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This 16-year-old turned her grandmother’s Holocaust survival story into a novel
(New York Jewish Week) — In May of 1937, 7-year-old Inge Eisinger lived in a luxurious Vienna apartment with a pantry stocked with favorite foods and a staff to keep her company. Though she had a strained relationship with her mother and an absent father, Inge, who was mostly raised by her maternal grandmother Anna, was living a charmed life.
This is the scene that opens “Running for Shelter,” a young adult novel about the Holocaust written by a young adult herself: 16-year-old Suzette Sheft, who is a junior at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx. In the novel, Sheft retells her grandmother’s story of surviving the Holocaust.
Published by Amsterdam Publishers, which specializes in Holocaust memoirs, the book is a delicate and powerful reminder of the importance of recording one’s family history. It’s a lesson Sheft learned too early in life: Her father died of pancreatic cancer when Sheft was just 13 and she soon realized she was forgetting all the stories he told her about his childhood.
“I fantasized about rewinding time, so I could go back and record my favorite stories about his childhood,” Sheft writes in an author’s note. “I wished I had taken the time to write these stories down when I had the chance, because his death allowed me to understand the vitality of preserving the stories of our loved ones before it is too late.”
In memory of her father, Sheft recorded the story of his mother, her grandmother Monique Sheft, who was once the Viennese school girl Inge Eisinger.
In pre-war Austria, Eisinger had been living a completely assimilated life — so much so that her parents never even told her that she was Jewish. Following the Nazi takeover of Austria, her mother managed to whisk the two of them away to Switzerland, then Paris, but soon abandoned her. After a twisting and tragic story, Eisinger eventually reunited with her grandmother and moved to a village in Central France to wait out the war, changing her name to the more French “Monique.”
Sheft’s novel ends in 1946, when the two are on the boat to New York after the war and Eisinger’s grandmother reveals to her that she and her family are actually Jewish.
In spite of this — or perhaps because of it — Sheft, who lives in Manhattan with her mom, her twin brother and two dogs, is very committed to her Jewish identity. “Although my grandmother never really practiced Judaism, my dad was very involved in the Jewish world,” she said. “He was very passionate about Jewish causes and just Judaism, in general. So I felt very connected to the Jewish world because of him.”
The New York Jewish Week talked with Sheft about what the book means to her, why its subject matter is important and what she learned in the process of putting it together.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
New York Jewish Week: What was the process of writing the book; how did the idea begin and how did you collect your grandmother’s story?
Suzette Sheft: I had heard a lot of my grandmother’s stories from my dad. I always had an interest in the Holocaust — I would go to Holocaust museums in every city I visited, and I almost exclusively read books about World War II and the Holocaust growing up. So I kind of knew in the back of my head that I wanted to do something like this, but [my father’s death] sparked and ignited the necessity of doing it as soon as possible.
As for the process, a few summers ago I spent a week with my grandmother, interviewing her every day about her escape from Austria to France. At first she shared physical elements of her life, like her apartment and her family dynamics and her school life, but then she began to talk to me about the time leading up to the war — the years before the Germans invaded Austria. As she spoke, I recorded everything she said in bullet point form and I would periodically stop and ask for more detail. The next day, at the beginning of the conversation, I would recap what we had talked about, and then allow her to elaborate or clarify the story.
Later, I wanted to widen my perspective and uncover other stories and details that she may have forgotten, so I watched an interview she did with the USC Shoah Foundation. This was really helpful because there were some details that she had forgotten or that she had left out.
Even though the book is about your grandmother’s life, you wrote it as fiction. How much of the story came from your grandmother’s details, and how much did you have to research or create on your own?
Every event that happens is true, and everything actually happened to her, but there are some small details that I embellished. For me, it was really helpful because, while I love creativity and writing, I sometimes struggle to pick an idea. So the fact that she had all these little stories, and I could expand from those, was something I loved while writing this. I had to use fiction when describing the atmosphere of certain places and also to write the dialogue because I can’t know exactly what they said or how they said it.
Do you have a favorite story your grandma told you that you made sure to get in the book?
Inge goes to a boarding school [in France] with her host family and there the children play a game where they pick someone to be the “torturer,” who is usually whoever they think the ugliest person is. My grandma had red hair and green eyes, and I guess she wasn’t the traditional standard of beauty. They picked her to be the torturer and she would have to pull people’s hair and scratch them. There would also be a queen, who was usually the prettiest girl with blond hair and blue eyes, and she would be protected. I thought it was interesting because to me it was the children’s way of understanding what was going on in the world around them. It’s a bit complicated, but when she told me this story I was completely shocked. It was really fascinating.
For people your age, why do you think Holocaust education is still relevant and important?
Some people my age don’t know anything about the Holocaust. I recently came across a statistic that talked about how little Gen Z knew about the Holocaust. There’s also been a spike in antisemitism and a decrease in awareness of history. For example, with Kanye West, who has a lot of followers, saying antisemitic remarks, a lot of people are going to just go along with what he says. There’s also just been a lot of hate crimes towards Jewish people, especially during COVID.
Lastly, the number of living Holocaust survivors is diminishing by the day. Gen Z is the last generation probably that is ever going to have the ability and the opportunity to speak with Holocaust survivors before they’re all gone. It’s important that we share this book now and then we educate people now before it’s too late.
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As Australian Jews call for action on antisemitism, prime minister unveils moves to curb hate speech
(JTA) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a slew of changes meant to curb antisemitism, including a crackdown on hate speech by extremist clerics.
The announcement comes four days after two gunmen killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney. Many Australian Jews said they had feared such an attack after years of surging antisemitism and what they said had been an inadequate government response.
Albanese acknowledged the criticism during an address in Canberra, Australia’s capital.
“More could have been done, and I accept my responsibility for the part in that as prime minister of Australia, but what I also do is accept my responsibility to lead the nation, and unite the nation,” he said.
“Anyone in this position would regret not doing more, and any inadequacies which are there,” Albanese added. “But what we need to do is to move forward.”
The new policies would heighten penalties for speech that incites violence, including online; increase the government’s latitude to block or rescind visas for those who spread hate; and penalize organizations whose leaders engage in hate speech.
As is the case in England, where two of the largest police forces announced on Wednesday that they would begin arresting people who use protest slogans seen by many as antisemitic, Australian authorities said they aimed to tip the scales against the kinds of speech that had long been treated as just shy of criminal.
“There have been organizations which any Australian would look at and say their behavior, their philosophy and what they are trying to do is about division and has no place in Australia,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters at Albanese’s press conference. “And yet for a generation, no government has been able to successfully take action against them because they have fallen just below the legal threshold.”
Albanese also pledged to enact a 13-point plan that his antisemitism envoy proposed earlier this year and announced a task force to ensure that Australian schools respond adequately to antisemitism. The moves follow a pledge made in the immediate aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack to tighten access to guns, which one of the alleged attackers had obtained legally.
Albanese’s announcement comes as Sydney is in the midst of days of funerals for the victims, who included rabbis, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl. While some local officials have attended the funerals, he has drawn criticism for staying away. Burke was heckled when he visited a vigil at Bondi Beach, with some in attendance shouting, “Blood on your hands!”
Prior to the shooting, Australian Jews were distressed by a string of arson and vandalism attacks on Jewish sites, as well as rhetoric in pro-Palestinian demonstrations seen as stoking antisemitic violence. Officials attributed some of the most searing attacks to criminals working indirectly on behalf of Iran, and Albanese ejected the Iranian ambassador in retaliation earlier this year.
Now, Albanese’s new moves have drawn criticism and concern from some on the left, including a progressive Jewish group, about their implications for free speech. But the main body representing Australian Jews, which on Sunday called for “decisive leadership and action now,” said it wanted more.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said in a statement that it would reserve a fuller judgment until after the funerals were over and more information was available but indicated that it was not satisfied. Albanese said it could take months to draft legislation to match his commitments.
“We will need to see the details before making an assessment as to whether the measures are likely to live up to their billing,” the council said. “This suite of measures can only be regarded as a first step, but it is an essential one.”
The post As Australian Jews call for action on antisemitism, prime minister unveils moves to curb hate speech appeared first on The Forward.
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I’m a 25-year-old semi-Zionist. Here’s what that means this Hanukkah.
I do not look Jewish. I do not wear a kippah. I wasn’t even truly connected to this identity until after Oct. 7. This isn’t to say I never felt Jewish; when I was a kid, I used to light LED Hanukkah “candles” with my father while giving my grandfather a “Chag Sameach” phone call. I used to hope for chocolate coins and Hot Wheels cars for my ever-growing collection. As an adult I have a much different hope. I hope for peace, for all Jews, everywhere.
When I was a child, I treated the existence of our homeland as a constant, something unshakeable, “There’s a Jewish homeland just like there’s a homeland for everyone else, just like there are Jews everywhere,” I thought. But since Oct. 7, I’ve realized just how fragile our existence is. I understand the concerns with Israel; I firmly believe that Benjamin Netanyahu and Itamar Ben-Gvir committed a genocide in our name and used our trauma to justify it. But I don’t think dismantling the country is a way to solve the problem.
This is why I describe myself as a “semi-Zionist.”
I believe that Jews have a claim to the land of Israel, that it is our ancestral homeland, and that yes, Jews were always in the region and had been in the region prior to 1917. I believe that we still have a right to Israel now, and that we always will.
Here’s why I’m “semi.” As a child I was taught that the ideal Jewish values are resilience, peace, and rationality. There is nothing resilient about denying food to starving people. There was nothing peaceful about laying waste to most of Gaza, and the acts of settler violence in the West Bank. And there is nothing rational about using the memory of a truly horrific atrocity to justify a campaign of hatred and fear. The very ideals of Zionism have been twisted by despicable people to turn from resilience to conquest.
It would be easy to blame antisemitism, including the terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia, on the actions of the Israeli government and their atrocities. What’s harder is thinking deeply and honestly about our own prejudices, who we blame, and what we do with our hate.
My hope for this Hanukkah is peace for everyone, everywhere, all Jews, and all people regardless of their faith. I hope for a time when the candles lit on Hanukkah are for celebration and not for mourning a senseless tragedy. I hope for a time when we can share our homeland with Palestinians instead of murdering them, because it is their homeland too. I hope for a time when Jews across the world can live freely without being persecuted for our beliefs or murdered just for existing.
But most of all, I hope for more Jews to have quiet Hanukkah nights like the ones I had, with fathers laughing about jokes their sons don’t understand, children pretending to like the taste of kugel, and lights that guide us toward a safe future.
The post I’m a 25-year-old semi-Zionist. Here’s what that means this Hanukkah. appeared first on The Forward.
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Ben Shapiro denounces Tucker Carlson at Heritage, urges policing of conservative movement
(JTA) — Ben Shapiro walked onto a Heritage Foundation stage Wednesday and used it to draw a line against Tucker Carlson and a strain of conservatism Shapiro warned is drifting toward conspiracy theories and antisemitism.
For a talk that lasted about an hour, Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish voices on the American right, denounced Carlson by name, arguing that the former Fox News host no longer belongs inside the conservative movement and urging the institution hosting him to enforce what he called “ideological border control.”
“A conservatism that treats Tucker Carlson as a thought leader is no conservatism,” Shapiro said. “If conservatives do not stand up and draw lines, conservatism and the dream of America itself will cease to exist.”
The speech was as notable for its venue as for its content. It was hosted by Kevin Roberts, Heritage’s president, who has come under fire in recent months for publicly defending Carlson after Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust revisionist. Roberts’ comments triggered resignations and criticism from Jewish leaders and former Heritage affiliates. Two more trustees of the foundation resigned this week over Roberts’ support for Carlson.
Despite the directness of Shapiro’s message, and his explicit call for Heritage to police the boundaries of the conservative movement, Roberts did not respond to the criticism or address antisemitism on the right during the event.
In his opening remarks, Roberts praised Shapiro as a “patriot,” a “man of faith” and a “trusted counselor,” and described Shapiro’s book as “a truly good book,” without mentioning Carlson, Fuentes or the controversy that has engulfed the organization. When Roberts moderated the discussion that followed, he pivoted to policy topics including immigration, housing affordability and elections, again avoiding any reference to Carlson or antisemitism.
Roberts also did not acknowledge the resignations or public criticism that followed his defense of Carlson, At the conclusion of the event, he broadly aligned Heritage with Shapiro’s message, telling the audience, “Count on Heritage to fight with you.”
In his speech, Shapiro accused Carlson of abandoning free-market principles, rejecting constitutional governance and advancing conspiracy theories that echo antisemitic tropes, particularly around Israel and Jewish influence. He cited Carlson’s repeated criticism of Israel, his suggestion of “nefarious Israeli influence in American government,” and his hostility toward Christian Zionists.
Shapiro also criticized Carlson for repeatedly platforming figures with extremist or antisemitic records, including Fuentes, whom he described as “America’s foremost Hitler apologist,” as well as Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin and revisionist historian Darryl Cooper. “None of this comports with traditional American values,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro framed the moment as a test of the conservative movement’s credibility. “Conservatism means something,” he said. “And if we refuse to stand for it and defend it, it will disappear.”
The post Ben Shapiro denounces Tucker Carlson at Heritage, urges policing of conservative movement appeared first on The Forward.