Life
Niusia review: A granddaughter’s heartfelt exploration of Holocaust legacy ★★★
Beth Paterson deals with Jewish identity and the generational impact of trauma in her one-woman show at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival
August 8, 2025 16:28
Beth Paterson deals with Jewish identity and the generational impact of trauma in her one-woman show at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival
August 8, 2025 16:28Australian performer Beth Paterson grew up thinking her grandmother Niusia was pretty nasty.
In her deeply personal one-woman Fringe show Niusia, Paterson explores the legacy of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who endured six years at Auschwitz, as she tries to reconcile the severe, bitter granny she knew growing up with the courageous yet traumatised young Jewish woman she comes to understand Niusia once was.
Through her own memories as well as her mother Suzie’s, whose voice intermittently comes through the speakers to commune with Paterson through pre-recorded sound bites, the show gradually paints a picture of the multi-faceted woman at its heart: Niusia was a savvy businesswoman, the owner of a dress shop; she survived Auschwitz thanks to her medical expertise, working under the “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele; she liked her nails painted red; she would often guilt her children into submission by telling them, “six million people died for you”; she felt angry at God; she loved music more than anything, and especially loved to hear her granddaughter sing.
The play sees Paterson struggle to contextualise the anguish her grandmother endured in Poland with her own Jew-ish Melbourne upbringing, especially since Niusia, who died when Paterson was just 14, would always change the subject when the Shoah came up.
It’s likely to be a familiar story for the descendants of other Holocaust survivors, Jews whose identities have, in some way, been moulded by the horror suffered by their forebears.
Paterson’s performance of her personal struggle is warm and heartfelt, with darker moments counterbalanced by plenty of levity and humour.
However, she loses her footing slightly in the second half of the play; when the narrative seems to be reaching a natural conclusion, Paterson delves into a series of random asides – her confusion of the words “Gestapo” and “gazpacho”, for example – and then sits down to explain who Mengele was. The interlude feels out of place in a show that otherwise (rightly) assumes a certain level of historical awareness from its audience. Paterson’s curiosity about her grandmother’s story, and all its surrounding history, is sweetly evident, but in trying to share everything she’s learned, she detracts from the impact of the central narrative.
Although the show drags on a bit past this point, belabouring as it does Paterson’s newfound sense now that she has learned her granny's story, Niusia will still leave you with a warmth in your chest. And an urge to call your grandmother.
NIUSIA is on at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from 31 July to 25 August at the Former Womens Locker Room at Summerhall
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