Who Loves Salami with Paprika?

Who loves Salami & Saving the World?

Fearless the fat dog is not fearless. Sammy captain of his pirate ship is on the lookout for danger. Jack with the bruise on his knee is fighting bullying. Illustrations by Sarah Davis, Cathy Wilcox and many of our incredible children’s creators line my narrow staircase in my terrace. As cohead of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators SCBWI for more than twenty five years, my home is the place children’s writers and illustrators gather.? I hosted the inaugural meeting of Room to Read there, which has brought literacy to more than thirty-two million children in Asia and Africa.? I love being a Writer Ambassador for them.

My mission has always been to save the world. As a child, I didn’t understand why, but I understand today. 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 always knew there was a darkness. I wanted to be brave like them.

Their first home in Sydney was just one room in a Bondi boarding house. This is where they began rebuilding their lives like so many refugees from Europe. Australia was a strange place to them at first. My father’s shock at discovering Devon still makes me laugh. ‘What is this .. (gasp) … pink sausage?’? Even his moustache stood on end. He went to the small delicatessen in Kings Cross where he could buy salami and Kolbász with plenty of paprika. It was not available in Australia 1960s. Today it’s available even in supermarkets, which are ?filled with cured meats hanging from hooks, cream cheeses, Emmentaler, Edam and Trappista, blinis, bagels, sausages of many types, speck, dill pickles, capsicums, cabbage rolls and more cabbage. Hungarians love their cabbage. ?

Growing up, there was always a sense of urgency to rebuild our lives. My father worked double shifts in the Pagewood Holden car factory and my mother sewed in the newly developing cottage fashion industry. ?That’s when the twinkle in my father’s eyes arrived. Me. The second twinkle, my sister arrived the following year. Good news for us, not sure how great the news was for our parents. Now they had two babies and my brother. But that was the purpose of life, wasn’t it?

Big news was when they got their first sewing machine.? ‘Refos’ that was the nickname for refugees, flocked to the ‘rag’ trade. There was an opportunity in the market and my father and other European refos filled it. I played under thousands of dresses designed by my mother, manufactured by my father in a three flight walk-up factory in a Surry Hills terrace. My father would carry the heavy rolls of material on his shoulders to the top floor. Rent was cheap there. All of Sydney seemed to be wearing the dresses that came out of their factory, with the different labels of the purchasers. It was like ghost writing for the fashion industry.

Growing up was a passionate life. A complex and turbulent life where loss, grief, cultural confusion, the impact of the Holocaust melded with hope and commitment to the future. As a child I was loved but didn’t understand why I was alive when so many others were not. The Holocaust is a terrible scar on humanity. It is one that has lived with me since a little girl. My parents rarely referred to it, but children sense when there are secrets. My safe place was reading and writing stories where I continued my mission to save my family and the world. That was in my imagination at least. Young people are smart. They feel so much but don’t have the voice or experience to navigate the challenges of an adult world. Today they are even more overwhelmed through social media as climate change, sexuality, racism, the rise of right-wing white supremacy, the pandemic, anti-semitism fill the news and their lives.

While I write from time to time for adults in literary journals and anthologies with stories that sit alongside David Malouf, Sir Salman Rushdie, Thomas Keneally, they are important but not important enough. Reaching young people through story is my greatest mission. I tackle their deep issues of identity, self-belief and write to partner them so when they fall, my stories are there to help them up.

I have an agenda to tackle tough issues with humour, pathos, empowerment, emotionally engaging young readers in their own journeys. I risk the personal in my books, because truth matters, because kids matter. My I Am Jack ?books have become rite-of-passage on school bullying drawn from when my son was bullied. I throw everything into my JACK books – Nanna whose teeth fall out, refugees, blending families, aging parents, war, love, bullying.? I’m a triple breast cancer survivor. Breast cancer is thrown into JACK as well, because life is messy. Actually when I was speaking to some kids about JACK, a sole hand rises. Yes, I say. ‘Susanne, did you die?’? Good news, I didn’t die.?

As sexual consent explodes in the news, male adolescence is centre stage. Teenage boys are searching for their spiritual, sexual, social, emotional place and they can lose their way. Uncompromisingly honest, I dragged in my then teen son as my truth censor, and wrote The Edge of Limits. It challenges them to think, to decide and find their own ways to become heroes. Psychologist Professor Carole Kayrooz? writes The Edge of Limits goes right to ‘the heart of young males in modern society.’?

My book Heroes of the Secret Underground ?has been simmering inside me for decades. Inspired by my family, lived history and philosophy, I have been asked why didn’t I write this for adults. Well, it is for adults in the same way as Diary of Anne Frank. It’s a conduit for adults and young people to share critical questions of the world. To question what justice means, irrespective of race, religion, gender, ethnicity.

Visiting Hungary with my daughter was the spark that helped me continue writing Heroes of the Secret Underground. I saw my mother’s house in Budapest and my father’s farm on the border of Hungary and Rumania. It was cathartic visiting the modest memorial of one room in The Glass House in Budapest, where the Jewish youth secret underground operated and saved lives. My father was there. My daughter and I sat silently.?

There was an overwhelming sense of responsibility writing Heroes of the Secret Underground’. Will everyone see the heroism and wisdom of my parents? Have I revealed too much of my personal life?? Will readers understand the past and know we can have a different world?

At the World Holocaust Forum Prince Charles said ‘The lessons of the Holocaust are searingly relevant to this day. 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.’ His son Prince William follow in father’s footsteps.

We must continue to empower our young people to oppose the spread of hatred and bigotry in the world.? It is still my mission. I hope you it yours too.

Susanne Gervay