0:00

Hello, forgiver. When I came to the United States at age 23,

0:05

I had no idea that the Holocaust even happened because under the apartheid system,

0:12

we were not allowed to learn about it in school.

0:15

You can guess my surprise and even disbelief when I was asked to teach a unit

0:21

on the Holocaust as a high school teacher.

0:24

In this episode, I introduce a fifth grade teacher from Canada,

0:29

who wrote a book about her relationship with a Holocaust survivor.

0:35

This episode is a tribute to Eva

0:38

Olson, but also an appreciation of Teresa Eppig, the author of this book,

0:45

who reminds us that it's really important for us to remember what happened and

0:51

to never repeat history. Before I dive into the content, just a reminder to go to my website,

0:57

side, click on a gift for you, and sign up for my weekly email.

1:02

I hope you can join my community. I'd love to get to know you better. Let's dive in.

1:08

Hello, forgiver. Welcome to the Forgiveness is for You podcast.

1:13

I'm Dr. Karen Silva, Forgiveness Guide and Catholic Mindset Coach.

1:17

I've spent 30 years in therapy for sexual, physical, emotional,

1:21

and racial trauma, but therapy could only take me so far.

1:26

I believe that there's freedom in forgiveness, but we cannot do it alone.

1:30

Do you struggle forgiving yourself or others? Are you ashamed of what happened to you in the past?

1:36

Do you harbor unforgiveness toward the adults who were supposed to protect you but didn't?

1:41

Do you resent a whole class of people because you were discriminated against?

1:46

On this podcast, we talk about all things forgiveness, what it is,

1:51

what it's not, and how you can begin to forgive yourself, others, and God.

1:56

Allow me to be your forgiveness guide. Let's begin. Hello, forgivers.

2:02

Today, I have with me Teresa Epic, author of A Legacy of Love,

2:08

How a Holocaust Survivor Inspired Me to Live with Greater Freedom and Purpose. Welcome, Teresa.

2:16

Thank you so much. It's so great to be here. Can you tell us about yourself

2:20

and what inspired you to write this book?

2:24

Absolutely. So I am an educator.

2:29

This year I teach grade five. And I, at one point, had the opportunity to invite a Holocaust survivor to come

2:37

speak to some students in our area.

2:40

And from there, we developed this beautiful friendship for the last almost a

2:46

decade now, as Eva's turning 100, actually, this coming fall. all.

2:53

And just in the course of our friendship, I was so inspired by this woman,

2:59

her testimony to resilience.

3:01

Her ability to forgive and just the love that she shared with so many people

3:07

so freely that I really wanted to write a tribute to her.

3:11

And I remember thinking about that early on in our friendship,

3:15

but now was just the moment.

3:18

It was just this feeling like I need to do it now. Now it's time.

3:22

So it has been such a pleasure now to have been able to write this book as a

3:26

tribute to Eva and share it with her and being able to celebrate it together.

3:30

So that's a little bit about me. Yes, and you're right. Now is the time because they are getting up in years

3:38

and we're starting to lose that opportunity to get the story from people who

3:44

experienced that event in history.

3:47

What a gift. This is such a gift to us. I read this book and I just kept going

3:52

back with a pen and underlining things.

3:55

So I'm going to be asking you to talk about some of what I read.

3:59

I'm going to just read this little passage here on page 10.

4:03

And this chapter is about the legacy of love.

4:07

And he said, hatred inspires fear.

4:11

Love inspires hope. To a heart that could have been a hardened and bitter with

4:17

the pain of so much loss, Eva chose the road of love.

4:22

She chose love so that she could live.

4:26

Tell us about how you came to write this particular passage in here.

4:33

What was it that inspired you about her? I think partly with Eva.

4:38

Even if I look at her surviving the Holocaust, you know, entering in as a 17

4:44

or 18-year-old girl, just when her life was about to really take off,

4:50

being bounced around from Auschwitz to a number of war camps.

4:53

Even that experience alone would have been enough to be able to write that about

4:58

her, that she didn't become bitter. She has now this beautiful mission she's embraced of speaking to our next generation

5:05

about the importance of acceptance and forgiveness and not hating and choosing love.

5:13

So that, I think, alone stands as a testament to this amazing woman's resilience.

5:20

But Eva's had other challenges that have entered into her life.

5:25

She was widowed at a very young age when she had, you know, survived the Holocaust

5:32

and these experiences there. She had met someone that, you know, they were able to get married and start

5:39

their family and start a new life in Canada, moving way over from Sweden where

5:44

they had met and then starting a new life here.

5:47

And then she actually lost her husband when he was driving to work and a drunk

5:52

driver hit him. So, you know, there was all these challenges and then I could go on.

5:58

She has many other challenges, even as a young single immigrant woman who never

6:04

had the opportunity to learn how to read or go to school as a young girl,

6:08

as that wasn't something that was part of their religious tradition growing up.

6:13

The girls didn't get a chance to learn how to go to school or even to read.

6:18

So she had a choice there too.

6:21

I think she was so courageous in that moment because she said, I had the opportunity.

6:26

I could have died with that man who was the first person after this horrible

6:32

experience of the Holocaust to really show me this beautiful love and give me

6:36

this new hope of a future. But she said, I thought of my son and I thought there's something more important

6:42

that I have to live for. And that's my family and their future.

6:46

So, you know, all of all of the steps along the way, she had these choices.

6:52

And she over and over again chose love and to live for someone else.

7:00

And even her and her sister were the only two survivors from their immediate family.

7:05

And she was able to encourage her sister to survive and to stay hopeful for

7:13

her through all of these horrible experiences.

7:16

Experiences and then at a certain point when she made

7:20

different decisions than her sister did they parted ways

7:23

and she was still able to choose love

7:26

and and really say you know I love my sister and she helped me get through the

7:30

camps but she's allowed to be free so you know she could have chose to be bitter

7:34

like wow my only surviving family member but you know our relationship's broken

7:39

now and and still she still loves her and she still treats her as like that's still a treasure,

7:45

even though she's not a part of her day-to-day life or wasn't.

7:49

She has since passed away. I talk about on this podcast how one can forgive and still love at a distance.

7:58

And so she's really exemplifying what that means is when you make a different

8:03

choice that doesn't align with the beliefs in your family,

8:07

even if you have one remaining family member and that person chooses to not have you in their life,

8:14

that you can still have that choice of loving them and forgiving them,

8:18

but loving them at a distance.

8:22

Yes, which was not easy for Eva, but in the end, she said that's...

8:28

What gave her freedom just to say, I still love you, but we're not ever going

8:32

to agree on certain things. Yes. Wow. That is beautiful.

8:38

Another part of this book that really touched me was this concept of justice.

8:47

And you write here, 87 members of Eva's family died in the Holocaust. cost.

8:54

She went through these experiences that were so painful, and she remained silent for 50 years.

9:03

I cannot even imagine what that must have been like for her.

9:08

Yeah, I think it was just very painful.

9:11

She shared with me that a lot of those years had nightmares or,

9:17

you know, there would be things and she would just kind of have to get up the

9:23

next day and still live life and still work hard.

9:26

You know, she did have different people to help her through that journey too,

9:30

but it wasn't something that most people in her life knew about.

9:35

And you say here, she also suffered the loss of those years and the emotional,

9:39

mental, physical, and spiritual costs of that traumatic experience.

9:45

And then you ask the question, could Hitler pay the price of death for the destruction

9:51

that he set into motion through propagating racist ideologies from his position as a leader?

9:58

Would that suffice? Would it bring about justice?

10:03

And you say, no, it wouldn't. So what was her message around justice?

10:08

I think with Eva, she always really understands there's things that she has

10:17

authority over and things that she doesn't.

10:21

And just hearing her share about the loss of her family members and how much each one meant to her,

10:30

even the ones that were very different from her, even if Hitler's ideas would

10:37

have just meant the loss of one of those family members, you know,

10:40

he couldn't pay the price. Just knowing that that was millions upon millions upon millions of people's

10:48

lives that this man's ideas ended in in their destruction it's almost like.

10:57

That justice is something beyond us to even imagine, like what those people

11:02

deserve, like they deserve life. They deserve the chance to live out their days, each one of them.

11:09

So even I just think of how Eva shares, somebody had asked her,

11:14

like, would you shoot Hitler if you saw him?

11:17

And she would have never even thought of that because it wouldn't have paid the price.

11:22

It wouldn't bring back her loved one, loved ones.

11:25

It wouldn't have made anything better

11:29

because there there was still that

11:32

unspeakable loss like you she always

11:35

talks about how people are irreplaceable right and every person brings a gift

11:40

her understanding of justice is how should it be what is right and i think we

11:46

all have that innate like sense like even our gut when something's not right

11:49

we know well that that shouldn't be, that's not just, that's not fair,

11:54

that's not as it should be, you know, and even just that simple understanding

11:59

of how important each person's life is, how precious each person's life is.

12:05

And I think Eva really meets justice from her own life experience and her own

12:12

journey just as a person wanting to spread what is good and do what is right.

12:20

And I think this section in the book just really speaks to what I've talked

12:25

about before on this podcast, is that forgiveness is always radical.

12:31

Forgiveness is not diminishing the pain or forgetting the wrong that was done.

12:36

Forgiveness is setting a person free from a debt they cannot pay.

12:41

It is surrendering the other person and releasing them from paying a debt that justice would demand.

12:47

The bigger the debt, the more radical forgiveness is. Wow.

12:53

And you say here, Eva's forgiveness is radical. Her forgiveness was courageous,

12:58

but it was also practical.

13:01

She did not want to live in a cage of bitterness.

13:05

She wanted to live with a heart free to love and to move forward in life.

13:11

And what are the fruits of that for you, You especially as a friend.

13:15

Oh, I think that Eve is always moving from me to we. Like she's always asking,

13:20

how are you? How is your family? She's always ready to share a laugh or, you know, tell about the good things happening in her life.

13:29

So every time that I talk to her, I feel like I'm filled with life. Yes.

13:33

I'm not sitting there thinking like, oh, our conversation makes us feel heavy.

13:38

No, it's full of joy. It's full of life.

13:41

It's full of love. And she's just, I remember one birthday, she was talking

13:46

about this beautiful lady at the drugstore who got her chocolates.

13:49

And she said, she always gets me chocolates. Isn't she a lovely person?

13:52

And it just made me think, wow, there's so many lovely people in my life too.

13:57

So it's always pointing up. it's always like bringing

14:00

life and joy and new energy and and i think

14:04

really that's the life that she has chosen and

14:08

and really battled to to receive

14:12

and to build right like that was something that brick by

14:15

brick she had to make those choices little by

14:18

little and she had to process her pain she had to even

14:21

every time she speaks she has to

14:24

enter back into those places of pain and she

14:27

even and did go back to Auschwitz and to the

14:30

places where she grew up and just you know the heartbreak of

14:33

that so she's she's walked this journey

14:36

to very painful places but when

14:39

she's with the people even presenting she will share

14:42

her experience but she always is there to bring life and always hope so I think

14:48

you know the work that she's done and the courage she's had and the forgiveness

14:52

that she She has had to walk through the fire to be able to give others so courageously,

15:00

has allowed her to have the freedom just to love and to bring so much life and so much joy.

15:06

Yes, and I can see that. I feel that when I'm reading this book and I can feel

15:12

how her presence in your life has really transformed how you see the world.

15:18

Do you want to talk a little bit about that from your perspective?

15:23

Yes, I'd love to share that. So often in my own journey,

15:28

I have struggled with trying to look at things through a little microscope and

15:33

trying so hard to do things the right way or the perfect way,

15:38

you know, and thinking, okay, that is going to be the thing that brings what's good to me.

15:44

And just in the stumbles of life, being able to see Eva's greater vision,

15:50

her resilience to go through so much and see the light on the other side and

15:56

to do it loving the people in her life the whole way through.

16:00

I think that's just given me so much hope and so much of almost like this little,

16:08

little, I don't know if it's like a voice inside, but this sense,

16:12

like if Eva could go through. So many hard things, growing up in poverty with difficult circumstances,

16:19

you know, accepting the path and her family's best for her, even if she had different ideas,

16:25

surviving through the Holocaust, losing the love of her life,

16:28

who she felt like showed her what unconditional love was like,

16:33

being a single mom and raising her son and, you know, also still experiencing racism,

16:38

you know, as she was trying to make a new life for herself here.

16:42

And then always throughout that

16:45

and she never really pretends that she lives it

16:48

perfectly because she said you know I'm still learning and I'm 99 and

16:52

when I'm 100 I'm still gonna be learning you know but just

16:55

to think wow like I don't have to lose love

16:59

my love I don't have to lose my life and

17:02

I don't have to be stuck in either these

17:05

little cages I create for myself self or or

17:09

worried about you know no matter what happens

17:12

on the outside we can still love we can

17:15

still choose to look for the good we can

17:18

still choose gratitude and a spirit of giving and generosity because Eva did

17:23

and so I think it's helped my perspective in those moments of struggle when

17:27

it's want to like go back into the microscope and and really almost sometimes

17:32

it's easy to get caught up in that struggle,

17:35

but then to look out and say, you know what? I have an opportunity to love today. I have so much to be grateful for. I'm alive.

17:42

Pardon me. I've lived another day and this is my gift.

17:46

And whatever this gift brings, maybe I could be a gift and maybe I could bring

17:51

the light when there's a lot of darkness around me.

17:55

Eva's really given me that conviction and that,

18:00

example as a role model of really how do we live through the hard stuff?

18:03

Well, we just take one step at a time and we look at what we have and we look at what we can get.

18:08

In a nutshell, those are some things that really, I would say,

18:11

transform my life because they've transformed my thinking and helped me to look

18:15

outside myself when there's been temptations just to kind of hide away inside

18:20

in my own perspective. Beautiful.

18:23

So I present retreats on forgiveness.

18:27

And what I actually teach is that we can shift our perspective from a microscopic

18:34

perspective to a kaleidoscopic perspective.

18:38

When you're looking through a microscope and you're so super focused on the

18:42

one thing that you miss everything else, but imagine looking through a kaleidoscope

18:48

and turning and twisting it and all these new patterns keep emerging.

18:53

And so if we shift our perspective to have

18:56

a broader view of our experience and we

18:59

step back then we just start to to fill

19:02

in all those what we call in language arts frame

19:06

narratives right you have the main plot but then you have all these little stories

19:11

that are going on around the main plot so what are all the stories what's the

19:16

story about the person who hurt me what's hitler's story what's the story of all

19:23

the people who stood behind him and propped him up and supported him.

19:28

You can just keep going and shifting and twisting and turning that kaleidoscope.

19:33

And you're going to come up with some really, really interesting twists and turns in that plot.

19:39

And you're going to start to go, oh, we are all human.

19:42

We're all human. And at some point, something happened that made them who they

19:47

were, capable of viewing me as subhuman or a number or capable of dehumanizing me.

19:55

Right? Yeah. So I can see how in Eva's world, she was able to do that.

20:02

She was able to say, I'm not going to exact justice and justice isn't going to bring me freedom.

20:09

The kind of justice that I want can never happen, but I can still forgive. Wow.

20:16

So you write about the importance of gratitude.

20:20

Why did you include this chapter in your book?

20:23

Well, I think it's really where Eva starts and where she ends.

20:29

And she starts her day even just with thinking, being thankful for everything.

20:33

And she has a little picture of her mom in her bedroom. And she still is like,

20:37

you know, thank you, mom, that you gave me a chance to live.

20:40

Because actually, when Eva's mom was expecting, it was a difficult pregnancy.

20:46

And her doctor actually recommended that she have an abortion because it was

20:50

a very difficult pregnancy. I don't know all the ins and outs of it, but just that she had to be on bed

20:55

rest for months with many small children to still care for.

21:01

So Eva said, you know what?

21:03

It's amazing that I do all these things because I wasn't even supposed to live.

21:08

So even every morning, she's still thankful for the gift of life and thank you God for another day.

21:12

And I think that her example of that was really important to her story because without that,

21:20

I don't think her story would have went the same because I think that's enabled

21:24

her her whole life to see the good things that are there. And even just, you know, I'm alive.

21:30

That's a gift. I'm grateful for that. And even for myself, once I started doing

21:36

that daily practice of gratitude and bringing that into the classroom for my students,

21:42

wow, that made such a big impact on me as a person to say, okay,

21:46

every morning I can write down 10 things I'm grateful for.

21:49

And then I can see, wow, these things are gifts.

21:53

I didn't really do anything to earn them and I've been given them and they can

21:58

really remind me of all I've received already.

22:02

And then, wow, if I've received these things, I can go out and give them.

22:05

But even I guess to shift that to difficult moments of seeking forgiveness or

22:11

seeking to be a person of forgiveness. There's been times I've been challenged to say by someone who I was talking

22:19

with about a little struggle in a relationship and they said,

22:22

well, for the next month, every day, write down 10 things about that person

22:26

that you can be thankful for. And wow, did that ever change the story for me?

22:31

Because all of a sudden I could say, wow, I can be thankful for what I've learned

22:35

from them, but also for the good things that are in that person that I've kind of been blind to.

22:40

And so in being able to do that, it wasn't the other person who all of a sudden

22:44

changed. We didn't even see each other, but I changed.

22:47

And I thought, wow, like gratitude has changed me.

22:51

Gratitude has given me the freedom to forgive in that situation,

22:55

but it's also given me a power to live with greater love every day because I'm

23:00

not focusing so much on things that I'm missing or lacking or the struggles,

23:05

but I'm like, I'm starting out from this place of remembering all the good things, or at least 10.

23:11

And sometimes it's like, wow, I could have three pages.

23:15

And sometimes it's a struggle to remember 10 on those days that are a bit trickier

23:20

or when the battle has been going on for some time and we're just tired.

23:24

But still, there's always something that brings that little bit of remembrance

23:28

that I've been given so much.

23:31

And I also am called to be a gift that other people can be grateful for.

23:36

There's one last thing that I want to touch on. And I was so impressed with

23:41

Eva Olsen's ability to just pivot in life.

23:45

And I thought it was quite funny that she waited tables when she was in her 60s. Yes.

23:54

And she actually loved that because she loved serving people. And it was busy.

23:59

It was, of course, something that I know was challenging for her. And she had long days.

24:03

But yeah, she always had this attitude of, I'm going to do what I can.

24:08

And I can do this. So I'm going to do this. She just took life as it came.

24:12

And that was her opportunity to work. So that's what she took on. And she came into Canada illiterate,

24:18

not being able to write and read.

24:21

And she is an author who has published numerous books and has won awards and

24:27

has been recognized as one of Canada's most distinguished.

24:31

Tell us a little bit more about her accomplishments.

24:34

Well, she has a couple of honorary doctorates as well.

24:38

She's been speaking in schools across Canada for over 30 years.

24:44

And now she continues to do presentations only online because she's no longer traveling.

24:50

And I think partly with COVID, there was just kind of that natural break.

24:55

And so she started stepping into the Zoom world. And that has also opened up

24:59

her horizons because she's done presentations at a university in Mexico and she's also...

25:06

Done presentations for the UN and she spoke many places.

25:10

She's authored books about her personal journey, about her relationship with

25:13

her son and how that was and their journey together, and also about going back too.

25:19

And they've been bestsellers for multiple times in just her story.

25:24

She received the Order of Canada. She just was presented with it officially this past fall.

25:29

Due to COVID, she had received it a year earlier, but then she was able to receive it in person.

25:34

So So that was something so special to her.

25:37

And, you know, I love Eva because she always says, well, my greatest accomplishment

25:41

is being a mom and a grandma and soon to be a great grandmother.

25:45

So for her, the matters of the heart are always the things that she treasures

25:51

the most and considers her greatest accomplishments.

25:53

But really, as a woman who has survived so much and then given so much,

26:00

she's really contributed to, I mean, our country of Canada and internationally,

26:05

this message of hope, of unconditional love and acceptance and not being a bystander too.

26:11

She's spread that message to students for a generation almost now,

26:16

you know, she's lived quite a bit of time.

26:19

She didn't speak for a long time, but when she started speaking,

26:22

that's been her contribution that will carry on.

26:25

And I know in Winnipeg, there is a Museum of Human Rights.

26:29

And there's also a little display there that is dedicated to Eva.

26:33

That's something that honors her journey and her accomplishments.

26:37

And there's also a painting that was recently done of her portrait, an artist in Ontario.

26:43

So she has a high level of accolades that she's collected.

26:48

But even the Order of Canada, when she first received it, I called her to congratulate her.

26:53

And she said, well, this award is great for me to receive. But I think my mom

26:57

really deserves the credit because without her, I wouldn't be here.

27:00

So So even in that moment of like great honor, she's telling me,

27:05

well, it really belongs to my mom. Like, I'm glad that I received it and I'm glad for the work that I've done, but it belongs to my mom.

27:13

So it's wonderful to just get that grounded perspective from Eva that she's so happy to contribute.

27:19

And these awards are kind of to her confirmation of the way that she's been

27:22

able to reach people and share her message and fulfill her mission in life.

27:28

She really does think she's here for a purpose.

27:31

And she said, if I didn't have a purpose, I wouldn't be here.

27:34

So here I am, and I'm going to do what I can while I'm here.

27:37

But at the same time, it's not about the recognition.

27:41

She's here to serve, and she's here to share what she can and to share her love

27:46

for future generations. Just that legacy of love, that's how the title came to me.

27:52

Because when I was just thinking of what is important to her, it's that legacy.

27:57

She builds this legacy of love in her family, in her community, and in her country.

28:02

Wow, what a beautiful way to end this conversation.

28:06

Where can people find this beautiful book? This book is featured on Amazon.

28:12

So that's where you can find it. Yes, and I will put contact information for

28:17

Teresa in the show notes and some links to Eva and her books.

28:22

And I can't tell you how happy

28:26

I am that I'm having this conversation because we are at that time when real

28:33

life people who experienced the Holocaust are dying and to have an opportunity

28:39

to leave a legacy that you are leaving for us as well,

28:44

Teresa, to be able to see that this relationship that you had with this woman

28:49

and the impact that it has had on you and your students,

28:53

that is so incredibly important to remember so that we don't repeat history.

29:00

So thank you very much for being here today.

29:04

Thank you so much. This has been such a privilege and a real joy to be able

29:08

to share this conversation with you today. it. Forgiver, there is one part of this book that I want to just share with you

29:15

that really touched me as well. Ivo Olson says, I was victimized, but I am not a victim. There is a difference.

29:25

How do you see life? Do you see yourself as a victim or someone who has triumphed?

29:32

Contemplate this. And until next time, much love. Please be tender with yourself.

29:38

Forgiveness is serious business. May the grace of the Lord be with you as you

29:43

contemplate what you learned today. If this podcast is making a difference in your life, please hit subscribe below

29:49

and consider writing a review. Share the link with a friend, take a screenshot and share on your social media.

29:55

Connect with me as your forgiveness guide. I will hold space for you as you

30:00

work through your pain and rewrite your story.

30:02

Sign up for my 5 Days to Forgiveness self-guided mini audio retreat at www.drkaren.com

30:10

Check out my website for how you can bring me to your church or small faith sharing group.

30:15

And remember friends, forgiveness is for you.

30:19

Music.