Chris Hadfield

From Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the west London Synagogue:

I had some minor surgery on my foot last week- which means I’ve had to keep it up in the air. So I’ve been grounded! So I’ve read a lot. One story I read was the life story of a man Moriz Scheyer, which was only discovered recently. Scheyer’s step grandson was clearing out his father’s attic by chance, because of a house move, and found a copy of the book in a suitcase, although his father had thought he’d destroyed it.

Scheyer was a professional writer; he knew lots of very famous people in Vienna. But he was a Jew, and his connections didn’t help. His story is of the terrible time he had escaping the Nazis, first in Austria, and then in France. He tells of two concentration camps and how he knew fear, dirt, hunger, despair and illness, and how he made friends with other people, often brave and brilliant, who did not survive. And all this took place until he was hidden by some wonderful brave French Franciscan nuns in 1943, and helped by Resistance members who became his family’s lifelong friends. And that’s when he began to write his extraordinarily vivid account.

This week, we’re encouraging young people to write their 500 word stories. Scheyer was a writer- he had to write his story down. We human beings need our stories. People sitting round a fire telling stories in the ancient world were no different from us. They used their stories to explain who they were. Scheyer wanted people to know who he was, and what had happened to him. He wanted to pay tribute to those who helped him survive. The Hebrew Bible often tells us: “… You shall tell your son in that day….” I’d include the daughters myself, but the point is clear. We tell stories for a reason. Without our stories, we would be lost… That’s why 500 word stories matter. Telling a story makes us feel human.