Melbourn and District u3a

Rachel Meller talked about her book - The Box with the Sunflower Clasp. It is a mixture of history and personal memoir that tells the story of her Viennese family’s escape from the Nazis during World War II. Along with around 20,000 European Jews, Rachel’s grandparents and aunt fled Hitler’s Reich for the unlikely haven of Shanghai. In researching her book, Rachel discovered that few people knew of this fascinating chapter of World War II history:

“Rachel Meller was never close to her aunt Lisbeth, a cool, unemotional woman with a drawling Viennese-Californian accent, a cigarette always in her hand. But when Lisbeth died, she left Rachel an intricately carved Chinese box with a sunflower clasp. Inside the box were photographs, letters and documents that led Rachel to uncover a story she had never known: that of a passionate Jewish teenager growing up in elegant Vienna, who was caught up by war, and forced to flee to Shanghai.

In her talk, Rachel tells some of what she discovered about her family’s new life in Shanghai: a life of small joys and great hardship, surrounded by others who, like them, had fled Nazi-run Europe. Rachel Meller was born and grew up near London, the middle daughter of Austrian Jewish refugees. After studying neurobiology at the University of Sussex, and research into hormones and behaviour at Cambridge University, she became a writer in a Cambridge-based communication consultancy. She joined her local u3a in late 2015. The Box with the Sunflower Clasp is her first book (bookshop link). It was shortlisted for the Christopher Bland Prize2024 (which she says should give hope to older authors!). Rachel Meller is a retired academic and business writer, now living in Cambridge.