The Story of The Graber Family
Using filmed testimony of her uncle, and the recorded memories of her father, Susanna tells the story of their survival as hidden children in France.
Her father Sacha was born in Paris, to Polish parents just before the 2nd World War started. Sacha’s parents, Kiwa and Estera, were non-observant Jews who lived in Paris with Sacha’s older brother Albert.
As a foreign Jew, Kiwa, her grandfather, was arrested in the first ‘round up’ of Jews in Paris. He was held in Drancy Internment camp for nearly a year before being transported and murdered at Auschwitz.
Her grandmother Estera, after several periods of hiding with her two young sons in Paris, decided to send them away to safety in the French countryside. The boys, just 6 and 11 years old, lived in primitive conditions in a tiny woodsman’s cottage on the edge of the forest about four hours from Paris.
Estera, who had stayed in Paris, was eventually arrested, and transported to Auschwitz where she was murdered. When the war finished, Sacha and Albert returned to Paris and spent some time living with a surviving aunt, however, she could not manage and sent them off to live in a houseboat on the Paris canals. The boys never found the houseboat but were picked up by the police and then taken into the care of a charity looking after orphaned Jewish children.
In 1948, Albert visited London on a school trip and got in contact with some distant relatives of his mother who eventually adopted Sacha. Albert chose to stay in Paris. Studious and determined, Sacha won a place at Cambridge University, started his own business in London and had a family before coming out as gay in his early 50s. He is all too aware that he joined another persecuted minority group.
Neither Sacha nor Albert ever spoke about their childhoods. It has taken decades to sufficiently integrate their trauma to be able tell their families.
Now 87, Sacha is living his life to the full as an openly gay man, committed and actively working towards a world where minorities are treated with compassion and respect.
Presented by Susanna Rosenberg
Inspired by her father’s lifelong and active commitment to equality and spreading the ideals of tolerance, compassion and respect, Susanna is dedicated to using her family’s story for something positive, to encourage thought about combating prejudice and discrimination of any kind.
A creative arts psychotherapist for over 25 years, Susanna is aware of the enormous impact of any inherited and intergenerational trauma. She works with people of all faiths and none, and from all types of background, both through her work and volunteering with multifaith groups
Susanna, her husband (also the child of a holocaust survivor) and their two teenage daughters are socially conscious and stand firm against the growing racial and social divisions that create intolerance.
Watch an excerpt from the story of The Graber Family
