Concert pianist and author Mona Golabek is returning to Indianapolis for the first time in 20 years, bringing with her a documentary built from her own family's survival story. The film, titled Hold on To Your Music: A Mother's Legacy, recounts how her mother, Lisa Jura, a young Jewish pianist, escaped Nazi-occupied Vienna aboard the Kindertransport and eventually made her way to England to rebuild her life and her music.
The screening is part of the Heartland Film Festival, according to WIBC 93.1 FM. The Kindertransport itself was a rescue effort that helped Jewish children escape Nazi persecution, ferrying thousands of young people out of Central Europe and into Britain in the years before the Second World War. Jura was one of them, carrying her music and her family's hopes with her as she left Vienna behind.
A Mother's Music, A Daughter's Mission
Golabek has spent years using music and storytelling to keep her mother's legacy alive, and the station's report notes she has reached audiences internationally, including in China, Austria and across the United States. On Sunday, she will perform her mother's music at the Indy Art Center's Frank Basile Theater, marking her first Indianapolis appearance in two decades.
Jura used music as a way to hold onto hope through what the same account describes as an unimaginable journey, one that carried her from the city of her birth to a new life she could not yet picture. Golabek has said her mother believed each piece of music tells a story, a philosophy that now anchors both the documentary and her live performances.
Passing Down a Story Across Generations
According to the Hold On To Your Music Foundation, the documentary traces Jura's path as a Kindertransport survivor and child-prodigy pianist, and the foundation's own account describes how, once she reached London, that early promise became a lifeline, leading to the Royal Academy of Music and a debut on the London stage. The film has since picked up recognition on the festival circuit, earning a nomination for best documentary at the 2025 UK Jewish Film Festival and winning the Torchbearer Jury Award at the 2026 Miami Jewish Film Festival.
Sources differ on exactly how old Jura was when she left Vienna. WIBC and the Hold On To Your Music Foundation both put her age at 14, while the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum states she boarded the train in August 1939 at age twelve, and World Jewish Relief places her at 13 when she came over from Vienna on the Kindertransport. What is not disputed is what came after: the museum's account states that in March 1942, Jura was accepted into the Royal Academy of Music in London, a milestone that set her on the path to the stage career her daughter now honors.
Loss, Survival and a Legacy Passed Down
The war's toll on Jura's family was severe. The Los Angeles Holocaust Museum's account states that she later learned her parents had been murdered in Auschwitz, while her older sister Rosie had miraculously survived. In 1949, Jura married Michel Golabek, a resistance fighter and fellow Holocaust survivor, and the couple immigrated together to the United States, where Mona Golabek would eventually learn piano at her mother's side.
Golabek has described herself as a messenger telling a story passed from her grandmother to her mother and then to her, and she has said the music she performs is meant to carry her mother's journey forward for new audiences. She founded and now leads the Hold On To Your Music Foundation, which states it uses storytelling, music and the performing arts to foster hope and resilience in the face of adversity and prejudice.
The story of Jura's life has traveled well beyond the documentary. A stage adaptation, The Pianist of Willesden Lane, began its run at the Geffen Playhouse in 2012, according to Kindertransport.org, and has since traveled around the world, with similar performances staged everywhere from Los Angeles to Omaha. For Indianapolis audiences, Golabek has said she hopes listeners will walk away inspired to pursue their own dreams, or help someone else achieve theirs.
