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Ursula Bacon
Keynote Fee : Up to $5,000 plus expenses Fee Note Travels From: OR |
Topics
- Motivation / Inspiration
- Speakers Under $5,000
Formats
- Keynote
Programs
"Shanghai Diary" A Young Girl's Journey from Hitler's Hate to War-Torn ChinaUrsula's Keynote: "Shanghai Diary," based on her book by the same name, is a reminder that you can craft something that will endure from something you have endured. She shares with her audiences the hard lessons learned on the street, the story of the Buddhist monk who changed her life, the overwhelming sorrow of a dear friend lost, and the thrill of rescuing the crew of a downed American bomber. Against this background, Ursula learned of her own resourcefulness and found within herself the fierce determination to survive. She closes her powerful program by discussing why she wrote her book: "It was time to honor the people who came into my life and all the gifts they left behind for me. It's the power of perseverance-the passion for life. It is as my father said: 'The world is full of wonderful people, and I know them all.'"
Speaker Information
When Ursula Bacon was 10 years old, her father was carted away by the Gestapo in Breslau, Germany. Because she was blessed with that blond, Aryan hair, her Jewish family sent Ursula to SS headquarters to rescue him. Her father was delivered to her, naked in a burlap bag, only because Ursula held three tickets aboard a steamship that would sail in a week for China.
In March 1939, six months before the Nazis would goose-step into Poland, Jews were desperate to escape Eastern Europe. Shanghai, the "scum-slum of the Orient," was one of the only open ports in the approaching storm. Ursula and her parents were among more than 18,000 Jews who escaped Hitler and took refuge there, escaping the scythe of Treblinka and the ovens of Auschwitz.
"Shanghai Diary" is the scrapbook of the eight years Ursula spent as a refugee in that raucous, rancid port, a city where you could just as easily find piroshkis in the Russian cafes as dead baby girls thrown out with the morning trash.
She spent most of those years living with her parents in an 11-foot-by-12-foot room, often one of 12 people sharing the same "honey pot," kept afloat above the chaos and despair by her father's optimism, her mother's elegance, the Buddhist teachings of a man named Yuan Lin, and the daily reminders of roly-poly Rosa Goldberg, parked on her three-legged stool in the shade on one of Shanghai's urine-stained, garbage-strewn lanes:
Ursula escaped Shanghai in 1947, departing for San Francisco aboard an U.S. troop transport. Every member of her mother's family left behind in Germany disappeared in the maw of the Holocaust. Her mother sent her on with the words, "We survived. We have to make our lives count. Do it right."