The following is a special presentation of WTCI, Chattanooga, North Georgia, and the Tennessee Valley.

A Grammy nominated pianist, she has performed in places like the Royal Festival Hall, the Kennedy Center, and with Major orchestras and conductors around the world.

Meet this passionate artist who is reaching out and educating others through her own life story.

Coming up on the A-list, Mona Golabek, an acclaimed author and educator, and also a third generation concert pianist who has written a book and tribute to her mother.

The story will soon be the subject of a five part documentary and feature film.

I caught up with Mona Golabek during a recent concert she gave in Chattanooga.

Hi Mona.

I am thrilled to be here.

The most gorgeous, gorgeous city.

Well thank you.

I walked it today and I couldn't believe it.

And the art that's here.

Every step that you that you go.

Just a fantastic representation of people's creativity here.

Well, we love hearing that.

We could always use more artists here in the neighborhood to move.

I'm definitely going to be.

I'm definitely going to keep coming back.

No question about it.

Golabek was recently at the Chattanooga High School and Center for Creative Arts as part of an educational series attached to her book entitled The Children of Willesden Lane Beyond the Kindertransport, a memoir of Music, Love and Survival.

Now, let's talk about your book first, about the inspiration for the children of Willesden Lane.

Well, no question about it.

It was my mother.

She was my great inspiration in life, my my piano teacher.

But most importantly, she taught me about life.

And the piano lessons were life lessons.

So when I was a little kid, she started me off.

When I was around five years old, she would regale me with stories of Beethoven and Bach and, you know, Mozart and their love letters and their their love stories.

But she would be in a Beethoven sonata.

And then suddenly she would whistle.

Da da da da da da da da da da da.

And I was confused and I was caught off guard because I knew it wasn't the Beethoven sonata.

And she said, Did I ever tell you the time that Aaron whistled to me at the window?

And then before she would answer or tell me who Aaron was, we'd go right back into the Beethoven Sonata.

Couple of more beats would go by, and then she would say, Or what about when Johnny King Kong read poetry to me at nighttime, when the bombs came down and I thought, Who was Johnny King Kong?

But she wouldn't answer.

We'd go right back into the lesson.

Eventually, she did, but I began to see that the lessons were about her life and this fantastic story that she began to spin through the piano lessons through the years.

And she would always tell me that each piece of music tells a story.

But for the listener, they had to discover what that story was.

So as you became an adult, did you start reflecting on these lessons and realize that the story was really your mother's story?

Absolutely.

And then one day, sometime in my mid-twenties, I was engaged to play that piece that she'd whistled in the piano lessons.

The daughter, I thought, which was the Grieg Piano Concerto, which was the theme of her childhood.

And I was hired to play that with the Seattle Symphony.

So I started practicing Da da da da da da da and daughter.

And I began to remember those lessons and I thought, Oh my God, that's my mother's life story.

I am playing her piece.

And I thought, I want to write her story.

So as I was learning the music for that performance, I started jotting down the memories of what happened in the piano lessons.

And suddenly I had a treatment and I became impassioned to find those mysterious characters from the storylines back in the piano lessons.

Your mother knew you're writing the book?

Yes.

I did not live to see it published.

What did she think, though, of you writing it?

She knew I was writing the book.

I think she kind of sort of went back and forth between being very proud and very excited and being very probably a little bit ill at ease, because anybody who is going to be the subject of a biography or a story has to feel all those mixed emotions, right?

I mean, you are exposing your life, you're exposing your joy, you're exposing your pain, you're exposing traumatic experience that is in your life.

There often isn't a day that doesn't go by that I wonder, what was she feeling at that train station?

What was in the depth of her heart and soul?

Is that train sped away through the smoke and all she could see was the white roofline of Vienna.

And if she could sit in the audience and listen to your concert and listen to the excerpt from the book, what do you wish she would.

Say to you?

She wouldn't speak.

There would just be tears.

And I think she would be proud.

Has her story also defined you?

Totally, totally defined me and totally given me my purpose in life.

Totally carved my path.

And in many ways, I had no choice.

It was a destiny preordained.

The moment she got on that train and took that journey to London.

I will share with you a little section, maybe in closing, of what what I say on the stage and share with everyone out there that there's a spot in the story where the boy that she falls in love with in the hostel comes to find her after the hostel has been destroyed, bombed, and they walk down Willesden Lane hand-in-hand and they share their dreams with each other.

He came to say goodbye because he was going to go fight the Nazis.

And then he promised her he would come back for her.

And she tells him of her dreams.

And she says that she's going to make her debut one day.

Just she dreamt way back in Vienna and she'll find her family.

And then one day when she grows up, she's going to have a little girl.

She's going to name her Mona, and she's going to teach her the piano.

And I started researching and I started calling.

And one thread led to the next, just like in a musical composition.

And I started to find these various mysterious characters.

Golubic shares her family legacy that spans two continents and four generations.

She uses her musical skills to create an emotionally charged atmosphere with characters that any generation can relate to.

Now, let's go back a second.

Let's talk about your mother's upbringing.

So she was raised in Vienna, Austria.

She was a child growing up in the grandeur of Vienna.

You know, the old stone buildings and the the the heritage of Mozart through Beethoven, all the way to Mahler and the fabulous cafés that she used to talk to me about it and the great trolley that would take her down to the center of the city, where if you've been to Vienna, I or your viewers will know the Great Philharmonic Hall and the Opera House.

So she was a kid and she was enthralled by that.

And she would pass that.

This we're talking the 1930s, Vienna, and she'd passed always that Opera House or the Philharmonic Hall, and she had a daydream.

Well, I want to make my debut in the Grieg Piano Concerto.

And she would close your eyes and imagine that, and she would always tell me about that in the piano lessons.

And of course, my story, or where the book begins, is a fateful Sunday, where she has a piano lesson sometime in October in 1938.

And we all know the darkness was taking over Europe, taking over her city.

The Nazis were coming in.

And she tell told me the story of how she got off the trolley, crossed the square where all the Nazi soldiers were to go into her piano lesson.

And that's where the story begins.

And so in order to avoid future persecution, her parents made a very important decision.

Tremendous, tremendous, horrible decision.

Because as this darkness swept across Europe and families became desperate to save their children, they tried to figure out, how can I get my my child out of Austria or Germany or Poland?

And so this miracle took place.

It was known as the Children's Transport, and it was a train Kindertransport, that would take children to safety to England, which was the most beautiful nation that banded together with Jews living in England as well as the most righteous Christians.

And they came together and they formed an organization.

Let's get save as many kids as we can.

So my mom tells the story and she would tell it to me over and over how my grandfather Abraham, came home one night and announced to the family that he had one found one ticket, and the most horrible decision awaited them because they had three daughters in that family.

And who is it going to be?

Was it going to be Rosie, 18 years old?

The beauty of the family.

She had been Miss runner up for Miss Vienna.

Was it going to be Sonia, the baby, 12 years old, my mother's precious little younger sister?

Or was it going to be Lisa?

My mother, 14 years old, who had her music.

And as I weave the story at the piano, the very next moment is going back to the piano and starting da dee da da da da Clair de Lune by Debussy, which was the only piece of music my mother packed and put in her suitcase as she walked through the house to look at everything the photographs, the place on the dining room table.

She touched the piano one last time and then packed that piece of music because she was determined and desperate to remember everything.

She was the one chosen to go on that train because her mother felt with her music she would have something to guide her.

Did she want to go?

No, she didn't want to go.

She didn't want to leave her mother.

And that's a magnificent question.

No one has ever asked me that question since I've published the book.

I'm very grateful that you asked me that.

And why?

Because it is the raison d'etre or the inspiration of why I wrote the book.

Because what happened at the train station is leads really from this question you just asked.

Did she want to go?

She didn't.

And when her mother walked her to the final goodbye after she said goodbye to her father and to her sisters, her mother looked at her directly into her eyes and said, You must make me a promise.

What is it, Mama?

You must promise me that you will hold on to music.

Promise me this, Lisa.

And my mother said, How can I without you?

I can't hold on to that music.

Meaning?

Really?

I don't want to go.

I can't do anything without you.

And I can't take the music with me.

And then my grandmother gave her the gift.

And the reason for the entire writing of the book and what influenced her entire life, getting to London and one day would influence my life, my sister's life and the children in the family.

My grandmother gave her the gift of a few precious words You can and you will never forget.

Lisa, let the music be your best friend in life.

It guided her through the long journey to London, through the darkness, through the blitz, through the loneliness, through never knowing whether her parents or her family was alive.

As the bombs came down, she held on to those words and made something of her life.

And the book really for me and the reason that I wanted to write it so badly was not only because I thought my mother was just the greatest, greatest possible mother with her story, but I felt if I could get it published.

And young people or people from all walks of life could hear the message of this book.

The message I hoped, God willing, they would take away was that even in the darkest of times, if you have something to hold on to that is truly inspiring and truly meaningful, it will light your way.

In Willesden Lane, Golubic tells a moving coming of age story and also opens a window to the joys and hardships of everyday life in London during World War Two.

And so Willesden Lane, we haven't really talked about the meaning behind that, but that is actually where your mother ended up living.

Yeah, she when she arrived in London and an extraordinary story of how she went down to Brighton and then to a castle which she would later described her mother was the castle of her dreams and escape from there.

Got on a train, made her way back to London, slept in a telephone booth, got back to an organization that had brought her out and begged the man to allow her to live among her own kind.

So they had set up these hostels in London, and there was one at two for three Willesden Lane.

So she'd always tell me Willesden Lane.

And it was so musical sounding to me as a kid, hearing that street name.

And it was right off of Riffle Road in the northern part of London, and it was a three storey rambling structure.

It had 30 kids from different parts of Europe, all chattering in different languages, all bound by the same sorrow, having to get on a train and say goodbye.

Trying to make the best of it while the war was raging and the bombs were coming down.

And she walked into that hospital, one of the last before the the the the train stopped and the war was declared and walked straight over to the piano and opened the lid and started to play.

Da da da da da.

Thought about that and she told me and they all told me these kids, when I found them, that one by one they came out of the doors from the second floor and the third floor and they stood on the staircase.

And as they listened to the beauty of that music, it became their story.

Just like my mother told me.

Each piece of music becomes your story.

It became the story of what they had left behind their parents, the beauty of their cities, their brothers and fathers and mothers and sisters.

And she told me, of course, she would always tell me over and over in the piano lessons in that moment when I entered the hostel and played the music.

Every boy fell in love with me.

Now I know what inspired you to write the book, but why did you write the book?

Does that make sense?

The difference?

Yes, absolutely.

I, I in my gut felt and knew this was a and, you know, there's so many amazing stories out there.

There's so many stories of sacrifice and people putting putting their life on the line.

But more importantly, even then, the message of what my grandmother gave my mother at the train station, the reason I wrote this book and thank you again you're asking me these phenomenal questions was that it was a nation that opened its heart and soul to total strangers.

Kids that were prejudiced against Jewish kids that would have had certain extinction to be doomed to be sent to the camps.

So this extraordinary nation opened its heart and soul, mostly Christians, Christian nation, and saved the lives of these young people.

And so why did I write the book?

Because I wanted to throw my little story into the ring of all the great stories out there of how we as mankind are really here for each other and how we have to continue.

Like the messages of facing history and ourselves to combat, you know, closing ourselves down, looking the other way, not standing up against evil.

And so you've been working and much to the point of why you wrote the book with a wonderful organization Facing History in Ourselves, which is the organization that brought you to Chattanooga to perform at the Center for Creative Arts.

How has that really mirrored your goals with the book and with your concerts?

Facing history and ourselves is one of the great, great educational, inspirational organizations of the world.

And really, they they launched me, along with the Milken family Foundation.

Facing history in ourselves is totally dedicated to enlightening young people to the horrors and the dangers of prejudice, source of hatred, of discrimination.

And so I think even more than the message that I shared about what my grandmother told my mother at the train station for me writing this book was to throw myself into the ring of humanity that tries to address or speak or champion those stories that really pay tribute and celebrate anyone's risk to help a help a stranger, and to be out there to to combat and fight evil in the world.

So your mother didn't want to go on the train?

No.

Do you think she regretted the decision later?

Well, let me back up.

She didn't want to go on the train, but I think a part of her my mother was so gutsy and had such strength and will.

And as she would always tell me, she had her music by her side.

Did she regret?

No, because she knew this was her destiny and she so powerfully held on to the piano and to the music and to make something of her life.

And she believed to the depths of her soul that somehow she would be reunited with her family if she just stayed the course and was as loving as possible and as strong as possible.

How do you think you're like your mother?

My goodness, These questions have never been asked of me.

I must say.

I think I would hope to God I have my mother's goodness.

I hope.

I think I have my mother's strength.

I think I have my mother's tremendous guts to get out there and to I mean, she had a dream and I had a dream.

So she I had a dream to tell her story and to use my music to make a difference in this world.

And to be a storyteller.

And she was a great storyteller.

It all it's so amazing how things come full circle all the way back to those lessons.

The music will tell the story.

And so I have now taken the music she gave to me.

And I've gone on the stages across America and across the world, and now I'm telling the story.

Now, when did it transition from this was a book and a story you wanted to tell to It became more than that.

It became a concert.

You wanted to share.

I owe this to my sister Renee, who is very dramatic and would teach me certain things in connection with the storylines.

And we used to talk a lot about it.

But my my mom was the first really kind of in telling me stories Somehow when I started to write the book and then when it got published and I started to be invited, as most authors are, to go, well, everyone heard, well, she's not just an author, but she's a concert pianist.

And she sort of it would be interesting to invite her and see if she could share with us the music so they would roll out the piano and I'd go out on the stage, talk about the book.

And I started developing it, working on it more and more.

And now very excitedly, we are about to shoot a year long documentary to air this performance and performances among young people and interviews with survivors that are still alive from the book and from the Kindertransport.

And if we're lucky enough, we're going to reenact my mother's debut in London and Wigmore Hall to conclude the documentary.

And we're very thrilled because the great actress Meryl Streep will narrate and bookend the documentary.

Going back can also be found regularly on the airwaves, hosting a radio program called Romantic Hours.

I have a show called The Romantic Hours, and again, it's based on the storylines and the emotion and the true feelings of what inspires you to create a work of art.

And it all goes back again to what my mom said back in those lessons when she taught me Beethoven or when she taught me Mozart.

What interested her was to say what was he feeling in his heart when he wrote that sonata?

Who was he in love with?

Who was he thinking about?

And that's what the lessons became.

They weren't just black notes on white paper.

They were flesh and blood.

And my mom really gave me the gift to understand that long after we are gone, you know, life fades.

And with us behind us, my mother would always say, But the music will always be there to tell our story.

And that was one of the great gifts that she gave me.

Each piece of music tells a story.

And that night.

Her music told the story.

Of so many in war torn London and.

And on that note, thank you for being with us.

And I'm certain your mother would be proud.

And we're thrilled that you've been in Chattanooga.

And I think through you and your mother's story and your music, I think you're going to reach a whole new generation of people who will understand and it won't be lost.

Thank you so much.

From the Center for Creative Arts.

Thank you for joining us.

She built a hymn with gratitude to her parents.

Love and wise devotion and to every mother and father who had the courage to save their child by saying goodbye.

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