Heroes Come from Dark Places

There was an overwhelming sense of responsibility writing Heroes of the Secret Underground. I immersed myself in the emotional reliving of growing up as the child of refugees and Holocaust survivors. There were anxious questions in my mind. Will everyone see the heroism and wisdom of my parents? Have I revealed too much of my personal life?? Will readers understand the past to become champions for a better world?

Reaching young people is my great passion. Young people feel so much. Are so funny, curious and amazing, but need support to meet life’s challenges as they search for who they will be. They can get lost. I tackle their deep issues of identity, self-belief and partner them so when they fall, I am beside them. They are meant to be heroes. Heroes of the Secret Underground was written so they know they can be.

My parents survived Nazism and Stalinist communism. Leaving everything they owned, telling no-one, they made the dangerous escape across mine fields from Hungary to Austria with my grandmother and baby brother. The refugee camp was very hard, but they lived in hope that a free country would accept them. Australia eventually did. Even though my parents rarely spoke about the past tragedies, there were slips and memories and I felt their fears. Keeping them locked away turned the fears into monsters. My father had terrible nightmares. He never told me what happened to his mother, sisters and their babies in the concentration camps. I could never ask him. My mother cried quietly in the dark with blinding migraines. I knew it was about the baby who died from meningitis and the loss of everything. It scared me. But they were so committed to rebuilding our lives. My mother brought music into our home and that was joyous.

?Heroes of the Secret Underground wins against those monsters through imagination, humour, courage and truth. Young people need this more than ever, as social media floods them with bullying, racism, the rise of white supremacy, wars, climate change, the pandemic. Heroes of the Secret Underground takes them onto a thrilling journey into the past and truth where they can make choices of bravery and resilience for today and the future.

I went to Hungary with my daughter and saw the glorious Hungarian Opera House where my mother played The Blue Danube on the violin as a girl. The grand Danube river with the golden parliament on one side and the Gothic Castle of Buda are sites of such beauty. However they are also the sites of terrible abuses. I cried when I saw the iron shoes along the bank of The Danube, the symbols of those who were killed by the fascists on the banks of the river. Who gathered Jewish people, homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled ... to tie them up, shoot, push them into the freezing waters of the Danube. Then there were young people, heroes, who saved who they could.

It was cathartic visiting the modest memorial of one room in The Glass House in Budapest, where the youth secret underground operated. My father had been there with other young heroes. I cannot imagine how thousands of men, women and children survived in The Glass House with one toilet and one shower and little food. There are very few records about The Glass House but it is integral to my story. My daughter and I sat silently.

?We travelled to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland a place of terrible darkness for Jews, gypsies, Poles, disabled, homosexuals and others. Many of my family perished there in the concentration camp. Although it was so painful, it furthered my purpose to inspire the courage, strength, love, and empowerment of young people for justice, ?even in the darkest times.

At the World Holocaust Forum Prince Charles said “The lessons of the Holocaust are searingly relevant to this day. More than seventy-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, hatred and intolerance still lurk in the human heart, still tell new lies, adopt new disguises, and still seek new victims.”

Through Heroes of the Secret Underground ?I seek to inspire our young people to oppose the ongoing spread of hatred and bigotry and become advocates of justice. To be heroes.

Susanne Gervay

sgervay.com

?