KAPAA — Lisa Raphael believes everybody comes from a place of peace, joy and love. This despite the fact she and her family were persecuted in Vienna during the Holocaust and eventually forced into exile in a ramshackle house in
KAPAA — Lisa Raphael believes everybody comes from a place of peace, joy and love. This despite the fact she and her family were persecuted in Vienna during the Holocaust and eventually forced into exile in a ramshackle house in Picton, Australia, nine months after Germany’s invasion of Austria.
“I didn’t know from one day to the next if I would live or die,” the 79-year-old said. “It was nine months of horror and fear until we could get out.”
She was one of the lucky ones who escaped the torture endured by millions in the late 1930s and early 40s, when, as Raphael puts it, “Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and priests were killed in an ethnic cleansing. It had nothing to do with religion, a myth I take every chance to debunk.”
Raphael remembers the moment Hitler and his forces invaded Vienna. She was 3 years old. Her brother was excluded from going to the public school, her father could no longer work, she couldn’t visit the zoo and neighbors completely stopped talking to one another.
Raphael doesn’t speak easily about those days. She can recall the emotions but not much about the events.
“There are lots of stories that I’ve heard but don’t remember since I was only 3 at the time,” said Raphael. “The police showed up at our home one time after somebody used a flashlight to go to the outhouse. They were called out because somebody in the neighborhood thought we were signaling the enemy.”
Raphael calls it a terrifying period in her life.
“There were lots of people who disappeared over night,” said Raphael.
The discrimination followed her to Australia. She remembers how a friend in the fourth grade abruptly stopped a daily ritual on the journey to school.
“Her mother said she couldn’t walk with me because I was Jewish,” said Raphael.
Seventy-six years later, Raphael volunteers at the Kauai Independent Daycare Services three days a week, where she is surrounded by dozens of children with diverse ethnic blends. She said she is learning the basics, such as scissor cutting and the art of putting together a puzzle, skills she never got the chance to learn as a child. She is also tuned in to the children’s harmony and loves observing it in play patterns.
From a broader perspective about island living since she moved to Kauai seven years ago, she observes, “There is an underlying animosity between the people who were born in Hawaii and the people who come here from elsewhere to live. There is also a lot of harmony here, too.”
Phyllis Kunimura, director and co-founder of K.I.D.S., said the source of harmony at the school comes from a practice she calls the Resolution Empathy Process.
“I’ve used it for many years to deal with aggressive behavior,” said Kunimura. “Children misbehave because they don’t have a better way to deal with conflict.”
She founded the five-step communication technique after teaching kindergarten for 30 years.
“This is a foundation for anti-bullying,” said Kunimura. “It is an effective practical way for them to learn how to handle aggressiveness, and teaches them empathy and responsibility.”
The crux of the process is to seek and accept forgiveness when a person’s feelings have been hurt.
“Imagine if Hitler and Stalin had gotten this kind of training,” said Raphael, who believes love and forgiveness is what life should be about.
She said today she suffers from a permanent case of gratitude and laughs when she says she hopes there is no remission from it.
