mother had died, and that seemed inconceivable to me because I was so attached to my mother, and I would ask her questions about the attict and what she ate in the attic and if her mother shared food with her.
I was very I think that was sort of my view of the war as a child.
Very interesting because you know, I didn't know, you know, I honestly, I'll be honest with you, Rita, You're the first person I've ever spoken to this Holocaust survivor. So I'm just in my mind is going and I'm just amazed. You know, I grew up I mean, I'm Jewish. I grew up hearing about it, right, I grew up with a family that feared that it could happen again. Anti Semitism, we know is still extremely prevalent, which is very upsetting.
Yeah.
You know, what do you say to people who, I mean, who deny there's even a Holocaust?
Well, I think go ahead. I'm sorry, mom, I don't be've acknowledged them. I mean, because it's stupid. Anybody who devised to look closes really living in this world.
Also really Holocaust deniers. It's just a form of hate speech. There's evidence all around that the Holocaust existed. It's as documented as World War One or World War two, So to say it didn't exist it is really just a provocative form of hate speech, but it was one of
my mother's reasons for wanting to write this book. I was at her house one morning and she was frustrated, and I asked her what was wrong, and she told me she really wanted to tell this story, that she couldn't find the right person to write it with her.
And I asked why she wanted to tell it, And first of all, she you know, reiterated to me that she had been speaking about her story and churches and synagogues and schools and students were so interested in this, and she wanted to tell her story to a broader group. But she also talked about the Holocaust deniers she had seen on the news lately, and she did want to
provide even more testimony of what took place. And finally, she said to me she wanted to show that people could go through the worst experiences imaginable and not only survive, but survived well, like go on to have good things happen in their lives. And I was sort of really moved that day, and I said, well, maybe I could help you, and I always think she didn't hear anything.
Maybe, so she said, well, when are we going to start writing this?
And That's how we started our book, but it was partly inspired by hearing more and more Holocaust deniers.
So what was it like to write the book with your mother? And was a cathartic? Was it challenging? And how long was the process?
It was a long process. It was a great experience. I had a lot of concern.
About going into this.
I didn't want to promise something I couldn't deliver. I had never I had never written a book.
I had been an executive at.
NBC and written some television scripts and I liked to write, but I had never even thought about writing a memoir. And beyond that, when I told people that I had decided to write a Holocaust story, most people said to me, ough, not another Holocaust story.
No, really, what a great idea.
But I knew from my television experience that we had every First of all, I knew no one ever knows what's going on, be good or not. You just have to believe in your ideas. And second, I knew that my mom was a really interesting character and that her story had a.
Lot of drama.
And we found a really different way to tell the story by putting me into it and my daughter putting three generations into a Holocaust story.
So I just had a gut sense that this could be successful.
But you know, and I say this because I want aspiring writers to be able to hold onto their conviction of what a good story is, because you know, everyone said it wouldn't work until it did, and then people loved it. But along the way I really enjoyed working with my mom. I thought maybe I wouldn't. You never know what it's like to get into a project like this whistline you love so much and are so close to but they're still your mom. But my mom brought
her her most professional self to this. She showed up at my house every day. We spent probably a year and a half telling me her story, and I was so impressed by how well she remembered so much.
But because she had been.
So young, I knew we needed other people brought into the story. So we made a point of talking to her sister, her three cousins, her two uncles who hid in the attic with her, and I had also been back to Poland years earlier, so I was able to incorporate what the woman who hid my mother had told us. So we had a lot of documentation. But it took probably I would say five or six years to write it because I was still working full time at the
same time, and then a couple of years. Then we had to find an agent, and then Harper Collins bought it, but then they had an editor, and it took eight years at least from the time we started till the time it was published.
But what a story. And you know what amazed me. There are a couple of things that amazed but obviously that the story of that, but the fact that fifteen people were hidden in an attic, and a very small fifteen. There was like no space. And those who did leave and escape and repatriate are did very well. And I think most are still and I mean you may have passed some, but many many are still alive.
Right, Yes, My mom, her sister, and the three cousins are all still alive.
Just amazing.
A couple of our uncles died very recently, once in his nineties, so yes, I mean, miraculously they survived and survived well. But and I was really intrigued when you started and said that, you know, imagine Anne Frank, because that was sort of my working idea when we started this is we all think if only Anne Frank had survived, like you know, everyone would have lived happily ever after the minute.
The war was over.
And one of the reasons we wanted to tell this story is because to show that when children are impacted by war and trauma, that that stays with them their whole lives too. It's not exactly like a Disney film where you know, when the prince comes along, everything works out well. Like my mother's life and that of her sister and her cousins has been, you know, much more of a struggle because of what they encountered as children, and you know that impacted their children and grandchildren also.
I was actually very impressed in terms of admiration that you were so open Rita and Leslie about Rita's bounce of depression. I've interviewed a lot of women on this show who've gone through horrific trauma as children. I've done a lot of shows on that and have come out on as adults as amazing women doing incredible things, many or business owners, everything, but they always carry inside of them something that happens. It will always stay with them.
And you're very open about having depression recurring depression and debilitating for which I admire because a lot of people hide that. And I think it's good to be open because reassuring that this is something that does happen after trauma, right.
Yes, absolutely absolutely, And you know, and one of the things that we always really want to talk about is, you know, it's been amazing sharing one story, how many stories have come back to us of young people today and what they are going through and their their own traumas, and to get people to talk about it, but also to really encourage mental health services being available to young people experiencing trauma, because you know, we believe that had
that been available to my mom earlier, it would have really helped with her recovery exactly.
And I kept as I read the book, I kept thinking about what's going on in the Ukraine right now, and I think about those children, yes so, and I think about the fear and how these children will never you know, and they're going to be, you know, going from a camp much like you did. They've been going to they've been assigned Italy and Poland. And as I read your book, I thought about that because you've got rius. I was amazed how many times you had to move
around after release. I don't understand the process of how why, I really don't, but it seemed like a really long time. It seemed like Italy was the longest period of time you were anywhere.
Yes, it took him five years to moving from displaced persons camp to displaced persons camp, mostly in Italy. But the reason is they had to wait for.
Some country to take them in. They weren't really.
Citizens of any country, and ultimately a distant relative in the United States sponsored my mother's family to come to the United States. But she was twelve years old and she had never been to school because the war had started just when she turned five. They went into hiding, so she didn't speak a word of English, and she started school for the first time in her life at twelve years old, in the seventh grade in New York.
Well, but you know, it is a.
Reminder, you know of what the children in Ukraine are going through right now, but also you know, in Afghanistan experience so many other places in the world because you know, the Ukraine is just closer to you know, right where my mother was born, but all those children are experiencing so much of the same thing from you know so many different places in the world right now.
It's it just never ends. You know what. We can't seem to learn from our lessons of history.
Can we? No?
No, no, it's so discouraging, it really is. And I don't understand. You know, we're supposed to be humankind, but we're fairly inhuman often and a lot of it. Yeah.
Well, I was going to say that children ultimately become the most vulnerable because they're the least able to advocate for themselves. They obviously have the least responsibility for their country being involved in a war to begin with, so at every level.
They're the it's all, yeah, and it packs him forever. I want to talk about the motherhood theme throughout the book. It's very strong, very strong, Rita. You obviously were very you loved your mother dearly. Her loss, she basically lost the will to live, which is a very sad way to die. I've seen it before. My father lost his will to live. I'm dealing with a mother now who just broke her hip this past weekend, and her will is very negative right now, and we're trying to turn
that around. But you know, when that happens, the mind is a powerful thing. And then you had another mother, a stepmother who had a whole other personality and was difficult and resentful and protective, but resentful. It's difficult. And then you became I'm a parent and you're also a grandmother. What have you I'd like you to share with both of you what you have learned from the experience from generation to generation about what you see in each other.
You know, how does motherhood Where do you see motherhood in terms of the lessons learned?
Are you saying in terms of the lessons learned from the Holocaust?
No, from your own experience of seeing a mother, knowing your mother suffered, so survived but still suffers. And you have a very tight relationship with your mother, so communication is very important. You know, what do you think strengthens the mother? You know, we've seen you know there was a mother that was a stepmother, that was less of a bond. What has strengthened you from mother to daughter to granddaughter as the story unfolds as unfolded.
It's just my my need to love and be loved.
M hm.
And and I'm very uh, let's see, how would I say, I'm very h oh involved, not involved, but I'm very. You're looking for the word in mesh, not a mesh that I don't do. I'm a mesh. Do you think I'm a mesh? I I'm very. I feel very close to my family because they're so important to me because I didn't have it when I was young.
Mm hmm, yeah. I think that is one of the things my mom passed down to all of us, is how central and important family is. I remember my you know, every time we hang up from each other, we all say I love you. And I remember my step son one time saying to me that he literally was talking to an operator and hanging up and he almost started to say I love you because he was just so used to saying it as he hung.
Up the phone.
So I think that that you know, just that closeness and that that idea that when you you know that in the best of circumstances, you can rely on family members. I think in terms of the mother daughter bond, though it's a you know, it's a beautiful and complicated bond that changes all the time, and you know, and I'm learning every day. I learned to be a better daughter, and I learned to be a better mother and a lot of it in life is just showing up, showing
up every day, dealing with the guilt. We all feel that we're not perfect, that you know, we can't be everything that each other wants us to be. But we're there and we're trying and we're open, and you know, it's I think it's hard. It's hard to be it's hard to be a mother, and it's hard to be a daughter because you know, our instinct I think as strong women is you want to fix everything. You want to fix everything. I want to fix everything for my mother. I want to fix everything for my daughter.
And you can't.
You can't fix your you know, mother's broken bones. You can't fix you know, you can't fix your children's broken hearts. But you can show up and listen and you know, be be the best.
You can be.
And I agree, well, me, I worry when they go with the trip of very worried of about their safety. I always can't wait till they come back so I know they're okay.
Thank god we have means that we have phones in facetimes now and the back in the day, I can't imagine what it was like. You know, I want to talk about a topic I want to talk about forgiveness, Yeah, because I think, you know, how do you forgive or do you forgive? And I think about Judaism, and you know, I'm actually as I'm speaking, I'm looking at a saying by Julius Ox. He founded the New York Times and
he's actually from Chattanooga, where I am. And he talks about, you know, God alone by forms and ceremonies, a virtuous life in the practice of charity and benevolence is my religion. And he talks about giving back and doing good. But what about forgiveness? How do you reconcile that based on what happened to you Rita and what happened to you as you learned it about your mother? How do you deal with that learning to you can't forget, but can you forgive? Or how do you process it into something
that's a positive thing? Mom?
Do you want to answer or give the Holocaust?
Well no, yea't forgive, but do not forgive. But you can never forgive the Holocaust. But there are people who were, you know, difficult afterward. I mean I personally felt the couple that hols you was they were kind, but they were also difficult and she was mad. Wasn't she angry when you went back, Leslie?
We talked about she was not angry when we went back.
But actually my mother and I went back. This isn't even in the book.
But after our book was published, we just speak in Poland. And so my mom came back with me for the first time since she was seven years old. And first of all, something fascinating happened.
We got out of our car, my mom.
And me and my husband and my kids and my friend Lynn, and a twelve year old girl was walking down the street and immediately walked by us and said, I know you. She said in Poland, but she's Polish, but she said I know you, and which seemed crazy because of course my mom.
Hadn't been back there since she was seven years old.
But it turned out her village had just celebrated its six hundred year anniversary and in all the celebrations, her teacher had noticed that there was no mention of the Jewish people who had lived in the village before the war.
So the teacher asked this twelve year old girl to write a book about the Jewish families who had lived in the village, and she had just interviewed the town historian and all the oldest people in the village, and at the center of her report, which had just won an award from the mayor, was a picture of my mom and me. It made it feel like it was a very small world, and you know, in a complicated world.
But everywhere we've spoken over ten years, which is a lot of places, every month, someone asked this exact question. They asked my mom if she forgives, if she forgives, you know, the people who harmed her family. It's you know, it's an important question, and Mom, maybe you can say first and then, but you can you can just talk about how you feel about you know, about forgiveness.
Well, defendant, who I'm supposed to forgive for us?
Do you forgive anyone connected with the Holocaust?
Connected with the Holocaust?
No, M yeah, I think that that, you know, and I always feel like it's not really my place to forgive, but it's you know, and to the extent that forgiveness is uh relevant, I you know, I guess I don't either forgive anyone who shot people innocent people who shoot innocent people. But I would say that the family who hid my mother's family, they I think they were appropriately complicated. I think they did an amazingly heroic act by taking
in my mother's family. And when we interviewed Maria Groholski, the stopped at Groholski's wife, the woman who was fighting them, who she had four young children of her own in their home. Every day their life.
Was at risk. Nazis would come.
By their home to get provisions all the time, so if a child cried in the attic, they would hit one of their own children downstairs so that the cries downstairs might cover up the cries upstairs. One day, Maria Girloski calls. She was peeling potatoes and a neighbor came by and said, why do you need all those potatoes? And she had to quickly make up a story about her forces having teeth problems and needing to boil potatoes
for them. So, you know, under so much stress, I could understand why they would have mixed feelings about my mother's family staying there for two years. But they truly were heroic.
But us, to tell you, the reason he took us in is because my grandfather and he had a relationship of my grandfather that upset a lot of favors for him m and took care.
But Mom, that doesn't compare to hiding a family for two years.
I mean, you know, risking your life, risking your family's life.
Right, he didn't know it's going to be for a couple of years, he no, you know, but then there's nothing he could do about it.
You know, I think in forgive that, you know, I think about my grandfather. My grandparents never bought German. They never would buy anything German, you know. You know that's I think where you go with it, you can't forgive. But there's the things that linger beyond. I mean, you know, even you know, there are people who still won't buy Japanese you know, things, you know, because a pearl harbor. There's it. You know what where you have to draw the line, I guess is trying to say this was
a terrible, horrible, evil thing that happened. But the people who are living today who just happened to be Japanese or German, you know, it's they're a fate. They didn't do it, you know, they're they're different people. They probably and I don't even know how the Holocaust is taught in Germany. I always wondered how that was because I live in the South, and I know, I hate to say it, but the war between the States is called the War of Northern Aggression. So I always wonder how
I just can't even imagine. But I would be angry, you know, I would be angry if I were a young German today and saw how my country treated people. And you know, I'm still angry that we interned people from how we treated the Japanese. But I me and everybody's individual and it's a very complicated world right now because I think the world is filled with a lot of hate, which I'd hate to see because we need to be filled with love. Are you familiar with kavad kovo d?
Now?
Yeah, I'm going to introduce so John an Israel Pregleman. John is from Chanooga and he's a lawyer. He started a photography exhibit called Cavad and he travels the country doing beautiful portraits of Holocaust survivors ka v o D. It's called Cavad Ensuring dignity. A lot of the money. He also raises money to help individuals who are living in and you know, who are in need. But he has a survivor gallery ko v o d is kavad Insharing dignity, and I'm going to introduce you because I
think would be a beautiful portrait they do. This is out of their heart, their goodness of their heart. So I do that and make sure you have it because I think you know, first of all, this book is a lesson that I think many should be reading in schools. I'm curious why you called it bending towards the Sun.
Well, when I was interguing my mom for the book and we were talking about the times that she was the first time she went through a very serious depression was when she graduated from high school and she was living in Chicago. Her friends were moving on to go to college, to get jobs, to get married, and my mom just felt sad, horribly sad, and she decided that
she needed help. Her father said, you're not crazy, you don't need to you don't need to go to a psychiatrist, but she knew she did, so she found a therapist, and little by little she started to feel better.
She told me that she noticed that flowers again.
Had colors, that leaves were green. She said, I felt myself bending towards the sun, and it seemed like such a hopeful expression, such a beautiful way of describing how one could feel so devastatingly horrible and then start to feel better.
So we just thought that's a great title for the book.
I think it's a beautiful title. And also just when you know, I remember when there was a little window in the attic, a little window in the attic, the opportunity to look at the sunlight going out, that it was a sign of hope, just to be able to see out. Yeah, I saw it that way. I mean it's I thought of a sunflower and just opening up.
We didn't get we couldn't get near the window because there was there were just stuff outside. Yeah, all kinds of different provisions. You know, they have booth so we couldn't get near the window.
That struck me too, because it reminded me of a movie I saw where the mother and her child were trapped in a room and there were that light. That window was the only thing they could see. I couldn't imagine not even being able to look outside. But that bending towards the sun is like a sign of you know, hope and redemption and also a bit of shedding a light on what happens and sharing it because you always want to share a light. So there's a lot of
meaning in it. In the title, I thought it was a great title.
Thank Yeah.
We think there are a lot of hopeful stories in the Holocaust, a lot of important stories, which is why you know, we wanted to tell the story. Yeah, you know, for example, one of the things that we noticed is the Groholski family did help my mother's family, and because of that.
So many people are alive today.
And we want, we always want to encourage people to be upstanders rather than bystanders. And when we talk about our book, we asked people to talk about who were the upstanders in the story, who were the people who affirmatively did something and really.
You know, encourage people to do that in the world today.
I think that's a really good point.
Yeah, we did answer the hosted name into the into yet, but in Israel for yes, for for helping us, so they're they're well known.
Sasha khok is noted as a righteous gentile for helping Jewish people.
That's very nice. That's very nice. That's very nice. I mean what they did really was heroic because they risk their lives to save your family's lives.
Yes, yeah.
And if people don't take that effort and make that, you know, you can't turn the blind eye.
No, and and thousands and thousands of people survived because some people, actually four percent of people in Poland took in Jewish people, so you know, there were people who were upstanders. And you know, the other kind of corollary to that is, no one took a human being in and thought they were going to take them in for two years. People start out, you know, being heroes. Heroes are ordinary people. They're just people like you and me.
But one day they decide to do something good, like maybe hide someone for a night, and then sometimes that makes them feel better about themselves and it leads to two nights or three nights.
But it was all before, it was all before my grandfather helped him in many ways.
So one good deed can you know, lead to others, you know, never you know, And I think that's really really important. Again, I'm looking at this Julius os quote and it says, worship God not alone by forms and ceremonies, but by a virtuous life, by the practice of charity and benevolence. This is my religion. And my mother always said she believes in do unto others, not as they would do unto you, but just do unto others, don't
ask anything in return. And I think that's important. Yeah, I think that's important in faith, doing to others, not as they would do unto you, but just do unto others. And you know, good will always out live an outlast evil. And I think this is a great example because they took you in, they risked their lives, you survived, and you've come out and had this amazing life here. You were accepted the United States, which is great, and your family has thrived and and you you're still here to
tell this amazing story. It's just incredible.
One other piece of that is that and it ties into my mom, you know, who just has repeated that her grandfather's family, you know, helped and Roolski. But one lesson, actually President Bell Clinton mentioned it initially at a press conference where a reporter said, what advice would you give my twelve year old son to make the world better? And President Clinton said, tell him to get to know as many people as he can his age who are
different from him. And it turned out that even in the Holocaust, Jewish people who are more assimilated who knew non Jewish people were more likely to be helped.
And we know.
Today that when people meet people different from themselves, that's what breaks down prejudice. And you know, even in the Holocaust.
German people would say, oh, yeah, the Jewish.
People, they're horrible, they're this, they're that, except for the one who lives next door to me, like he's a good person. And so I think we all have to go out of our way a little bit to meet people who are, you know, different from ourselves.
I agree. I think that's really important in and I know that's how I was brought up, and it makes me a more accepting and curious people and inspires me every day. I want to thank both of you for joining me today. We've come to the end of the show again. We've been speaking with readA Laurie and Leslie Gilbert Laurie. I love how you added the name after your married name, and it was a beautiful tribute. The book again is Bending Towards the Sun, a mother and
daughter memoir. It came out in two thousand and nine by HarperCollins and now has an audible version which is narrated by you. Leslie and voice artist. Be out to Posniac right, be out to Posniac. So I encourage everybody to read it. I also encourage you to give it to children of a certain age or young adults to read, because I think it's important to continue sharing the message that we can't have hate in our world. We have
to have benevolence and kindness. Thank thank you for joining me, and of course I hope you know you share this show. And my message to everyone is that despite whatever hardship you're going through and hurdles, you have the right and the choice to make the decision to say I want to live life on my terms and be the change you want to be and yourself and the people around you and your community. So just remember stay fearless and fabulous. Thank you, Thank you very much.
Tell me again your.
Name Melanie Young, Melanie, Yes, I am your host, Melanie Young. Fearless, fabulous, Melanie Young.
Okay, thanks so much, Melanie, Thank you my pleasure.
Bye, mom and daughter, Okay bye.
You ought to