In A Brilliant Life, Rachelle Unreich approaches writing about the life of her dying mother, Mira Blumenstock, as if it were a mystery to be solved. Unreich, the grateful, untraumatized, and adoring daughter of a Holocaust survivor, uses her gifts as an empathetic, facts-driven journalist to tell the most important story of her life.
On a visit to Los Angeles at age 23, she found herself in a room with other adult children of Holocaust survivors, hearing heartbreaking stories of children brought up by traumatized parents. That was when she first became aware of a stark contrast with her own childhood.
“They all seemed to speak of parents who were too scared to let them ride bicycles, who hoarded food, who looked sad, at best, and panicked, at worst, for most of the time. These parents talked about the Holocaust constantly, or not at all, keeping their secrets in a vault while everyone around them banished decades of history from conversation.”
These experiences were so different from Unreich’s childhood. A native of Melbourne, Australia, she recalls that as a teenager, her friends often commented on her mother’s sunny demeanor. Uncovering her mother’s unpretentious yet extremely happy childhood – until the 1939 Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia – “was like finding the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle that finally fit,” Unreich writes about realizing that her mother had been brought up in a house full of song and joy and emotional security. Mira was 12 when the Nazis invaded, and her happy memories became overshadowed by a new grim reality. Jews were not welcome. They were singled out for persecution – losing their jobs, their livelihoods, and their non-Jewish friends.
Mira spent the final eight months of World War II as a prisoner in four concentration camps. She experienced severe exhaustion, malnutrition, physical and emotional abuse, and the notorious Death March – surviving, as her daughter is amazed to note, with her faith in God and in the overall goodness of people still intact.
Unreich was familiar with the interviews that her mother had given to the USC Shoah Foundation, the organization founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, and to a similar video project for Holocaust survivors in Melbourne. The daughter went further, meticulously matching precious family photographs of the murdered Blumenstocks and pressing Mira to bring them back to life: a great-grandmother, grandparents, an aunt and uncle, a sister and brother – characters who, in the book, jump off the page.
The story of Mira Blumenstock
Mira was the fourth child of five, born in Czechoslovakia into an observant Jewish home in the small town of Spisska Stara Ves. Shabbat was always welcomed with home-baked challah and a beautiful meal in the company of extended family. Unreich tells us how Mira would await her father’s return from synagogue so she could learn the weekly Torah portion with him.
Mira recalls how her own mother, Genya, “would turn to her husband and exclaim: ‘Have a look, Dolfie! Have a look at our children! One more beautiful than the other! One more clever than the other! We are so lucky to have children like that.’ Dolfie would turn that into a joke. ‘Yes,’ he’d say. ‘We should start a circus.’”
Mira’s parents owned the town’s only fabric store and had been on good terms with their neighbors and customers before the Nazi invasion. Then, suddenly, most of them were too afraid for their own lives to associate openly with Jews any longer. An exception was a righteous Christian neighbor who took over the fabric store and put his and his family’s lives at risk to help the Jewish family survive in hiding. Mira would visit them many years later to express her gratitude.
Unreich doesn’t stint on the details of her mother’s harrowing recollections from her tortured concentration camp existence.
Finally, Mira was on her death bed at an Auschwitz sub-camp, her body a skeleton, every tooth wobbling in her mouth. When she could no longer get up for daily roll call, she lay in the barracks and prayed to God to reunite with her mother. She felt Genya come to her, urging her to hold on to life until her birthday, four days hence. “Then on your birthday, I’ll come and save you,” she heard Genya say.
Mira woke up the next day feeling as full as if she had drunk her mother’s fortifying soup. She found the energy to get out of the bunk and appear at roll call. While still weak and close to death, she vowed that if her birthday came and went and nothing happened, she would let herself die.
Four days later, on Mira’s 18th birthday, the Nazis fled the camp.
Mira and Unreich often discussed the book in the evening hours after the Shabbat meal. The ravages of ovarian cancer made it hard on Mira, but Unreich tells us that her mother was determined to recall as much as she could. Mira comes across as humble, unassuming, and fully aware that she was just one of the 27,000 Holocaust survivors who made their way to Australia.
Unreich uncovers her mother’s inner strength, her quick thinking, and her ability to act upon her intuition; the blessings of good luck; miraculous encounters; and her faith in God. Mira would most likely have been at peace slipping out of this world in old age without her story being made into a book. But Unreich would not let that happen. However, it would take about 30 years to simmer into the writing of this heartwarming memoir.
The pogroms of Oct. 7 on Israeli soil make A Brilliant Life more relevant than ever. Unreich’s unflinching redaction of unexpected miracles and angelic support offer rays of hope.
The writer is a memoir writer and author of The Wagamama Bride, A Jewish Family Saga Made in Japan.
- A BRILLIANT LIFE: MY MOTHER’S INSPIRING TRUE STORY OF SURVIVING THE HOLOCAUST
- By Rachelle Unreich
- Harper Paperbacks
- 304 pages; $13