The stories I never expected to tell

When the opportunity came up to join The Australian Jewish News, I did not hesitate for long. My reason was quite specific: the chance to meet Holocaust survivors and hear their stories in their own words.

I had spent my entire career in sports journalism. Sitting in press boxes, covering matches, reporting on injuries and the inspirational comebacks from them. Every weekend was spent at a different stadium and weeks were consumed with analysing the latest A-League match or Socceroos squad. It goes without saying, then, that community journalism was a different prospect entirely. But the pull of Holocaust education had always been there and this felt like the time grab onto it. I figured I could still dabble in sport on the side. And for a while, I did.

Then came October 7, 2023.

In an instant, everything changed. While I was a sports journalist, I had tried to separate my religion and beliefs from my work life, but I knew instinctively that was not going to be possible for me anymore. Because suddenly, I felt a responsibility to bear witness to one of the most devastating chapters in modern Jewish history, as it unfolded in real time.

I found myself telling not just the stories of Holocaust survivors, though that privilege never diminished, but of Nova survivors who had danced into a nightmare. Of hostages. Of the families of those murdered. Of the complexities of war.

I felt fortunate to find myself in a supportive work environment and began drifting further away from the sports world, distancing myself from the ill-informed views of some of my close former colleagues.

Before my time at The AJN, I would have said interviewing the likes of Pele, Arsene Wenger and Alessandro Del Piero were the highlights of my career. But now, I count among the greatest honours of my professional life the opportunity to interview Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin, the parents of Hersh, who was murdered in Hamas captivity after being kidnapped from the Nova massacre.

Rachel in particular left a mark on me that I know will never fade. She has become a modern-day Queen Esther to so many in the Jewish community. A mother who has somehow turned her grief into a mission, who speaks with a clarity and profound grace that seems almost impossible given what she has endured. To listen to her was to be in the presence of something rare.

I was also privileged to interview Omer Shemtov, released after 505 days in Hamas captivity. He is, quite simply, one of the most inspirational human beings I have ever encountered. He is the embodiment of resilience.

And then came Bondi.

On December 14, 2025, the story I had been telling from a distance arrived on our own shores. Suddenly I was not reporting on grief and survival somewhere else in the world, I was telling the stories of our own community. Those who had survived and those who tragically had not. These were our own community members, celebrating in the very place I have been to hundreds of times before.

When I joined The AJN, I never imagined I would find myself at the coal face of antisemitism. It is the defining issue not just of this moment in Australia, but of our time across the world.

Looking back, I have often wondered if this was where I was meant to be. My desire to tell the stories of Holocaust survivors, to understand where hatred leads when it is left unchecked, brought me here. To Bondi. To a Royal Commission. To a community fighting to be seen and heard, determined to stamp out the hate.

There is a line that connects Holocaust survivors to the families I interviewed in the aftermath of October 7, and to the community members I have spoken with in the months following the Bondi attack. It is the line of Jewish memory and Jewish survival. Of bearing witness so that others might understand, and so that it never happens again. I have spent these years understanding why bearing witness matters so deeply, and it is a lesson I am determined to pass on to my own children.

It has been a privilege to record even a small part of this history for The Australian Jewish News. The stories I have told here will stay with me always.

And while I may have moved on to a new chapter, I will never be far from this one.

Carly Adno is the communications manager at the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and a former AJN senior journalist.