The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis is a deeply personal and emotionally charged biography of your grandmother, Liesl Herbst, who went from being Austria’s national tennis champion in the 1930s to a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. Why was it important for you to write this book?

In 2018 my daughter, who was a student at the time, asked me about her family heritage and I realised I knew very little. So I took my three children to Vienna, and I started my research. I soon realised that what I’d planned to be a book for my children, could be something for a wider audience. It just grew from there.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

Inherited trauma and survivors’ guilt. I realised that my grandmother and mother both suffered from survivors’ guilt and trauma, and they had unwittingly passed these down to the next generation. Writing the book has been cathartic for me. It is not just those who survived the Holocaust who might feel this way, but anyone who has survived war or a tragedy – but their friends or family have not.

What was the most challenging part of writing your grandmother’s biography, and what was the most rewarding?

Most challenging was having to travel to the places in the Czech Republic and Slovakia where my grandparents were born and where my grandmother’s family was murdered. It was upsetting visiting the concentration camp near Prague where my grandmother’s mother and oldest sister were killed, and the forest in Slovakia where my grandmother’s other sister and her family were massacred among 700 people. It was also difficult searching museum archives in languages I do not speak or read. Most rewarding was the people I met in those places who gave up their leisure time to help me and were all incredibly helpful and friendly.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your book?

Even in the darkest situations, there is hope.

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