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Inherited Trauma
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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In London, though initially stripped of their Austrian passports and rendered stateless aliens, both Liesl and her daughter Dorli competed at Wimbledon. They remain the only mother and daughter ever to have played doubles together at Wimbledon.
This moving story of escape and survival is told by Liesl’s grand-daughter, Dorli’s daughter. Some of the story, the author heard first-hand from her grandmother; the rest, she has meticulously researched over many years in four countries. It is as much a search for the author’s own identity as for her own children and grandchildren to ensure that their remarkable family history is never lost again.
Illustrated throughout with family photographs and original documents, this is a story of survival against terrible odds, an inspiring tale of resilience and hope.
The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis
Felice Hardy’s The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis is a deeply personal and emotionally charged biography of her grandmother, Liesl Herbst, who went from being Austria’s national tennis champion in the 1930s to a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazi persecution. The book is part historical investigation, part memoir, and part tribute, tracing Liesl’s life from her privileged upbringing in Moravia through the horrors of World War II and eventually to her quiet resilience in post-war Britain. What sets it apart is the way it weaves together family history, European politics, sport, and trauma, without ever losing its heart.
Reading this book felt like rummaging through an old trunk in an attic and finding not just letters and photos but whole lives. Hardy’s prose is warm and immediate, but the subject matter cuts deep. The opening chapter alone, describing Kristallnacht from the viewpoint of her grandfather David, is as vivid and harrowing as any historical account I’ve read. I could feel my stomach clench reading about a doctor being humiliated and urinated on in the streets of Vienna, and later seeing Liesl’s cousin Emil beaten and carted away. Hardy doesn’t soften the truth; she hands it to you raw, but wrapped in compassion.
I was especially struck by Liesl’s emotional restraint. Despite witnessing and experiencing so much loss, she managed to carry herself with grace, never speaking much about the past. In one powerful scene, Hardy recalls asking her grandmother about her family, only to see her flinch and change the subject. The silence spoke louder than any confession. Yet Liesl wasn’t just a survivor; she was also a star. Her tennis career, glossed over in most other narratives, takes center stage in chapters like “Tennis Champion,” where she goes from the clay courts of Europe to playing at Wimbledon. I found myself cheering her on, not just in matches, but in life.
What makes this book resonate most is Hardy’s own journey of discovery. Her transformation from someone hiding her Jewish roots to someone reclaiming them with pride is its own compelling arc. She brings an honesty to her process, admitting she didn’t ask questions when she could have, or that she felt ashamed at times to even mention her family’s past. These raw confessions gave the book its emotional core. Her visits to Vienna, Krnov, and Bratislava read like ghost hunts, piecing together a broken mirror, shard by shard.
By the end, I felt like I knew Liesl, but also like I knew Felice. The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis is more than just a Holocaust biography. It’s for anyone grappling with identity, silence, and inherited memory. I’d recommend this to readers of historical nonfiction, lovers of family sagas, and especially those curious about the forgotten women of sport. It broke my heart, and it patched it up again.
Pages: 321 | ASIN : B0BYQSDVXG
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