THE TRUTH SUMMIT STARTS HERE. MY STORY. CONFUSION AND WONDERING. AND DARING TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP.

When I interview someone, I always start by asking: How did you get to be the person you are? What were you like as a child? What was your childhood like?

What about me, I’ve been asking myself. How did I get to take on these Truth Summits? So many topics. And some of them hot topics.

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Long long ago. Early childhood.

My world was very small when I was a little girl. My home with my parents and then also little sister. My aunt and uncle’s home with my cousin. My grandparents’ home. I remember being told about school, that I would be going and would not like it. (Yes, I ended up going to school, but ended up very much liking it. Reading. Books.) Anyway, outside those few places, I remember almost nothing. And I don’t remember wondering or being curious. Like, how did we get here?

I remember a jolt of learning when I was maybe four or five. We were visiting my grandparents, who lived 50 kilometers from where we lived - Vienna. My mother looked into the distance and said, “I wonder if it’s raining in Vienna.” What!! How could it be raining in Vienna if it wasn’t raining where I was. I must have said that out loud because I remember one of my parents pointing to the clouds and saying: “Look over there. The clouds. They’re coming from there. That’s where Vienna is.” i was stunned. I had just learned that the weather is not the same everywhere. It was a huge chunk of learning.

But that wasn’t a major part of what got me to doing Truth Summits

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Fast forward. To coming to Canada.

When I was five and a half, we moved from Austria to Canada. It was 10 years after the end of World War II.

Everything changed. Some of the changes were obvious. New place. New language.

Some of the changes I felt but didn’t have words for.

My father, who came to Canada 3 months before my mother, my sister and myself, picked an apartment in a very Jewish section of Montreal. In my school, only 3 or 4 of the 35 students in my class were non-Jewish.

I believe my father chose the area to show he was not anti-Semitic. (We talked about this many years later.) He said he didn’t believe that Jews, given what they had lived through, would ever do anything like that to anyone else.

My experience as a child was of being an outsider at school - not through anything that was overt, at least not for the most part. I do remember that it was hard, in Grade One, when we were to line up, two by two, to get anyone to hold my hand.

Still, how much of my being an outsider came from being new to the country? I wore white socks to school when all the other girls wore colored socks. I was laughed at.

But it wasn’t only that. I remember, in high school, spending time in the park on a sunny afternoon with a Jewish fellow student. One of the things he mentioned was that he could never, if we went out, bring me home to meet his parents. I completely understood.

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Huge silences and somehow learning

As far as I remember, the past was never mentioned, not at home, not at school, not on the street. I did not know, as a child, there had been a huge war. I did not know that Jews had been rounded up by Germans and Austrians, and put into camps where there was so much suffering and death.

History, when I finally got to it in Grade Six or so, was about long ago, especially the fur trade (extremely boring) and the settling of Canada, not about anything recent.

All the same, somehow I learned about the Holocaust, about six million dead Jews.

And I learned to feel that my people - including me - were worse than others. Somehow bad. Guilt and shame. I knew I had not been born when the horrible things happened, but I still felt those feelings.

I did not talk about this anywhere.

Maybe most, there was so much confusion in me - unspoken and much of the time, un-thought even. But felt.

There definitely was no place to explore any of this.

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My next us-them experience

In my late teens, another us-them movement became ever stronger where I was. French vs English. The French were the majority, and voted in a government that changed the laws. Might makes right, as they say. The laws came to be against the English language, and against English-speaking people. When I was in my twenties, there was a mass exodus of English-speaking people from the province where I lived. There is a lot more to this.

A simple truth. There was a war long ago, the two troop leaders, both the English one and the French one, were mortally wounded and died. But before the end of the battle, the French lost. Still, they were granted the right to keep their language and religion. A couple of hundred years later, that was far from enough for them. Again, there was a lot more.

One thing I took in was the sense of complex forces, and of how easily people could come to be against THEM and feel they were RIGHT. Much was spoken, shouted. Not much got heard by people who disagreed. Also, much was unspoken. And confusing.

I wanted to help make things right. But what was right?

And how did one reach anyone?

I’m sure there was more to it. But this is a bit of a beginning.

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Easy stuff and being on the winning side

Another thing. For a long time my concern was with stuff that was really obvious to me and just about everyone around me - male-female equality, racial equality, equality for people of all sexual orientations.

Already then, I was active. I wrote my MA on Nellie L. McClung, an amazing women who wrote bestsellers, worked for women’s suffrage, and got elected to the parliament of her province. And I taught Women’s Studies courses. It felt good to be doing something that felt productive.

I had no idea that soon there would be much that was not pro-male-female-equality, but anti-men. And not pro-racial equality, but anti-white. I had so much to learn - especially to understand what was going on behind what I could see.

This has been much harder. I was no longer, for one thing, on what felt like the winning team.

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No longer on the winning side

The first time I found found myself facing, in a big way, something different from the really obvious stuff was with Islam, with the Danish cartoon. (I believe Mohamed had a bomb tucked into his turban.) Suddenly (or so it felt to me), the rules were changed. Instead of everyone around me being for freedom of speech, so many people held that we were not to offend Islamic people. It was very hard - often impossible - to be heard if one - like me - was for freedom of speech.

The biggest change for me. I stopped being part of the majority around me. With Islam, it was so obvious to me that the demand was that I be silent. Censorship. No more freedom of speech. But so many went along with: it’s wrong to offend. How could people suddenly be against freedom of speech?

Once again, I long had no idea what we were up against, what was behind things.

And once again, I was active. I put on my first 3 Truth Summits - on people who were doing all they could to reach people with the truth about Islam.

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Mandates, lockdowns and an awakening mind

It took the mandates and lockdowns for me to get any idea about what was going on - the powers behind things.

Over and over I just could not believe.

I learned to acknowledge those powerful forces.

My ongoing desire to reach people eventually sparked the 2 Truth Summits of 2023

Again now, I’ve felt an inner impetus to put on another Truth Summit - and even before it has started, have come into a taboo area and decided that, I’m no longer a child. Time to explore.

It’s an ongoing journey.

I have no idea how this will turn out.

But I know it’s an exploration I want to undertake.

My experience: I keep learning.

My desire: that you also gain from this exploration.

All the best to all of us,

Elsa

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PS. Here is the blog on the Truth Summit:
http://truthsummit.info/blog.html

PPS. Here is the page on the Truth Summit, the weeks as they are being presented:
https://truthsummit.info/truth-summit-2025.html

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Posted July 21, 2025