Seventy years ago today, the prisoners of Auschwitz were liberated. Irene Weiss is one of those survivors. She was 13 years old when she was captured in Czechoslovakia, her long blond braids shaved off and her family killed in the gas chambers. Weiss sat down with me to share her inspirational story. Remarkably, it was her vivid daydreams that helped her stay alive. Listen to our conversation here:
“There will never be any hate or discrimination after this, because we will tell the world what happened: This is what a 13-year-old was daydreaming about,” she told me.
Irene shared some powerful descriptions of her time at Auschwitz. Here are some excerpts of our conversation.
On the sights and sounds:
“At night we could hear the steam engine, which makes a lot of hissing noise. We’d hear the whistle of the train arriving. Then we could hear the hum of human beings, a huge hum of sounds. And then I’d look up the road and see them coming: a huge column of women and children and elderly moving toward the gate of the gas chamber…. You could see flames, like the whole forest was burning…. The screams were blood curdling. I would stuff my fingers in my ears. I couldn’t stand it.”
On how she dealt with the pain:
“I cannot say to you that all I wanted to do is die. No! I pushed that out of my immediate grief. It was like a stone — you know, without feeling. It’s the way we deal with death…. We grieve and find a way to distance ourselves from the real, painful part of grief. You have to do that; otherwise you have to stop living, or you cry all the time … or commit suicide. Some did…. It was quite easy, by just touching the electrified fence.”
On never crying:
Weiss has never let herself cry about her experiences, even to this day, despite having her beautiful braids of long, blond hair shaved off; being told by her fellow prisoners that the rest of her family had been killed (they just pointed to the chimneys); and finding a shawl belonging to her late aunt as she sorted through the mountains of prisoners’ belongings.
I asked her if she ever cries for joy, for example when she saw her children getting married.
“Well I do experience great joy from my children, endless joy,” she said. “Like all parents, it’s mixed with a little bit of fear that it should last and nothing should spoil it.”
One day soon there will be no more survivors who can tell us their story, which is all the more reason to listen closely and learn from brave women like Irene Weiss. What would it take to make her daydream a reality?
To find out more about Irene Weiss’ remarkable story, go to the Holocaust Museum site.
Diane von Furstenberg says that the greatest gift she’s ever been given was the lesson that fear is not an option.
With 2015 off to a fearful start in Paris and its impact reverberating globally, especially within Jewish communities, it’s a lesson worth exploring.
I sat down with von Furstenberg, Queen of the Wrap Dress and the DVF brand, and found a down-to-earth woman with a powerful story that resonates far beyond the world of fashion.
As a small child, von Furstenberg learned her lesson in a rather brutal way from her mother, a Holocaust survivor.
“She’d lock me in a closet and wait til I stopped being afraid,” says von Furstenberg.
Her mother experienced atrocities at Auschwitz and her challenging life shaped von Furstenberg’s to this day.
“Fear is not an option is everything: fear of flying, living, confronting the truth…fear of anything,” says von Furstenberg, who has made some courageous choices in her personal and business life, as chronicled in her new book “The Woman I Wanted To Be.”
She recounts the many periods of self doubt and challenges she faced as her career soared then flopped, rose again from the ashes, battled to stay relevant and then triumphed in China and globally, ensuring DVF a place in the design history books. She’s done it all: married (and divorced) a prince, been painted by Andy Warhol, made front page of Newsweek, survived cancer, faced bankruptcy and become a doting grandmother.
In a conversation with Maria Shriver the day before our interview, she urged women to be hard on themselves. I asked her what she meant by that. Although some journalists claim she’s impossible to interview, DVF answered my question directly.
“The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself,” says von Furstenberg. “See yourself for what you really are…for the good and the bad, whatever. Once you have accepted that, then you can also begin to like yourself.”
Along with Tina Brown and Sally Field, von Furstenberg is part of Vital Voices, a network that supports female community and business leaders around the world, both politically and financially.
It’s amazing who you bump into at Silicon Valley conferences! Last week, it was Harry Hamlin of Mad Men fame. Turns out he’s a huge fan of Tesla Motors and Elon Musk. I put my Mad Men zeal aside and we talked internal combustion vs electric cars; the need for clean energy and why he thinks nuclear fusion, not wind and solar, is the answer. (Here’s a little primer on nuclear fusion if, like me, your physics is a wee bit rusty).
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“I will never buy another internal combustion engine car,” says Harry Hamlin. The Mad Men star is completely enamoured by his Tesla Model S, and says it outperforms any car he’s ever driven, and he’s driven them all during his long and tumultuous acting career: from Aston Martin to Ferrari and Lamborghini to Porsche.
We discuss his vision for a clean energy future and he gives us a lesson from Einstein on nuclear fusion. You may notice a big smile on my face when he launches into an explanation of E=MC Squared. It was one of the most surreal moments in my eventful interviewing career. Hamlin may be a pretty face, but he’s also quite the intellectual.
He eschewed questions about his investments in clean energy, however Michael Kanellos of Forbes has written about the secretive company, Tri-Alpha Energy, with which Hamlin is connected. Kanellos also points out, that although nuclear fusion offers a tantalizingly abundant source of clean power, it’s not that easy to produce at scale. Hamlin may find it easy to “drive green” but the green energy bit is still a work in progress.
In other news, Hamlin confirmed that Mad Men is “an ongoing project,” so I think we safely can conclude he survives this weekend’s series finale. He also told me about his upcoming independent movies:
“The Erotic Fire of the Unthinkable” – in which he plays “the anti-hero.” Hamlin claims it’s not as X-rated as his sounds.
“The Fourth Noble Truth” – This movie about Buddhism recently won a prize at the Sonoma Film Festival.
Last night, I caught up with acclaimed journalist Lesley Stahl to discuss Barbara Walters’ retirement. Here’s Stahl’s tribute to her television colleague and fellow crasher of the boys’ club:
“Barbara has been a pioneer all along,” says Stahl. “Even in hanging in there to the age of 84, she’s still leading the way.”
The 60 Minutes Correspondent and former White House Correspondent for the Carter, Reagan and George H. Bush administration gives a historic perspective on Barbara Walters’ groundbreaking role in TV journalism.
“When she started, when I started, it was generally assumed women couldn’t last in television news beyond the age of 40,” says the Emmy award winning Stahl. “Then it was 50, then Barbara reached 60…Barbara is 84, it’s fabulous!”
At 72, the vivacious Lesley Stahl continues to create newsmaking reports for 60 Minutes as well as Years of Living Dangerously. In her early days, producers told her to ”never, ever, ever smile,” she even wore glasses to look more serious. But today, the glasses are off and she frequently shows off her dynamic personality on air. She famously wrote in her biography, Reporting Live, that when she started work at 60 Minutes in 1991, joining septuagenarian colleagues like Morley Safer, she felt younger, “There simply is not a better job or a better shop in all of television news – possibly in all of journalism.”
The interview was recorded back stage at the Flint Center in Cupertino, minutes before Lesley Stahl took the stage with her 60 Minutes colleague Bob Simon, for Foothill College’s Celebrity Forum Series. Special thanks to host, Dick Henning and Foothill College President Judy Miner for their warm welcome.
Check back soon at Fresh Dialogues for Part 2 of my interview with Lesley Stahl about climate change and her eye witness account of the dramatic Arctic ice melt.
PBS NewsHour has recently updated its format with the first all female anchor team, refreshed its website and added a weekend program. How will it change in the next twelve months? Longtime PBS correspondent and San Francisco media personality Spencer Michels shares the long view and asks a key question:
“What can we put on the air that will get people to watch?”
Michels describes how the media landscape has changed dramatically since he became a journalist fifty years ago. As well as anchoring the KQED show “Express” and working on “Evening Edition” with Belva Davis, Michels has been a PBS correspondent and now also contributes to KQED’s latest news show, KQED Newsroom with Thuy Vu and Scott Shafer.
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Before our video interview, Michels shared a poignant memory from his childhood; an experience that helped plant the seeds for his journey in journalism. He recalls being a child in San Francisco during the Second World War.
“I was without my father for the first three grades in school…it was tough,” says Michels. “I still remember the day that my father returned from the war. It was very dramatic. He drove up in a car. I was at school on the second or third floor and there he was. I was eight years old and hadn’t seen him in three years.”
I asked Michels to describe the scene.
“I did run down and I did embrace him on the street. It was an emotional experience…I’m sure there were tears,” says Michels. “After that, everything changed.”
Those three years were formative for Michels, who went on to explore the world during a remarkable career in journalism. After working for PBS NewsHour as a national correspondent for 30 years, he was laid off last year during a major cost cutting exercise. As weekend anchor, Hari Sreenivasan recently explained to Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, “facts are expensive.” That is, doing intelligent, original journalism doesn’t come cheap, especially in the Bay Area.
It’s a tongue in cheek, behind the scenes look at the work of a PBS NewsHour correspondent. The low budget, goofy juxtaposition between Goldbloom and his demanding PBS NewsHour producer, Jordan Smith, is downright hilarious at times. On air Introductions by news heavyweights like Judy Woodruff, Gwen Ifill and Hari Sreenivasan lend gravitas to the whole endeavor. PBS NewsHour hopes it will help to capture the exodus of its audience from television to online streaming and grab more younger viewers in the process. It looks like a winning formula.
At Fresh Dialogues, I’m used to getting Fresh Answers, but as you’ll see in this interview, I also got some unsolicited media tips from a pro.
Michels was too kind to comment on my excessive head nodding, but I will definitely be working on that.
Weiss has never let herself cry about her experiences, even to this day, despite having her beautiful braids of long, blond hair shaved off; being told by her fellow prisoners that the rest of her family had been killed (they just pointed to the chimneys); and finding a shawl belonging to her late aunt as she sorted through the mountains of prisoners’ belongings.
