Sophie: A tribute to a cherished grandmother

By Sharyn Kolieb, February 7, 2025, 8:00 am

https://www.australianjewishnews.com/sophie-a-tribute-to-a-cherished-grandmother/

Part of the book is told from Sophie’s perspective based on the recordings, while others are from the perspective of author Barbara Kamler and her cousins.

How much do we truly know about our grandmothers? Often as children we take their remarkable life stories for granted.

Barbara Kamler is an experienced academic researcher as a professor of education in Australia, but when her mother passed away at the age of 58, she regretted not having asked her more questions about her life.

This despair led her to return to her native New Jersey where she interviewed her father’s mother Sophie Kamler about her life.

Speaking to The AJN about her captivating book, Sophie, Kamler said she told her grandmother, “I know you came from Poland. I never really listened to your story. I don’t know much. I really want to know, can you talk to me?”

That was in 1982, and 40 years later Kamler decided to turn the recordings into the creative non-fiction book Sophie. In her interview with Sophie, her grandmother told of her leaving Poland on her own for a better life in America aged only 14. That through grit and determination she found work and paid for her siblings and mother to join her in the US, invariably saving their lives. And how as a mother of three, she defied New York gangsters, and became a widow twice.

Stories of women who built new lives in new countries are often overlooked or undermined, but with Sophie her granddaughter attempts to capture her life from different viewpoints and “do Sophie justice”, as Kamler writes.

Part of the book is told from Sophie’s perspective based on the recordings, while others are from the perspective of Kamler and her cousins.

In the author’s note Kamler states that the book is a “tribute” to her grandmother. “It rises from a belief that Sophie was never accorded the witness and praise she deserved,” she writes.

Asked why it took her 40 years to return to the recordings, Kamler said, “Becoming 70 myself and having grandchildren and moving on … I think it’s about getting older and I wanted to leave something.”

Kamler says she loves hearing feedback that her book has prompted others to ask questions from their family members and record it. “It’s kind of encouraged them to think about why they themselves have not documented important people in their lives, which I think is actually quite a good contribution,” she said.

“I think if it encourages people to do that, to have those conversations, then I’d be very happy.”

She notes that while her story is about a Jewish family, it speaks broadly to people across cultures “because of people’s relationships with grandmothers”.

“I also feel that in the current times, when we’re experiencing antisemitism and all kinds of negativity, it feels really important to me to have a story that speaks to the courage of a woman who escaped from that and built a life and did good in the world.”

Sophie published by Ginninderra Press can be purchased a ginninderrapress.com.au