Breaking a survivor’s silence

Joe Reich, celebrated ophthalmologist and chair of Melbourne Jewish Book Week, recently launched his latest book We Should Have Talked at a private event in Melbourne.

The work, a biography of his late father, Holocaust survivor Jacob Reich, explores the journey of uncovering his father’s story of survival through testimonies only discovered after Jacob’s passing. Like many Holocaust survivors, Jacob Reich never told his children about his wartime experiences, preferring to focus on the future after immigrating to Australia from Poland in 1948.

Among those in attendance was 101-year-old Holocaust survivor Helen Schon. Schon is an active member of the Melbourne Jewish community with her testimony most notably appearing in the 2023 Australian documentary Remember Belsen.

“Someone who was in the Łódź Ghetto with both my parents, who was liberated from Bergen-Belsen with my mother in May 1945 was Helen Schon,” Reich said. “After the war, she got to know my parents well. Helen’s a very generous and active woman who still makes me a poppy seed cake every year.”

The launch was hosted by Reich’s son, Joshua Reich, who had also never been privy to the full extent of his grandfather’s experiences during the war. Joshua praised his father for bringing “humanity, emotional salience and a sick and twisted sort of beauty” to his grandfather’s story, making it a compelling read.

“It’s important that you’ve written it. Not only is it important for my immediate family, your grandchildren, the friends you’ve got gathered here today, it’s important for the broader Jewish community, and also for the community of people who don’t know the story of the Holocaust … Who don’t know that they can turn on the news today and see echoes of the past that rhyme with current events. With the rise of extremism and antisemitism, people need to learn from well-told personal stories,” Joshua said.

Reich was then interviewed by Dr Daniel Haumschild, manager of exhibitions and storytelling at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.

Reich spoke about his father’s upbringing as an Alexander Chasid in Poland, his rebellious nature and his survival in the Łódź Ghetto and numerous labour and concentration camps. He also highlighted his father’s resilience and generosity, both during and after the war, and spoke about the impact of Jacob’s silence about his traumatic past and the importance of historical accuracy.

Haumschild described the book as “a reckoning with what happened, trying to understand it from that broad human perspective”.

“I hope it actually encourages people to think about the history that they’ve inherited … potentially to actually pursue the conversation that they’ve been wanting to have with their parent or their grandparent or their great-grandparent and to do that historical deep dive without sacrificing the human quality of the experience … So, if we can do that within our lives, I think the book actually demonstrates how to live well in the midst of all this swirling history, and even a contemporary world that’s sometimes hard to look at, but you can look at it in a way that actually makes you a better person,” Haumschild told The AJN.

AJN journalist Dahlia D’Onghia is a member of the team behind Melbourne Jewish Book Week 2026.