I wanted to preserve my mother’s story to give my children roots

Name: Helen Benporath

Dream: Record family history for posterity

Location: Israel/Melbourne

Growing up in Sydney, Australia, in a family of proudly traditional Jews, I was acutely aware that my parents were Holocaust survivors. But I didn’t know many details of their war experiences.

I was a typical self-absorbed adolescent, so even when I had a school assignment about my parents’ youth, I kept it short and sweet, not absorbing much; on the one occasion that my father really shared his past, it went in one ear and out the other.

With age and maturity, though, came the dawning realization that my parents’ story needed to be recorded. If I didn’t want my children to grow up rootless and oblivious of their past, my parents’ testimony needed to be preserved for future generations.

When I began thinking along those lines, though, I was a busy mom of seven little Benporaths, who were joined by twins just a couple of years later, so I didn’t act on that idea for some years. There simply wasn’t time.

And then my father, who had always hoped to take me to visit his hometown in Czechoslovakia, passed away, and I was left with the regret that I’d missed an opportunity. At that point, some 20 years ago, I was just ready to explore the past, and suddenly, yet another link was gone.

My dismay over the lost opportunity to record my father’s story lingered and spurred me on, until the time was ripe for me to act on it.

One day, I spotted an ad in an English-language circular for Life Stories Unlimited. Run by Varda Branfman and Esther Chana Stromberg, they offered services to interview, transcribe, and write an individual’s life story. As soon as I saw it, I said, “This would be perfect!”

When my mother visited Israel for my son’s bar mitzvah in 2012, I asked her if she’d work with me to commit her story to writing. She was a bit hesitant at first, but agreed for the sake of the grandchildren.

Mrs. Stromberg came to interview my mother three times. I gave them their privacy.

It was very challenging for Mommy. She had to confront all the pain of her past, and she broke down a number of times while reliving it. But she persevered, because that’s who she was — a fighter. “I told her things I’ve never told you,” she told us afterward. There was the story of the girl whose life she’d saved during a selection, boldly telling Mengele they were sisters, causing him to relent on the other girl’s death sentence and send them to the right together.

I’d always been amazed by my mother’s resilience, but hearing her stories in detail increased that admiration exponentially.