Courage: Guts, grit, spine, heart, and verve.Courage: Guts, grit, spine, heart, and verve.
All In The Mind
Polish-born Sabina Wolanski, now 80, was a teenager when her entire family was killed by Nazis, and was the sole Holocaust survivor to speak at the launch of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Russian-born Maria Tumarkin came to Australia as a teenager in 1980s. Her new book unearths courage in the crevices of everyday life, and she's defiantly not interested in heroes. They join Natasha Mitchell in an intimate exchange about brave minds.
30:15•7 Jun 2008
Courage Without Capes: Everyday Bravery with Sabina Wolanski and Maria Tamarkin
Episode Overview
- Courage is framed as small, everyday choices rather than grand acts of heroism.
- Sabina’s Holocaust diaries highlight how preserving dignity can be a form of resistance.
- Maria challenges popular hero worship and focuses on relatable, ordinary bravery.
- Honest self-examination, including facing self-loathing, is presented as a courageous act.
- Love is described as requiring immense courage due to its vulnerability and risk of pain.
“Today, I am alive. I'm a human being. And I want to live like one.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? Here, courage is stripped of capes and spotlight and shown as something raw, ordinary and deeply human. This conversation on All In The Mind brings together Holocaust survivor and businesswoman Sabina Wolanski and writer-philosopher Maria Tamarkin, with Natasha Mitchell guiding an honest chat about what courage really looks like in everyday life.
Sabina shares harrowing teenage diary entries from Nazi-occupied Poland, describing pogroms, labour camps and the loss of her entire family. Yet she talks about moments of stubborn dignity, like cleaning a filthy cell the night before a planned execution: “Today, I am alive. I'm a human being. And I want to live like one.” Her story shows how hanging on to a sense of self can be its own kind of quiet bravery.
Maria approaches courage as an obsession, questioning why it matters so much and why she's “prepared to give up a lot of things… for the attribute of courage.” She pushes back against the idea of heroes, calling popular hero worship “lazy and confused” and instead focuses on “small‑c courage” in Monday-to-Friday life: parenting, migration, falling in love, and facing self-loathing head-on.
Her tale about Bella refusing to hide under restaurant tables during a knife-wielding robbery is both darkly funny and strangely uplifting. Together, Sabina and Maria swap stories about guilt, love, memory and the risk of being honest with yourself. Their exchange is gentle but challenging, asking what it means to act bravely when you're terrified, traumatised, or just exhausted.
If you’re curious about how guts, grit, spine, heart and verve show up in ordinary decisions and painful histories, this episode offers rich food for thought and a reminder that courage isn’t reserved for heroes – it might already be part of how you live today. How might your own “small‑c courage” be showing up more than you think?
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