Esther Perel on identity, her parents and the desire to feel alive

Esther Perel looks back at the history of her own parents, Sala Ferlegier and Icek Perel, who were survivors of the Nazi concentration camps and sole survivors of their respective families. She shares the story of when she went back with her parents to Poland after the Berlin Wall fell. They had not been back since they were liberated from the camps. “During our time in Poland I witnessed for the first time the things they had kept inside about which they couldn’t speak because they had to go on with their life. At one point my father said: ‘Everyone’s gone.’

Esther also showed a famous interview from the film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann with barber Abraham Bomba, who was part of the Sonderkommando in Treblinka, to reflect on her parents' history. She tells us how she learned from her parents the difference between not being dead and being alive.

“I always felt my parent’s pain, but I didn’t dare to ask them about it. I feared that if this pain came out, they would never recover from it.”
"In Antwerp, I always felt there were two groups within the Jewish community. There were people who hadn't died and people who were alive again. This applies to everyone’s who’s ever experienced trauma. Some people come out of the trauma and aren’t dead, but that doesn’t mean they’re alive. Other people get over the trauma and have a new life, a full life.”
“Many people are searching for happiness, but you can't search for happiness. You feel happy if you have a great deal of meaning and purpose in your life.”

Interviewer: Janine Abbring

This clip is an edited segment from the renowned Dutch 3-hour interview program VPRO Zomergasten (Summer Residents) and part of a playlist that contains an edited version of the interview, without the movie clips, which we cannot show online due to copyrights:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzLGaX_JvmJq8ATpCMyroZpxa_g7ZTWru

VPRO Zomergasten is a staple interview program in the Netherlands, produced by the Dutch public broadcasting station VPRO. Each summer 6 renowned guests are invited to compose their ideal evening of television, filling up an entire Sunday evening, consisting of a 3-hour live in-depth studio interview prompted by their selection of cinema and television clips or any other form of moving images, which run like a thread through the entire interview.

Esther Perel was a guest in the summer of 2018. She selected clips from the following movies, television history, documentary films and interviews: I, Tonya; Salvador Minuchin; My Architect; Before Midnight; The {The And}; Bill Clinton; Elisabeth Badinter; Shoah; Mr. Gaga; A Walk on the Moon; Away from Her; Newness; Call Me by Your Name.

Видео Esther Perel on identity, her parents and the desire to feel alive канала vpro extra