Woman's Hour - Mary Robinson, Holocaust Memorial Day, Catherine Airey

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Mrs Robinson is a feature-length documentary about Ireland’s first female president. Telling her own story of her childhood and career for the first time on screen, it was filmed over three years, and takes a deep-dive into Mary Robinson’s career as she discusses the significant controversies throughout her tenure and her own professional regrets; and examines how her gift for bridging differences was instrumental in bringing about seismic change in Ireland. Mary Robinson joins Clare McDonnell live.Today is Holocaust Memorial Day and this year it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Clare is joined by two women who reflect on their mothers’ experiences of surviving the Holocaust, the lasting impact and how it has shaped their own lives. Anita Peleg talks about her mother, Naomi Blake, who was sent first to Auschwitz and then to Brahnau Concentration Camp, before settling in the UK and becoming a sculptor. Noemie Lopian remembers her mother, Renee Bornstein BEM – a Holocaust survivor and educator.The Welsh opera singer and presenter Wynne Evans has apologised for what he called 'an inappropriate and unacceptable' comment at the launch of the Strictly Come Dancing Live tour earlier this month, about the tour host Janette Manrara. Clare speaks to podcaster and comedian Helen Thorn and entertainment journalist Caroline Frost to get their reactions.Confessions is the debut novel from Catherine Airey. The book follows three generations of women as they navigate love, trauma, family and tragedy. Catherine joins Clare and discusses quitting her job and moving to rural Ireland in 2021 to focus on her writing.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Clare MacDonald and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Hello and welcome to Woman's Hour. Banter. Dictionary definition. The playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks. It's not exactly how you could describe a comment made by Strictly Come Dancing tour contestant Wynne Evans about female host Jeanette Manrara as they were posing for a picture to publicise the current tour. Now, the comment was degrading and sexually explicit. He has apologised and, as of this morning, is still on the tour.

Did you groan when you heard this story? Does it have that depressingly familiar ring to it? Do you hear this kind of overtly sexist comment passed off as banter where you work? And if so, how do you deal with it? We're going to be talking about this story shortly, but I'd love to hear your views. You can text the programme. The number is 84844. Text will be charged at your standard message rate. On social media, we are at BBC Woman's Hour, or you can send a WhatsApp message or a voice note using the number 03700 100 444. Also this morning, we will mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau

on Holocaust Memorial Day by talking to two women who will reflect on their mother's experiences of surviving the Holocaust and how it shaped their own lives. Plus, the astonishing debut novel from writer Catherine Airey, who quit her job in the civil service and moved to Ireland, the homeland of her grandmother, because she knew she had a book in her. Confessions is out this week and, amongst other things, examines the repression and emancipation of book in her. Confessions is out this week and amongst other things examines the repression and emancipation of women in Ireland. Themes that dovetail quite neatly with my first guest this morning. She is Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland and now her journey to that epoch-changing moment is documented in the film Mrs Robinson, a feature link, the documentary all about her life. Filmed over three years using home archive footage, she tells her own story of her childhood and takes a deep dive into her career, including highlights, controversies and professional regrets. The film also examines how she bridge divides

to help bring about social and political change in Ireland. And I'm delighted to say Mary Robertson joins me now live. Welcome back to Woman's Hour, Mary. Thank you, Clare. It's wonderful to have you here. What was it like for you to watch your life back, essentially? Well, I didn't actually want to make the film, but I had a very dear friend and an advisor when I was president for the seven years,

who always told me the things I needed to hear. And she said, Mary, this isn't really about you. Yes, it's about you. But people need inspiration, especially women. And you've had a good life. And I think you should do it it and she made it possible and sadly died almost immediately after the film was completed so it's dedicated to her but I now understand it does as you say tell a story a social history of how Ireland struggled and many of us you know had to fight for women's rights that are taken for granted now by younger people in Ireland. Yeah, I mean, it feels like the audience gets a very honest view of you personally, your background, your work, the things that matter most to you.

And you just said it, the things that are at the top of that list, the interests of women and gender equality. Why was that always so key for you? I think I blame my parents, if you like. They were medical doctors. I was the only girl wedged between four brothers. And they kept saying to me, Mary, you have all the opportunities your brothers have. And I knew this wasn't the case.

Even at the very beginning, they were altar boys. There was no such thing as an altar girl. I had to wear this awful scarf in church. And we were a very religious family, weekly mass. And I knew from everything I perceived in wider society that women were not equal. So I think I had this sense of injustice that drove me into making it so. I was going to do everything I could to make it the way my parents told me it was. And you say in the documentary you felt you didn't have the right kind of look so you had to try even harder to be academically brilliant. That struck me as quite sad. How do you reflect on that now? I think it was just a reflection I had

that I had very handsome brothers and somehow although I was the only girl I wasn't a beauty and therefore I had to you know just try a bit harder to be clever and achieve things and make a difference. You certainly did that and people will remember you're the first female president of Ireland from 1990 to 97 and the odds of you winning that a hundred to one outsider first of all and you go in the, you weren't entirely sure that this is something you should do. What changed your mind? I think it was reading the oath of office, which is in our constitution, and seeing we have a direct election by all the people. So it's outside politics, it's a choice of the people. And yet the six men who had been presidents before me had been kind of elder

statesmen or elder judges who hadn't really done much other than be the president, do state visits abroad, use the red carpet and a band if they went anywhere. And they weren't relevant. But I could see from the oath that a president could be relevant at local level, at national level, and hopefully even at international level. And I wanted to make the case for that when I started. I didn't start when I was nominated by the Labour Party and running as an independent. I didn't expect to win by any standards, but I wanted to make the case for whoever became president. We thought it was going to be a deputy prime minister who was a popular guy and who was going to be the nominee of the party that had owned the presidency, if you like. And looking back at that footage, you were clearly a singular woman in a sea of men.

And when the odds started to shorten and it looked like you might actually win, you were the receiving end for a fair bit of sexism, weren't you, from your opponents? Yes, there was a particular radio programme when a minister at the time said, you know, about Mary Robinson who has reinvented herself and her newfound interest in family. Very, very wounding stuff. And initially I was very hurt by it. And then I saw the response that people were outraged, particularly women. And I think it helped in the end to secure the victory.

And Bride, of course, my great friend, had a good sense of humour. And she sent 24 red roses to this minister on behalf of the women of Ireland after the election. So I enjoyed that. This is Bride you were just talking about, who sadly passed away and didn't get a chance to see this documentary. She's the one who advised you to do it. Oh, she did. She saw it before, yes. Fantastic. We actually had a last viewing of it.

I was leaving it to the production company to completely, you know, they had completely free reign of what they wanted to do. I knew that my mistakes would be in it because that's the kind of friend bride is. She would make sure that, you know, it was as honest as possible. And but we she did see it before she she died. And she's right about the impact. And I'm now really aware that it can be used, for example, for one of the projects I'm involved in at the moment, which is shown in the film at its very beginning, called Project Dandelion,

which is women leaders stepping up on a broad climate justice movement, which will be women-led but not women-only. And look at what's happening on climate now with President Trump taking the United States out again, out of the climate agreement, but even more than that, having an energy emergency in the United States to drill baby drill I mean it's shocking and it's very worrying and we need women to really step up so I'm glad the film can have a life of impact I hope yes I mean I want to dig deeper into that in a moment just just while we're on it and that time in your life um just to go back ever so slightly, when you got married and you met your husband when you were

at Trinity College, went away to Harvard, came back, and then you got married, it was very difficult for you, and you document this in the film, that your family didn't attend the wedding because of his religion. That must have been very painful. It wasn't as narrow as that, actually. I was already, at the age of 25, a senator professor. I was the only daughter of my parents, and they thought no one was good enough for me. And they knew that Nick had had lots of girlfriends in college when he decided to become a cartoonist instead of staying with the law. And this wasn't the profile that they wanted. And he was a Protestant.

It was a cumulative sense of something that, you know, is quite dangerous, actually. It's called overlove, when you overlove a child and think nobody's good enough for them. And that was the problem. And I mean, once we were married, of course, my parents were very religious Catholics. They came around immediately, you know. And Nick always understood the over love problem. And you forgave them for that then quite quickly, did you?

Very quickly, yes. And this is a man who is still with you, still by your side. And you talk about that relationship very movingly. And how he was very happy to kind of take three steps back and always be three steps behind you. That's how he describes it in the documentary. Do you think you could have done it without a man like that by your side? Well, we're in our 55th year of marriage.

So I certainly made the right decision. And it has been enormously important in my life to have a partner who was happy that I was earning more when I was working as a lawyer and happy that I was in the public domain from the beginning of our marriage because I was a senator before we married. And that when I became president, that he would, as you say, be a couple of steps behind me. And he has a great sense of humor. I remember when we were on an official visit to Britain in 1996. I'd already had the meeting with the Queen in 1993, but we were on an official visit and Nick was surrounded by some, you know, grandees who said to him, what is it like to be Dennis Thatcher?

And Nick said, oh, no, I'm not Dennis Thatcher. I'm the Duke of Edinburgh. And the shock on their faces. They just couldn't take it. You know, this was a president and this was the husband of a president. Yeah. But it's wonderful because, you know, you get a full picture of having a supportive partner for everything that you do and with your family life as well. Just to go back a bit, you were an incredible advocate for women having power over their lives, over their bodies.

And that started with advocating for family planning. How did you get involved well it was very clear to me particularly when i'd done my master's in law in harvard that the law was out of touch with reality married women couldn't get the contraceptive pill unless they had the written permission of their doctor that they had cycle regulation problems we used to joke that must be the weather or something that so many irish women had cycle regulation problems and um it was a criminal offence to buy or sell a condom. It was ridiculous. So I thought all I have to do is have a simple criminal law amendment bill

amending the bit about condoms and talking about the need for access of married women to contraceptives, and indeed all women who need it. And I underestimated the incredibly, you know, reaction of that I was a witch from hell trying to undermine morality in Ireland. Nobody wanted to talk about sex. Nobody wanted to talk about reproductive health. And newspapers, but also individual letters, hate mail. There was no social media, obviously, in those days, but I got a lot of letters, cut-off garden gloves and hate mail

telling me how terrible I was. And I was destabilised. I was young. I was 26 going on up to 27. The bill was introduced in 1971. And Nick recognized that it was affecting me. And so he burned the letters. And of course, almost immediately afterwards, we regretted because it took away a whole picture of social history of the time. But it did steady me. And I decided very early that if you really believe in something, be prepared to pay the price, be prepared to be unpopular for a while.

It was a very valuable lesson for the rest of my life. And in fact, I never felt I got criticised for the contraception trains that used to go from the Republic to Northern Ireland and back again. Tell our listeners about those. I carefully never joined it as a practicing barrister. I was careful of not going too far into protest. But they took a train and went to Belfast. And they actually went into a chemist shop and asked for contraceptives and were told, well, you need a prescription even in Northern Ireland for contraceptives. And they said, well, give us aspirins. And they actually came back with aspirins and condoms. They were able to buy condoms, all right. And there was a real fear as to whether they were going to be arrested.

So there was a protest gathering in Dublin to make sure they weren't arrested, which they weren't. But it did bring home. I mean, protests can be useful in visualising the problem. There's an interesting comparison. You mentioned now President Trump for a second term. And there's footage of you in a car in Washington, where you talk about how far reproductive rights for women have come in Ireland, and how far backwards reproductive rights for women have gone in America with the reigning back of Roe v. Wade. How do you reflect on that? Now we are into a second Trump presidency.

I'm really concerned about the situation in the United States. And I think it's a lesson to all of us. Human rights are never to be taken for granted, never totally secure. They can be undermined. Even in a country that I thought, when I did my master's in Harvard, was the strongest democratic country you could have. I love the teachers. I admire their Supreme Court, et cetera. And now we see the real danger. And the danger is incredibly real now, because you not only have a president

who tells lie after lie, but you have social media amplifying those lies. And our democratic space is very worrying at the moment. And we need independent media that will investigate. And media is being undermined because all the money is going to social media. And, you know, it's harder now for democratic countries to fight back, to be honest. And we need to be strong and to fight back. And we need a free media, independent media to do that. That's one of my latest real senses of how important that is. We just have to point out at this point, there'll be many people listening to this who, and there's strong feelings on both sides of the abortion argument.

And many people were pleased to see these changes brought back in and did in fact vote for President Trump. I want to talk to you because I know climate change is something incredibly important to you. You mentioned Operation Dandelion. Tell us why Dandelion, first of all. Why did you call it that? I learned the importance of symbols when I was president because I put a light on the window of my official residence for all of those who'd had to leave Ireland over the centuries and over the decades, et cetera, because of poverty, conflict, sexual orientation, whatever. And that light took on a

life of its own for the seven years and still does. People still mention that light. So I'm a believer in storytelling to get the climate message across. It's the best way. And we need a symbol to help us with our stories. And the dandelion is part of nature. It's very often a weed. I always thought of it as a weed when I was growing up, although I love to blow the seeds that every child does.

But actually, it's a beautiful flower. It's very resilient. Yes, it's true. You can't get rid of it if you want to. But it's got roots that are very deep for the soil. So it's regenerative. There is no waste. You can eat or drink any part of the dandelion. And then how do you spread it? You just blow. And so this is how we're going to have a sort of ecosystem. We've begun with women leaders, and it's made a huge difference. In the climate space now,

women leaders amplify each other. We're not competing with each other for funding. That's not the mentality. We're talking about what others are doing, especially women on the ground and getting more money to the women who are making their communities resilient. It's part of the whole story, but it's not being funded.

You say climate change in the documentary is a man-made problem that requires a feminist solution, but you go on to qualify that to say it's just not wholly women you are talking to. Explain that a little bit more for us. Yes, a feminist solution, but man-made includes all of us. And we need men who accept the way of leading that comes from the women's movement. It's not the masculine authoritarian way of doing it, which is becoming too popular in our populist world. And the best example is Trump himself. I will do everything. I am who I am. God has chosen me somehow. I mean, it's awful stuff to listen to. But the feminist way of leading is enabling problem solving, not hierarchical, and reaches out to people and listens.

And I think we need much more of this leadership because we need to address the problems. And we need to address in, the climate and nature crisis. And we only have about five years to turn around, according to the climate scientists. We have to be in a different place in 2030. We have to have cut our emissions by about 45% globally and more than that in developed countries.

And secondly, we have to regenerate nature and recapture the biodiversity we're losing so heavily in the species. And it's all doable if we just switch the money, switch it away from fossil fuel and incentivise, incentivise with urgency that we move rapidly over the next few years. And I think women leaders understand this more because we know the problems. And just very briefly, there's many points in this documentary where you are moved to tears. And recently, excuse me as well, you seem to be very emotionally in touch with the human existence. When you reflect on your life, has that given you more pain than joy?

How do you reflect on your life, has that given you more pain than joy? How do you reflect on your own empathy? I think I'm glad that I've had the experience of going to places where there was the worst violations of rights, listening to women not just raped but their bodies destroyed in and around Goma, which is under attack again at the moment. And I have I'm enriched by the pain because I understand and I understand why the world is moving in the wrong direction now in losing that empathy. Social media is not helpful. It's sort of the algorithms draws to the dark side we actually need to have our sense of humanity reawakened because there are too many people suffering terrible pain from conflict and many of them are children women the elderly and you know so the elders that I belong to

which also features in the book that were brought together by Nelson Mandela, we talk about long view leadership and being thoughtful, knowing that we need intergovernmental agreement on our big problems. But they have to matter also on the ground. So wonderful to have you back on Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for joining us. Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland, and Mrs. Robinson is going to be screened in Glasgow, London and Birmingham from 28th of January, which is tomorrow, to the 1st of February in celebration of St. Bridget's Day, a day in the Irish calendar committed to showcasing women's achievements. And the film will be available to view across all major platforms from March the 17th which is of course St Patrick's Day. Thank you so much for joining us. Now to a story dominating

some of the news outlets today and I should say that some of you may find the language during this next item graphic. I'm talking about news of the Welsh opera singer Wyn Evans who has apologised for making what he described as an inappropriate and unacceptable comment during the Strictly Come Dancing live tour launch in Birmingham earlier this month. It was reported yesterday by the Mail on Sunday that he used the phrase spit roast in relation to the tour's host Jeanette Manrara. This is shorthand for a graphic sexual act involving several people, commonly with a woman and two men. Now, this is not the first time the singer and presenter has faced criticism

whilst competing in last year's Strictly. Evan's dance partner, Katya Jones, removed his hand from her waist. Joining me now to talk about this is entertainment journalist Caroline Frost and Helen Thorne, comedian, podcaster and one half of the Scummy Mummies. Welcome both of you. Hello. Hello there. Caroline, let's start with you. Actually, let's just start with both of you. First of all, a general overview. Caroline, what did you make of what he said? Idiotic, in a word. Probably at best harmless because it was meant to be a light throwaway comment meant to

endear himself to his surrounding pack of dancers with whom he's bonded over that series but bearing in mind the context of what has made him famous increasingly in the last six months absolutely idiotic and clearly lessons have not been learned from when he got his yellow card and his wrist slapped last time that he he went he erred shall we say helen yeah i think i i just echo what you say caroline i think you know you you obviously he's very comfortable with the the people around him but this is about um power and this is about being in you know being incredibly inappropriate in that moment and he didn't just offend those on stage, but also those in the audience, which made them feel also incredibly uncomfortable.

And it was incredibly unwise. Yeah, you're a comic, obviously. Do you have sympathy for people who feel like they don't know where to draw the line? If we're being generous, we might say, you know, he turned around, he thought he was giving a funny line um and it clearly wasn't um i don't know i think you have to you have to own what you say you know and also

he's an experienced entertainer and it's 2025 i think um but i have to say you know as a as a comedian you know obviously sex and sexuality and all those sort of things feature highly in the work that we do. But that's about being appropriate within that space and having that understanding. So, yeah, I mean, as comedians, we enjoy making jokes about our own sexuality, but we're always the butt of the joke. You know, that's the joy of it. You know, we're celebrating our own bodies and our own, you know, our playfulness. So that's where I come from. Helen, the term banter, Kevin Mayer has written in The Times newspaper today and says it isn't banter. This is about power.

What would you say to that? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think I think that's it. And, you know, it is it is it is inappropriate. And I'm sure and he has apologised. I think that's it and um you know I it you know it's it is it is inappropriate and I'm sure and he has apologized I think that's the thing you know it was slipped out and I think you know there's there's appropriate banter within your friendship groups and and and all that sort of stuff but he was on stage and and also the the term was offensive so that's where I'd be coming

from. Caroline what do you think? You started by saying this is obviously not his first transgression. And here we go again. So in that wider context, lessons clearly have not been learned, have they? Well, no, not by him, but encouragingly by the rest of us. If you look at the speed of the response of the Strictly live tour crew everybody else involved in this shenanigans he has emerged as the outlier I mean I would slightly hesitate to say this is about power just because I don't think he is by any means the most powerful person on that stage I think that other people have higher profiles stronger brands he was very much a newcomer and he is the beneficiary of this Strictly brand

that has elevated him to his profile. Obviously, he's completely sabotaged that, not once but twice, as we've said, during the series of Strictly before Christmas. There was an incident that he and his partner laughed off where he was seen with his hand creeping across his partner's front while they were on stage together. And this was laughed off as a silly joke between them, an inside joke. scene with his hand creeping across his partner's front while they were on stage together and this

was laughed off as a silly joke between them an inside joke I mean we were all curious quite what the content of that in joke would be but we never quite learned that however the circus moved on the series was a success of course this series was a huge triumph considering everything that had come before in the year for Strictly with all the behind the scenes debates and scandals and really this should have been a triumph I mean poor for Strictly with all the behind the scenes debates and scandals. And really, this should have been a triumph. I mean, poor old Strictly PR team. They never get a day's rest, do they? They thought they were safely through the storm of last year and emerged triumphant thanks to Chris McCausland. But no, wind's still keeping them on their toes. I think this is what Melania Trump would call a locker room talk. This is

probably suitable in certain places, small enclosed clubs. And there will be a line of people, not all men, but mostly queuing up to defend him and say, oh, you can't say anything these days. Nothing's funny. It's just banter. But with the optics where they are increasingly in a public space, we see that that has moved on, that that locker room mercifully is becoming a smaller and smaller enclosed space. And unfortunately, Wynne has boxed himself into it. We're asking people, our listeners today,

to get in touch with their experiences of banter in inverted comments. So do keep texting 84844. Helen, what do you do then when you, I mean, do you come across this kind of banter in a work environment or is it less so these days? Well, I think, you know, myself and Ellie, the other scummy mummy, of course, we've encountered that. We've had incidences where like a promoter has walked into our change room while we're getting change. And he said, oh, look, I don't mind and and he said no but we do and and I think that is that

is the key here is that he saw no problem whatsoever in walking into a dressing room with two women getting changed and we had to call it out and we call it out if it happens in our in our show but I have to say like we perform our show we're about to go on tour with our hot mess show and we're celebrating our sexuality and that but we have predominantly women audiences and women audiences come to our show because they say we don't feel intimidated we're not going to get picked on so we're creating a safe space for women to come to and i think that should be celebrated as well but we've had incidences with promoters who have just dismissed us as female comedians and said oh you know just one woman on the bill and things like that. And we've had to call it out. And we've got that confidence.

But I'm assuming that in other incidences, when you don't feel like you've got that confidence, that can be a really intimidating situation. But no, we will call it out any time of the day. Well, I want to read you a text from a listener who absolutely did call it out. Banter in the open office workplace and how I dealt with it recently. On this occasion, one older guy asked the other guy to bring him back a nice Thai girl from his holidays. I just swore out loud and was asked if I was having a bad day. I was told it's just banter.

I said it's not banter and asked for an apology. It still continues, except it now sometimes is whispered as opposed to everything else which is at decibels so this is the issue isn't it that you kind of potentially stand up to something and then it just kind of goes underground Caroline let's just go back to you as far as the BBC is concerned is this something they can just say well he's apolog's apologised. Let's move on again. Well, he's now got two yellow cards. I don't know what the rules of football are. I think it's two yellows equal a red, don't they? I mean, certainly he cannot say going forward that he has not been warned and told.

He's now apologised twice at some point, even if you don't get him on his badness, because I don't put Wynne Evans in the same category as so many previous malefactors that we've uncovered at the BBC and other stations in the past few years. However, you would have to say, if this man's judgment is so poor, does he deserve to have such a huge platform? Because he's clearly a bit of a loose cannon. So one way or another, I would think that he will be hopefully being very very careful it'd be nice to see some sort of gesture but a bit as I say I mean there's something quite honest perhaps it's quite useful that we have this conversation and Wynne is effectively a bit of a martyr to that cause it's a useful conversation that we're having this morning I mean again the line keeps moving doesn't it between what's acceptable and what's unacceptable but certainly he knows he's in the

crosshairs of just about every journalist and every producer going forward. And just final word to you, Helen, briefly, if you can, male allies is always a good one, isn't it, when these stories come out? It's helpful, isn't it? If men as well as women come forward and say,

you know, it's not banter, don't do it. Absolutely. And I think, and we're seeing that more and more in the um in the world of comedy a lot more male comedians are coming forward and and and supporting women when they have faced this sort of intimidation and and um inappropriate behavior but i've got to say if you know when you were you're confronted by that by an audience it is a fantastic way in which we can you know the audience will be with you if you've been, you know, attacked by a male. We had a man stand up in the middle of our show saying,

making comments on our breasts and actually putting him down. You got the support from the women as well. So that was incredible. But yeah, I absolutely agree. We need more male allies to stand up with us. Thank you both for joining us on Woman's Hour this morning. That's the voice of Helen Thorne, comedian, podcaster and one half of the Scummy Mummies. And you also heard from Caroline Frost, journalist. We have these statements. Wynne Evans has said today,

my language was inappropriate and unacceptable, for which I sincerely apologise. And a spokesperson for the Strictly Live tour and BBC studios said this, we were not previously aware of the remark and did not receive any complaints. We've made it very clear to Wynn that we do not tolerate such behaviour on the tour. Keep your texts coming into this.

And anything else you'd like to comment on? The number is 848-DOUBLE. I'm Sarah Trelevan, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.

Four. Now, today is Holocaust Memorial Day, and this year it marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I'm joined now by two women who reflect on their mother's experiences of surviving the Holocaust, the lasting impact and how it has shaped their own lives. Anita Pelek is director of Generation to Generation. Now, her mother, Naomi Blake, was sent to Auschwitz and then Branau concentration camp before settling in the UK and becoming a very well-known sculptor. And Noemi Lopian is the daughter of Holocaust survivor

Renée Bornstein, BEM. She is a Holocaust educator and gives talks around the UK. Welcome to both of you. Thank you for joining us on Woman's Hour. Thank you. Let's talk first of all about your mothers. Anita, your mother, Naomi Blake, what kind of woman was she? Well, you know, I'm biased, of course. Of course, she was wonderful. Quite remarkably, she was very calm. Many of my friends when I was at school were surprised to hear that she was a survivor because she was a very calm very loving person and in particular I think what marked her was she always saw the good in people and she even remarked on that through her sculpture that for her, the human

figure had something very positive. You know, despite everything that she suffered, she still saw the positive in people. Noemi, same question to you, your mother, Renee, how would you sum her up? My mum was very warm. People described that she recently passed away the end of November as regal. She was French. She was very sophisticated and a lot of fun too, and very, very hospitable. Our friends commented that they felt she was matriarchal to them and a grandmother to my children because she lived across the road to me. But unlike Anita's mum, my mum was plagued by anxiety, which could sadly sometimes play out as being controlling. But I only understood, of course, as I became more mature,

that it wasn't a control, that it was her anxiousness that made it like that. Let's talk about their stories and connection with Auschwitz now and life in the camps. Anita, your mother was deported in 1944, first to Auschwitz, along with her sister. What did she tell you about life there? Well, she didn't stay in Auschwitz very long,

but she did tell me about the journey, the deportation, how they were shoved into these cattle trucks, standing room only, squashed together, a journey of about three days. The train stopping and starting and children crying and told me how terrible that was. And then the arrival at Auschwitz, where there were selections and where she was actually on the train, not only with one of the sister, but with another sister and four nephews and nieces and with her father. And her father, one of her older sisters and the four nephews and nieces, all under the age of 13, were sent in a different direction and they were sent immediately to the gas chamber so she was left with her sister Malchi and from there they were deported to a work camp in the north of Poland first to Stutthof concentration camp and then to Branau work camp, where they worked in a munitions factory. And quite remarkably, there were some male prisoners of war there who taught the women how to disable the bombs. So they got a little bit of satisfaction when they were able to do that. But again, an incredibly risky thing to do, an incredibly brave thing to do.

Yeah, yeah, I think it was. And then, you know, later when the Russians were getting closer and it was clearer that the Germans were losing the war, many of the Nazi guards took their prisoners on these notorious death marches. And my mother and her sister were amongst those being marched through the freezing cold. And at one point, they realized that they were actually running away from their liberators. The Russians were coming to liberate them and they were being forced to move away. So at one point, about 25 women all decided to run for it and they escaped the death march

by running in different directions into the woods. And that may well have saved her. So, yeah, that was pretty brave too. Just incredible stories of, you know, survival, really. Nomi, your mother was in prison. So tell us how that started, because she kind of almost made it through, didn't she? She almost was free the entire time. But it was 1944 that the Nazis caught up with her.

Correct. It was 1944. She was moved from Strasbourg to the southwest of France, Saint-Gignan, and the Nazis in Saint-Gignan, the southwest of France, also made their presence very much known by making entire families disappear and children being picked up the streets. There was a group called the French Resistance that were a brave group, mainly made up of young people, Jewish and non-Jewish, French people who fought against the Nazis. And my grandparents,

my mum's parents, were encouraged to send the children away to Switzerland, where they would be safe from the Nazis. And they made that decision. And in May 1944, the three children, my mum then 10, little René, Helen 13, and her little brother Joey, were picked up by a group leader unknown to my grandparents, unknown to the children. They had a little satchel with their best sabbat clothes in it. And they traversed France, being hidden in convents

where they were forced to convert to Christianity, threatened with death if they didn't. And then in Annecy, which is a beautiful town, they were met by the group leader Marianne Kahn. She was 22 years old, a secular Jewess from berlin and she embraced the children mom tells me little renee that was the first time in that journey of over two weeks that she felt safe and she said children it's a sunny day by then it was june 1944 i'll show you the lake let's go and you can see switzerland they were very close to the border and indeed she took the children and little Renée says the light was magical dancing on the lake and she saw the Alps across the lake and she could feel and sense and smell Switzerland. When they'd finished that

Marianne apologized to the children and said children we've missed the adjoining train. We have to now take a car. And on the way, they were arrested by the Germans with sniffer dogs and guns, barking at the group. By then, my mum had formed a group of 32 children of the ages of 2 to 18. And they asked who the responsible is. And Marianne said it was her. And she did say a white lie that these

weren't Jewish children these were children from the railway workers in Lyon where the station was being bombed and she was taking these children away from the bombings to safety when they the Germans said take us to that place that holiday camp and she did and the lady in charge was already waiting at the top of the stairs a burlesqueque lady, biggish lady, mum describes. And she shook her head and said she's not expecting these children. And then mum was imprisoned at the age of 10, as I say. And the three children were questioned daily by the Gestapo. Two Nazis, one Nazi, Gestapo Maya, aged in his 40s with, mum says, unnaturally piercing blue eyes, coming very close

to her, gun to her head, asking, are you Jewish? What's your name? What's your parents' name? What's your parents' address? Now, the parents' address, and this went like on a, you know, repeat, as we say today. Parents' address was very important to the Nazis because they wanted to deport these children's parents. Of course, the Nazis knew full well that the children were Jewish, and I saw that myself in a register that they'd kept. It's so important on this day of all days to remember these stories of recent history. Anita, you are now Director of Generation to Generation. Was your mother forthcoming in recounting her experience with you? Yes, she was.

There wasn't a time that my brother and I remember that she didn't talk about it. So, you know, from a very young age, we knew some of the detail. And then when I was about 10 years old um we went to Bournemouth for a holiday just the two of us and uh she decided to order breakfast in bed and she said now I'm going to tell you my story in detail and then she said um and one day I want you to tell my story I want you to write it and I want you to tell it. And the way she told me her story, I wasn't traumatised. I was snuggled up to her.

She was calm. Some of it was horrific. And, of course, she suffered. But in a way, I was empowered by it. And the fact that she asked me to make sure that her story is known and that stories of others are known is probably what got me, first of all, starting to present her story and write her story I wrote a book and then become part of this organization generation to generation which enables other children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of survivors to tell their family stories and today we go into schools we go into prisons we present these stories not just around Holocaust Memorial Day, but throughout the year.

In fact, today I am at a JFS school and they've given me a little room so that I can talk to you before I go and speak to their students. Well, we're very grateful you took the time out. Naomi, you went back to visit the town of Anmas, didn't you? There was a ceremony in honour of, in your honour, a plaque was unveiled as well. How difficult was that going back to where your mother, as you've just so graphically described, went through such a painful experience? My mother was made honorary citizen of Anmas and it actually came about by my mum wanting to thank the Lord Mayor. He was the other gentleman in the story after Marianne decided not to leave the children. She had a chance to leave the children. The resistance

knew she was in danger, that she was tortured, raped and shot and left in a ditch. And that was the Lord Mayor, Jean Defoe, who knew that the children were going to be shot too. Prison was full, railway lines weren't working, and they needed rid. And Jean Defoe decided to risk his own life and make a pact with the Gestapo, saying that he will facilitate their transport back to Germany if the Germans give the children to him.

And he had to sign a contract that any time the Germans return, he has to return, the Lord Mayor has to return the children to them. Mum went with me, we filmed, we were part of four families with a BBC documentary, my family, the Holocaust and me. And I retraced my mom's steps. And we met in Anmas where mom was made honorary citizen. I went into the prison. And I believe into the cell where mom was interrogated. People were very friendly. Mom spoke. And she got asked by all the people in Anmas, will you return to Anmas? And mom turned to me and said, they they don't understand Anmas isn't a city that I visited my Anmas was prison my place of horror trauma and fear and uh but I understand it was a beautiful moment with the um the grandson of the mayor tell us that story I must tell you that because we

catalogued it in pictures. You wouldn't believe it if you hadn't seen it. That was the great, great grandson, little Sasha, age six, of the Lord Mayor, who met my mother in the beginning of this very long day and embraced my mother and never left my mother's side. We toured the city of Anmas to commemorate the Lord Mayor and Marianne and my mother spoke outside the town hall and he just sat on her lap and snuggled in throughout the whole day. And I asked his granddad, is Sasha normally so outgoing? And he said no. And I felt, although I don't believe in spirits as such or anything but I did believe that the Lord Mayor who'd saved my mum was somehow with my mum and helped to support her besides us

as a family through little Sasha and little Sasha did give my mum a lot of strength and love and mum managed to return that fully to him. It's a lovely, lovely story. It really is. Just a final word from both of you on how this oral history, the fact that both of your mothers decided it was important that you should know at a pretty young age what they'd gone through. How did it affect Anita, how she lived her life, do you think? And how does it inform how you live your life now well my mother definitely needed to express herself and she found language the english language difficult and so she did it through sculpture and it really helped her express her subconscious feelings but not only it gave her a mission because not only was she able through her sculpture to remember her family um um who were murdered 10 young children under the age of 13 from her family who were murdered but also to look forward to the

future and she became very involved with the Council for Christians and Jews. Her sculptures were placed in churches and cathedrals, and she was able to express and promote understanding between faiths. And that became incredibly important to her. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us on such an important day. That is Anita Peleg, director of Generation to Generation. And you heard also from Noemi Lopien, daughter of Holocaust survivor René Bornstein. Thank you both so much for joining us.

Thank you for everybody who's got in touch with the programme so far. We were talking about banter, male banter earlier on with the comments that win evans who was on the strictly come dancing tour at the moment had to apologize for joe says read the discussion of win evans i feel the pornified culture we live in and the associated misogyny fuels and normalizes the expression of this banter and this texter john harris doctor and psychotherapist listening to your talk talk today, mentioning banter. Banter is the way men largely shame each other. It is not funny and is always a jostling for power between men to demean men who are perceived to have more power.

It's not funny, friendly or innocent. John, thank you for your contribution. 84844 is the text number if you would like to get in touch with the programme today. Now, here's a question. Have you got a book inside you? My next guest knew she did, so she quit her job. She moved to rural Ireland and began writing. What she produced is quite honestly a stunning debut novel. Confessions, and it begins in the aftermath of 9-11, but travels from history into modern day to follow the lives of three generations of women. And the book's author is Catherine Airey, and she joins me now. Good morning. Good morning, Claire. Thanks for having me on the show. Thank you so much for coming in. I loved it. Thanks. Honest to goodness, it's like you've

been doing it all your life. This is your first novel. So talk us through, you always thought you had a book in you and you quit your job and decided to get it out. So what were you doing? I was working in the civil service as a copywriter and it was a really nice job and I was reading and writing all day, but I'd always wanted to write a novel and it just wasn't happening in my spare time. I just wasn't getting it done. And that was making me quite sort of unhappy once you've had quite a few years of doing that and knowing that you're not quite doing what you want to be doing. So I think after the lockdowns had happened, I thought about that quite a bit. And I decided that I was going to quit my job and move to Ireland, which is where my grandmother is from in County Cork.

So I cycled to Ireland because I wanted to bring my bike with me because I didn't have a car. So I decided to cycle to Ireland and then after I arrived, I started writing. Did you get the ferry to Cork? Oh yeah, I didn't cycle across the sea. I did cycle right onto the ferry, which was quite exciting. Yeah, I just cycled on like I was a car. The start of my new life.

And you know, mentally, you weren't in a great spot, were you? You were quite open about that during lockdown. Is that the point where you thought, I've really got to do something else? Yeah, I think my mental health had sort of progressively been getting worse and worse. And, you know, I'd see my friends and it sort of felt like they were, they were quite happy. They'd complain about their jobs, but they were very, they meant a lot to them, their careers. And, you know, they were just sort of quite motivated day to day, whereas I think I found my own motivation really slipping. Yeah. Okay. So you went there, where did you end up and where did you start this new life,

this new journey of attempting to be an author? So I went on a website called Workaway, which is where you can do volunteer work in exchange for bed and board. And I sort of matched up with a woman called Anne who lived down in Baltimore. And she was restoring an old wooden boat, big wooden boat. And I messaged her just because the way she'd written her advert was just so friendly and really lovely. And I could remember going on holiday there as a child to the similar area. So I sent her a message and I said, I don't know anything about boat making, but I'm cycling and I don't really know when I'm going to arrive either. And she said, you don't need to know anything about it. I didn't know anything about it before I started doing this either.

And just get here when you get here. Oh, goodness. This is fantastic to listen to so many people listening to this will be so inspired by this so let's talk about the book it begins in the aftermath of 9-11 doesn't it with a young female character why that event? I think it's probably not a coincidence that at the point when I was moving and doing the cycling, it was September 2021. So it was 20 years after 9-11 had happened. And 9-11 has always really stuck with me, I think because I was eight years old when it happened. So I'm a lot younger than the character who we meet in at the beginning of Confessions. But it was the first big world

disaster that really stuck with me as a child. I can remember my mum picking me up from school. And then when we got home, watching it on the TV, and it was just playing over and over and over again. And it was the first time as a child, I was sort of aware that the world was so big, and that such big, bad things could happen. And it really frightened me. So yeah, I was just very, I'd always watched all of the documentaries over the years, but I wanted to tell a story that was looking at it from a slightly different angle,

particularly maybe for generations where if you were younger than I was, you wouldn't have remembered it at all. And I wanted to look at it more from the side of what it was like for an ordinary person in New York, particularly in the days that followed. Okay, I know you're going to read us. I think you're going to read us the first page. Yeah. So who's the character who's speaking here? So here we

are meeting Cora Brady who's 16 years old in September 2001. Take it away. You got to get it up on your Kindle. Sorry. Here we go. Here we go. Okay. Two days after she disappeared, most of my mother's body washed up in Flushing Creek. The morgue had comfy armchairs in the lobby, and I can remember being annoyed that it didn't take longer for my father to identify the body. I was reading Little Women and would quite happily have sat there all day. I was eight. Almost exactly eight years later, my father jumped from the 104th floor of the World Trade Center, North Tower.

I don't know that he jumped for sure, but it's the story I've told myself. I saw the photo of the falling man the next morning in the New York Times, along with everyone else left in the world. As well as that famous one, the photographer captured 11 others of the same man falling.

Years later, when it became possible for a person to do such a thing, I inspected each photo, then pieced them together like a kineograph to see the man in motion, tumbling over and over. For a while it was accepted that the man had been a pastry chef

working in the windows on the World Restaurant. Later they said he was a sound engineer, brother to a singer who had been in Village People. They never said it was my father. I never told anyone that I thought it could be him, not just because the chances of it being true were next to none, but because I knew I wouldn't have been able to handle being proved wrong. Honestly, so much intrigue just in the first page and so many answers that the reader needs to find a solution to. And what follows is an incredibly woven story. It's

centered on the lives of women. We have Moira Roisin, both sisters growing up in 1970s Ireland, Cora, who we've just heard from there, who's in New York, and Laika in modern day Ireland. And it's all interwoven. And it's funny, we were talking to the first female president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, on the programme earlier. And a lot of the things she was campaigning for, you cover in this book that, you know, the repression of women, the lack of access to abortion and birth control. How important are those issues for you that you brought them to play in this book? So you foreground them. Well, I think moving to Ireland, it made me realise that I'd

always taken those things totally for granted growing up in England. Because in England, abortion has been legal for many decades, but it was only legalised in 2018 in Ireland. So when I moved over, and then particularly writing about these young characters, I sort of realised that my friends, people who are the same age as I was in Ireland, hadn't had access to abortion when when they were younger. So I think I was really thinking about that and thinking about the fact that I'd grown up with this incredible freedom myself. But that also there's sort of still so far to go in terms of having freedom as a woman, but still feeling like you're not really in control of your choices as a woman. And, you know, it's a bit more complicated than maybe than just getting the rights stuff legally sorted out. Well, I know you got a very healthy advance for this one.

I can understand why there was a bidding war. And you're working on your follow up now? Yeah, working on the follow up novel uh I'm finding it quite difficult I think I've got a bit of that second novel uh anxiety it does feel like quite a lot to look up to but um because I do I did get a very healthy advance amount I'm also just really grateful that I can work now as a writer and I want to put a lot of uh time and effort into it well we're very glad we're very glad you're you're doing that as well. It's an absolutely stunning debut. Catherine, thank you so much for coming into the Women's Hour studio

and talking us through it and reading us a little bit as well. Catherine Airey, the book Confessions is out now. Thank you to all of my guests this morning on Women's Hour. On tomorrow's programme, reality star Vicky Pattinson

will be here to talk about her new documentary on deepfake porn videos. And I'll also be chatting to singer Kim Wilde about her new documentary on deep fake porn videos. And I'll also be chatting to singer Kim Wilde about her new album. Join us tomorrow from 10. That's all from today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. There's a divide in American politics between those who think democracy is in peril and those who think it's already been subverted, hollowed out from the inside. As President Trump returns to the White House,

we go through the looking glass into a world where nothing is as it seems. The Coming Storm from BBC Radio 4. Listen on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in.

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