Oscar David Benedikt

“I survived two ghettos, three concentration camps, and a 10-day death march at the end. These are my credentials.

I was a spoiled only child. I mention this because of the tragic contrast with what lay ahead.

In 1939, Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Nazis. Jewish students were thrown out of schools and universities; trainloads of Jews were later deported to Theresienstadt. In 1942, 1,000 Jews were sent by train to Riga, Latvia, without food or water for five days; 80 young males were selected, and the rest of the Jews killed by engine fumes from exhaust pipes fed into the vans. This was how my parents, both aged 49, perished.

In Riga, ghetto food rations were miserable but community life was organized. Young people could be educated. I took courses in Jewish and Zionist history. I was sent to the harbour, offloading 12 hours a day, carrying 80kg bags of grain on my shoulders. In 1944, with the Russian advance coming closer, the ghetto was liquidated. We were taken to Kaiserwald and then Stutthof concentration camp. We could hear the Russian artillery.

In February 1945, I went with the non-Jewish Poles on a death march, with only a loaf of bread to eat. Stragglers were shot in the ditches. I lost consciousness. Two days later I woke to see our liberation. People roamed the countryside collecting survivors and treating them for whatever ailed them. One third of those liberated didn’t make it.

In 1946, my wife and I arrived in Australia thanks to Mr Arthur Calwell, the Immigration Minister who let many survivors into the country. I have never been back to Europe… it is the graveyard of my people.

I speak because when we are all gone, the deniers will still be around.”

David had no objects, but he shared an insight into the inevitable process of ageing: “There are so many horrible Holocaust memories I try not to remember, and so many good things I now can’t recall.”

David passed away in May 2019.

Dasia Black-Gutman

A shifting identity and the search for self is at the heart of Dasia’s story. Left by her parents with a Polish Catholic woman for safety at the age of four, Stasia – as she was known at the time – hid her distress, ate unfamiliar food, prayed to a God she did not know, and, over time, grew further removed from her true self.

“I was nobody’s child.”

With both parents murdered in the Holocaust, fear of abandonment pervaded her post-war life. Adopted by her aunt and uncle at the end of the war, Dasia worked to prove her worthiness through academic pursuits and by being a dutiful daughter. In her early years, Zionism reconnected her to her Jewish identity, but grappling with her feelings of displacement and her ceaseless pursuit of self-reliance would be a longer journey.

Dasia’s Australian life began in 1951. Her first marriage produced two sons and five grandchildren. She forged a career as an academic and lecturer in child development, all the while exploring the source of her limitations and anxieties:

“In my research, I delved into the area of prejudice and racism, and came to understand that what was holding me back was within me: a type of internalized oppression.”

Despite her hardships, Dasia takes pleasure in the time spent with her family and those whom she has accepted as such. Ever mindful of her history, she channels her experiences into her work with traumatised children and into a deep, cathartic self-reflection. Integral to this is the memory of her parents, Chana and Szulem, and the significance of their sacrifice.

Extract from her father’s letter to his American family

30 November 1942
“I am compelled to hide my precious infant branch, my little daughter, may she live, until the storm passes. It is difficult for me to describe the sorrow and the pain that gnaw at my heart when I see that my bright little daughter cannot understand why she is being taken away from the arms of her parents.”

Dasia holds a photo of her parents close to her heart. She was four years old and living as an Aryan child at the time they were taken from Zbaraz ghetto and murdered. To this day, she is unaware of how or when they were murdered.

Gaby de Leon

“To explain to her class what bullying is all about, a teacher started with an exercise: Each student got a piece of paper and was told to crush it. Then she asked them to smooth it and say sorry. She asked the class, ‘What do you see?’ One student said, ‘Nothing, only some creases and some scars.’ ‘That’s it,’ she replied, ‘that’s what remains visible – sometimes very faintly – but indelible marks.’

Those indelible marks are what remain in my soul.”

In April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by four Axis armies. They each established their own occupation zone with separate administration. Gaby de Leon and his family were caught in the German zone. Conditions were extremely hostile. Hearing the situation was more favourable for Jews in the Italian-occupied zone, Gaby’s father, a highly respected businessman and president of a Jewish humanitarian organization, attempted to secure safe passage for the family. He was rounded up on the streets of Belgrade and was later shot. After near fatal encounters with Croatian police, Gaby’s mother organized false papers and they escaped to the Italian zone. Following interrogation, they were sent to Italy by boat. Reunited with his two brothers, the four remained in Italy as internees until the Armistice in 1943.

No longer classified as interned prisoners, and provided with identity documents, Gaby’s family decided to travel as far south as possible. As their train arrived in Rome, so did a German convoy of tanks. With Allied troops at the city walls, the front stabilized and the family were trapped for 10 months. In order to avoid the exposure of the refugee community, Gaby clandestinely delivered food to addresses across the city. The Allies entered Rome in June 1944. Gaby’s brothers joined the Yugoslav Army, whilst he and his mother remained in Italy until the war ended.

After the war, Gaby and his mother returned to Belgrade – to a city destroyed and a Jewish population decimated. The country embraced the task of its own reconstruction and development, and it was in this atmosphere that Gaby finished his schooling and met his wife, Ana.

Gaby holds a scrunched piece of paper, a visual tool he uses to demonstrate the indelible scars left by history.

Eva Engel

“My father, an emancipated Jew from Vienna, was involved in the Social Democrat Party, as were many of his family. We lived in a beautiful apartment. As a child, my bedroom was the family meeting room, with its radio a constant source of news, and a warm spot for our little dog, Rollie.

Rollie hated the sound of the hundreds of patriotic boot-clad Nazis marching in the streets after the Anschluss. The instruction throughout the Jewish community was to remain inconspicuous, but at one point we could not stop him barking at a group of Nazis. Terrified, we picked him up, ran for our lives, and never took him out in the day again.

When I was six years old, we left Vienna for Zurich, where people anxiously discussed the Evian Conference. Very few countries would accept Jews as refugees. We left for Australia just in time.

We only mixed with German-speaking Jews. We thought we were far from the Nazi horror but a New Zealand man who was a key organizer of the clandestine Nazi party in Auckland came into our lives because he was terrorizing his housekeeper. My feisty mother came to her rescue and went to report what was happening to the Lord Mayor of Auckland. Two days later, the offender committed suicide.

Being an only child, I was fearful of separation from my parents. In New Zealand life became more normal. I joined the Zionist Youth League, sang in the school choir, and looked after some displaced youths who arrived from Europe and came to the Zionist Youth holiday camp. I became aware of my strengths and abilities. My personal identity grew during this period, giving me the confidence to start my work in outreach, counselling, migrant integration, and interviewing, which formed the basis of the support groups I created.”

Eva holds a promotional brochure for the T.S.S. Strathaird, the P&O liner that carried her family to New Zealand. She remembers that her mother was seasick for four weeks during the voyage. Eva clung to her regardless.

Vera Faludi

“In Sofia I attended an Italian pre-school, a Hungarian school, and then a German school with my brother Teddy. By the end of 1939, Jewish children were no longer allowed at German schools, and I moved to a French school run by nuns. Languages were important to my father. He thought they could open doors, give you advantages, and you never knew when they could come in handy. This was a partial reason for our family’s survival.

In 1942 a friend of my father at the Hungarian Embassy offered to move, via diplomatic courier, our most valuable belongings from Sofia to Budapest – Persian carpets, paintings, porcelain. Our belongings never arrived, most likely stolen by the diplomat.

Teddy and my father were sent for forced labour; my mother and I had to move into the ghetto. One day Arrow Cross soldiers came and took all of the women aged 16 to 60; my mother, grandmother, and I hid in the attic. It was so small that we had to lie down or be half-seated. We stayed for a week. We got papers to move into a protected house of the Swedish consulate.

One day, after the war, a dirty, skinny man approached me and I started to run away. I heard a voice, ‘Vera, don’t you recognize me?’ It was my brother!

Shortly after liberation, I met again an old friend, George Faludi. I was 16 years old. We were married in early 1946. We left Hungary in 1947 for Brussels, where we stayed for eight months waiting for visas. We went to Paris, and by 1948, with false visas for Paraguay, left for Uruguay. We had to be resourceful to get where we wanted to go.”

Vera and her husband George took few belongings when they escaped from communist Hungary. This dessert plate is one of six, which Vera took to remind her husband of the smells of his mother’s baking and the desserts they enjoyed.

Magda Forbath

“When I was six months old the Germans marched into Hungary. My father was already in a Hungarian forced labour battalion. Then the Germans took him to Mauthausen concentration camp. Luckily when the Americans liberated the camp they had facilities to rehabilitate these barely alive skeletons. My father was restored enough to walk home from Austria to Hungary.

I was two when he turned up. My mother, grand-mother and I had lived in the ghetto; we spent most of the time in the bunker because of the bombings. Apparently I was in a very bad state, having been deprived of fresh food during the war.

In 1949 the communists nationalized and took everything my parents had built up. So they lost everything a second time. My family’s hardship continued throughout the Hungarian Revolution. After all of this, my parents decided it was best to move us to Australia. I was 15 and started as a hairdresser’s apprentice.

I’ve been volunteering at the Sydney Jewish Museum for over 15 years; it is very uplifting. I knew I wanted to volunteer with a Jewish organization. The Museum is important, not only for our community, but for all races and religions. Every day I work here is a pleasure and I help in whatever way I can, thankful to be able to contribute to the Jewish community that opened its arms to my family all those years ago.”

Magda received this Star of David necklace from her mother after the family immigrated to Australia. She has nothing from pre-war Hungary, noting: “Whatever the Nazis left, the communists took.”

Helena Goldstein

Lena fought against the Germans any way she could and assisted fellow Jews in the struggle to survive. Recruited by the resistance in the Warsaw ghetto, she stole uniforms and light bulbs, which were filled with kerosene and used as Molotov cocktails against German troops.

Following her escape from the ghetto, Lena was hidden by a Polish caretaker for 18 months. Later, her hiding spot was a tiny underground bunker, cramped together with eight others in a space that allowed no privacy. The psychological struggle of this experience was unbearable, and yet, Lena penned a satirical newsletter to bolster the morale of her bunker companions, who threatened to leave as conditions were so deplorable. This outward humour masked the true nature of her anxieties – her ongoing battle for body and mind. Her personal diary entries from this time reflect the gravity of her struggle.

Thursday, 16 November 1944

“I long for the splatter of autumn rain. I long for the monotonous music of raindrops beating with fine drizzle against a window pane, for the grey, melancholy, clouded November sky. And I long for the thoughts: thoughts at a twilight hour, the thoughts which, sad as they might be, never begin with the words ‘If I survive…’, and never carry the burden of doubt that all this thinking is empty and pointless, because…I will not survive anyway…”

“We dream of freedom. Freedom: this word has acquired a magical power and it means much more than it ever did before. Its meaning is quite different from what it used to be. It has ceased to be the cliché invariably linked to its cliché- companions “equality” and “brotherhood”… For us, freedom is a word which has become alive: it is our goal and our dream. It is the sky above us and the sun and the stars and the ground under our feet and the air for our lungs. It is a full stomach and a fearless look. It is the end of a hunted dog’s existence: everything that we are missing and everything for which we strive. That is freedom; because to us freedom means life.”

Lena was liberated after spending six months in the bunker. She married Alexander Goldstein and immigrated to Australia in 1949.

Lena held her German ID card identifying her as a washerwoman in a laundry.

Lena passed away in May 2019.

George Grojnowski

“For a long time I didn’t talk about the Holocaust. You feel guilty that you survived and you think, ‘What is the point of being a survivor?’ You’re 18 years old and have no parents, no sister, no aunts and uncles… No one survived. You’re by yourself and don’t know where to go, where to establish yourself again.

I didn’t talk to my children about it. But when people started denying what happened, my wife said to me, ‘If you aren’t going to talk about it, who will?’ So today I tell my story. Talking about it is a good thing: it helps you come to terms with it.

In my story there are two occasions when a Nazi soldier impacted on my survival in some way. The first was when a Nazi guard stopped me from running to my mother and sister – they went directly to their deaths – and the second was when a Nazi guard gave me back to my father. I like to tell these stories because in a situation where most people had no value for human life and no one even thought of a life after the war, there was someone who didn’t want to separate a father and son. When you fight for life every day, you don’t analyze it until later. When you think of what could have happened, you realize that those two soldiers had some element of humanity in them.

My birthday is 23 January 1927 but I regard March 1949 as my true birthday, when I came to Australia and built a normal life.”

George displayed the concentration camp jacket he wore in Buchenwald, on which he changed the yellow triangle to red in gratitude to his Soviet liberators in May 1945.

George passed away in March 2021.

Peter Halas

“On 19 March 1944, the Germans occupied Hungary and life for the Jews changed. The trains started taking them to Auschwitz. My mother and I went into hiding with an Armenian family friend. My mother’s parents also went into hiding, in a different location. On 15 December, it was my grandfather’s birthday and my mother felt obliged to visit him, even though she knew it was dangerous. She kissed me goodbye, and that was the last time I saw her. While visiting him, the Hungarian SS raided the building and took all the Jews, my mother and grandparents amongst them, to the banks of the Danube and shot them.

When the people hiding me heard what had happened, they decided to find me a new place to hide. A young couple on the outskirts of the city were prepared to take me in, and I survived the war living with them. Once the war ended, my father’s mother found me, and I went to live with her. My father came back from the camps in June or July of 1945.

Life began again. However, the communist government in Hungary wasn’t much more benevolent than the Nazis. My father was arrested on trumped-up charges so that they could take away our business; food was in short supply and personal freedom ceased.

In 1956, some of my friends and I decided to try and escape to the West. We arrived in Austria, and life in the free world began.

I immigrated to Australia in 1957. I spoke no English, and became a labourer. Once I found my feet, I started to work in the fashion industry, eventually establishing my own business in 1975. It became a successful swimsuit company. We called it Peter’s Folly, changing its name to Seafolly shortly after.”

Peter holds a Jewish prayer book which belonged to his paternal grandmother. The family births, deaths and marriages have been recorded on its pages. Peter has adopted this tradition, recording the births of his own grandchildren in it.

Yvonne Halas

“When I was born, Europe was already embroiled in the war. We lived in a small town near to the border with Czechoslovakia. My family were the only Jewish people in a town full of Christian farmers.

Shortly after my birth, my father was sent away to a labour camp where the inmates were forced to work hard for the state and not fed too well. One day in 1944, my father came home. Our joy was short-lived as we were ordered to be at the railway station early the next morning with one small suitcase per person. The train that we were forced to board was a cattle train. As it travelled through the countryside it picked up all the Jewish families from each town. As the carriage filled up, the distressed occupants were shoving and pushing each other, attempting to guard their own areas and to shield their loved ones.

My parents hatched an amazing plot. At the next station, just as another family were trying to position themselves within the carriage, and just before the train doors slid shut, my mother took me in her arms and threw me as far as she could out of the train. She was unsure if she was saving or endangering me. At the next stop, she leapt out and walked back to find me. When she found me, someone had stolen my clothes and my little earrings had been torn out of my ears. We walked along the railway line hoping to find my father, who was also planning to jump out, but we never found him.

We left Hungary in 1948 after it became clear that my father would not return. It was only in 2008 that we finally found out he had spent five months in Bergen-Belsen and had died there.”

This passport belonged to Yvonne’s mother, Valeria. Yvonne discovered it hidden in a drawer after the family had immigrated to Australia. It contains the name of her real father, Frederic, who perished in Bergen-Belsen. Her mother tried to keep secret that her stepfather wasn’t her real father.

Anne Heilig

Leo and Ida Hoffmann left Germany in 1938 after their business was targeted. One morning they woke to find that someone had scrawled the words ‘Leo Hoffmann is a Jew’ across their window.

“My father spent every night sleeping in a different house because he knew the Germans were looking for him. We were amongst the few fortunate people to receive a visa to Australia. I am glad they chose Australia. My parent’s decision to leave Germany was soon vindicated – our ship, the Eridan, arrived in Australia on the day of Kristallnacht, 10 November 1938. We arrived with £200 and some personal belongings.

My father couldn’t find a job; he was willing to settle for washing cars for a shilling, but couldn’t even get that work. They eventually opened a shop in Mascot selling children’s and men’s wear, using milk crates as the shop counter. Although registered as an ‘Alien’, my father was enlisted into the Australian Army. My mother looked after me and the shop while he was away. It was up to me to teach my parents English. One day my father went to the shops to ask for potatoes and came back with onions instead.”

Anne with her toy pram, a gift for her third birthday. It was a custom-made copy of the same pram that she had used as a baby.

Gerty Jellinek

“My parents gave me an abundance of love and values: to be tolerant and accept every person.

On 12 March 1938, Hitler’s army annexed Austria. The next day every second house displayed a swastika flag, every other young person wore a Nazi uniform. The Austrians welcomed Hitler with open arms. My parents had rented a room to a nice Christian couple for years. A day later, the man appeared in full Nazi uniform. He was from the Brownshirts. He threw us out of our home. My father lost his job; I was told I could no longer attend school.

In summer I watched Jewish people scrubbing footpaths with toothbrushes. Hitler Youths jeered and laughed, ‘Ha, ha, you Jewish women, your nails won’t look like anything when we are finished with you.’ On 9 November 1938, Kristallnacht, synagogues in Austria were burnt to the ground; Torah scrolls, prayer books, and tallisim (prayer shawls) were thrown into the street and trodden on. Austrians looked on in amazement, not in horror, at these happenings.

My father was taken away for ten days. When he finally returned to us, he was a broken man. His only thought was leaving Austria. The only place visas were not needed was Shanghai. We arrived there on 12 September 1939. Broken buildings were our camps. In time the Hongkew area was built up and became a village of refugees. On 7 December 1941, the Pacific War started, Japan occupied Shanghai, and the village became a ghetto. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese surrendered and American soldiers arrived. They gave us food, clothing, and dignity.

In 1947 I met Willie Jellinek. We married and left for Sydney. I was pregnant with my daughterat the time. She was made in China – because everything is made in China! – and born in Australia.”

Gerty was surrounded by a table of memories. Among the many documents were her husband Wilhelm’s travel documents, her father’s identity card, and her Chinese marriage certificate.

Gerty passed away in February 2017.

Francine Lazarus

“My memories lay dormant for many years, having been told after the war that nothing happened to me – that I should forget everything. I was lucky because I was alive. Much later in Belgian government archives, I found family files that informed me about my early life.

Horrendous stories of Nazi terror towards Jews filtered through from people fleeing already-occupied countries. Belgium was invaded on 10 May 1940. Nazis enforced the registration of Jews. No registration meant no food coupons, but registration meant it was easy to find and arrest the Jews.

The round-ups of Jews began in earnest in 1942. I was four when my father left me with strangers on a farm and disappeared. Distraught, frightened, and lonely, I cried for days. I was relatively safe. I had enough food. After the farmers were caught by the Gestapo, I returned to Brussels. Walking with my father, hearing the heavy footsteps of boots, we hid in a doorway, me enveloped in my father’s big, black coat; I remember the smell of that coat – it was the smell of fear. I moved from safe house to safe house. My clothes became too small, my shoes too tight. I received the clothes from older children and passed mine on. They were riddled with lice. When visitors came, I had to hide in a dark cupboard and be very still, despite the itch from the lice bites.

My father was caught and sent on the last convoy from Belgium on 31 July 1944; he was murdered in Auschwitz. I have of him only his ring, so precious to me.

After liberation, not able or willing to care for me, my mother sent me to foster care. I was intractable and naughty, and they would throw me out. My needs for love, affection, and care were not met. I only began school when I was eight years old, and finished before I turned 14. My mother remarried in 1948. My sister was born in 1949. I had to care for her. I was eleven. In 1959 I left Belgium. Arriving in Sydney by ship, coming through the Heads, I saw this beautiful place bathed in sunshine. I had found my harbour.”

Francine played with this fragile coffee set in hiding, all the while imagining that she was entertaining other children and eating imaginary biscuits. In reality, Francine never played with other children. To this day, her grandchildren can’t understand why she doesn’t know how to play games with them.

Shmulek Moses

Shmulek Moses was born in 1923 in Balassagyarmat, in the Hungarian countryside. He went to an Orthodox Jewish school. In high school he was taught about the Crusades but was angry that he never learned Jewish history.

Shmulek left for Budapest in 1943. He learned Hebrew and became a religious Zionist and Bnei Akiva leader. In illegal clandestine groups he taught young people they should believe in Zionism and that they had no future in Hungary.

On 19 March 1944 the Germans invaded Hungary. Shmulek was taken to the ghetto, where Jews were subjected to curfews, forced to relinquish radios and valuables, interrogated and beaten.

One month later he was called up for forced labour. His company was sent to Poland to build roads in the mountains. By October the army started to retreat as the Russians advanced. Shmulek found himself marching across Hungary in torn shoes, his company charged with digging a new defence against the Russians. Half the company had typhoid. The Germans killed these and other sick people with a shot to the head. “I had to bury comrades who were murdered in this way.”

When liberation came in April 1945, Shmulek went back to Budapest. Bnei Akiva was arranging to take young people to Israel. He made contact with the Jewish Brigade in Italy. A year later, as leader of Hachsharah, a Zionist organization, he selected refugees from DP camps and placed them on buses and then ships from Italy and France, thus facilitating their escape to Palestine.

After the creation of the State of Israel, no more clandestine operations were necessary. Shmulek married Rachel; they had a daughter, Gilla, born in Italy, and came to Australia in 1954.

During the photoshoot, Shmulek cradled a photograph of Rachel, his recently deceased wife. He did not wish to be photographed without her by his side.

Peter Nash

“My maternal grandfather steadfastly refused to leave Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power. As a World War I veteran who had fought for the former Kaiser, he firmly believed that the Nazis would never harm him. He also thought that Hitler would not last. Shortly after Kristallnacht, in November 1938 my parents received an eviction notice from the owners of our apartment in Berlin. It stated, ‘Under the principles of the Nazis it is not acceptable for Aryan tenants to live under the same roof with Jews. We therefore demand that you vacate the premises.’

We did not vacate immediately because we were unable to obtain entry to another country. We heard that Shanghai did not require an entry visa. So my parents and I, my mother’s parents, and her brother decided to leave Berlin. In April 1939, we went by train to Genoa, Italy, where we boarded a German steamship. My grandfather was devastated to leave Germany. Unlike dozens of our family members, our lives were saved. Sadly, my grandfather died one month after reaching Shanghai, suffering complications from a heart attack prior to the journey.

My father’s parents in Poland did not want to leave. Once again pride stood in the way. Soon after Germany occupied Poland, my grandparents were among over 300 Jews who were sent to Piotrkow Trybunalski ghetto. We exchanged letters with them throughout 1940 until April 1941, after which we never heard from them again. In late 1942, all the remaining inmates of Piotrkow Trybunalski were transported to Treblinka and murdered.

In 1991 I visited Berlin with an older cousin and he showed me the spot where he stood on the morning of 10 November 1938 and watched the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue still in flames.”

Peter holds the eviction notice which was issued to the Nachemstein family at their apartment in Berlin on 25 November 1938.

George Sternfeld

“The missed Bar Mitzvah at 13 symbolized the Holocaust and its legacy, while the belated Bar Mitzvah at 66 symbolized my recovery from trauma and my re-entry into the communal fold.”

In 2005, George Sternfeld celebrated his coming of age in the forecourt of the Kotel, Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall. It was a rite of passage denied to him in his adolescent years, in a life interrupted by the Nazi threat and subsequent flight of his family from Warsaw to the southern edge of Siberia.

Aside from the biting weather and remoteness from news of Europe, this exiled life afforded some semblance of security. At the war’s end, the Sternfelds returned to Poland; to the realization of devastation and loss. “Subsequent enquiries have never given us hope that we would find a single relative alive. Nor were there graves to go to. The air above Europe is their cemetery.”

As a proud, young, Jewish man growing up in post-war Poland, early encounters with antisemitism affected George profoundly. Seeking empowerment and the discipline to set his life on a chosen course, he took up boxing and reinvigorated his lust for life. In 1960, the family immigrated to Australia. Embracing his new country, George found a natural affinity for the Australian way of life: the people, the culture, the personal freedom.

“Australia is my adopted home: I adopted it and it adopted me. I have a soul that is Jewish co-existing with a mentality that is Australian.”

George has two sons, Bernard and Dan. He married Liz, his second wife, in 1974 and together, they have built a life on a foundation of deep affection and understanding. Reflecting on his life, George acknowledges his journey in comprehending his history, in reconciling his identity as a Pole and as an Australian, but above all, in resolving his relationship with his Jewish identity.

George holds a photo of himself as a child in Siberia. It evokes strong memories of his childhood in the vast and remote area, where the temperatures could drop to minus 50 degrees.

Beate Stricker

“I was born in Berlin into an observant family. My parents and I lived with my grandparents until I was five. I loved my grandparents very much, and received a lot of attention from uncles, aunts, and cousins.

I was not really aware of the threatening dark clouds that were gathering… and then came Kristallnacht. My father did not stay at home that terrible night. When he returned the next morning, to his horror, he saw my mother, with my baby sister in her arms, facing an SS man. My father was able to prove that he had the necessary papers for us to leave immediately. Our destination was Australia. When we arrived we were surprised that there were no kangaroos hopping around the streets.

My parents felt insecure – how would they make a living and what did their future hold? A few more worrying months passed before they took over a run-down general store in Kogarah. While they were learning how to run it, my sister and I were taken care of at the Isabella Lazarus Home in Hunters Hill. My parents didn’t visit because they didn’t have a car and were tied up with the business.

Now they had the opportunity to learn English, make a living, and our family could live together in the attached residence. In time, several Jewish families moved near us. My father initiated a regular Friday night service at the local school of arts, which became the Southern Sydney Synagogue in Allawah. The Synagogue has been active in the community since 1943.

At the age of 19, I married Henry Stricker, a Kindertransport child from Vienna.”

Beate does not believe she is a Holocaust survivor, and yet she lives in its shadow.

Helen Studencki

“My parents, Solomon and Amalia Freifeld, were both from middle-class families with traditional Jewish values, which they tried very hard to instil in me and my older sister Sally.

We survived the war in Radymno, in the eastern part of Poland, initially in the ghetto and then in hiding. I have no memories of this time, since I was a baby.

My post-war recollections, when we emerged from our shelter with a Polish family, are muddy; difficult to tell today whether they are actual memories or things my mother told me.

One lesson I was determined to never forget was to be proudly Jewish, since anything else would have given victory to Hitler and the forces of evil, and desecrated the memory of all the members of our family and the millions of other innocent Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust.

Growing up in communist, post-war Poland, I had experienced many episodes of antisemitism, which was one of many reasons for emigrating. At this point, our small family fractured, with my mother and sister going to the US and me going to Australia.

My father is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. He gave me the Megillah that I have donated to the Museum in memory of my parents, who – despite the greatest odds – succeeded in making my sister and myself fiercely proud to be Jewish, and committed to the principles they lived by. It is from them that I have learned compassion and tolerance, and the understanding that no man is an island, and we need to be open minded and accepting, and never take anything for granted.”

Helen peers at a filigree silver Megillah, which holds sacred Jewish texts – a family heirloom given to her when she left Poland in 1959.

Margot Tischmann

“Things were already bad in Germany when I was born in 1933. It was the year Hitler came to power. My mother didn’t even stay in the hospital. My parents had a menswear business and were paying rent to a German man. He refused to take rent from them anymore, advising them, ‘You have to leave; you have to get out.’

We left on the ship D. Main, arriving in Australia on 6 December 1938. I was four years old at the time. When we arrived, the Sydney Morning Herald took a photo of me and another young Jewish girl. We were featured in the newspaper. Fearing consequences for our relatives in Germany, my mother and father would not give their names.

My father’s family lived in Poland; they all perished. My mother’s parents died before the war, but three of her sisters and a brother were murdered by the Nazis.

When we arrived none of us could speak a word of English. We had no relatives in Australia and there was no one to meet us. I went to pre-school and didn’t even know how to say, ‘I need the toilet.’ My parents had a big manufacturing business in Germany, but in Australia my mother had to clean floors to make a living. Soon, my parents were doing ‘piece work’ in their home in Bondi, making trousers. They changed their name from Fuks to Fox, to fit in.”

The doll held aloft by Margot was the sole treasured item she was allowed to bring with her when the family immigrated to Australia.

Lotte Weiss

Lotte Weiss attributed her survival to a series of miracles. Her parents and five siblings all perished in Auschwitz.

In March 1942, Lotte and her two sisters were deported from Bratislava in Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz. She remembered the “strange and terrible smell” of the bodies burning in the crematorium. That was the moment that she lost her faith in God.

In June 1942, Lotte narrowly escaped death when, after being sentenced to a punishment camp, the transport to which she was allocated was already full. She was also lucky to survive a bout of meningitis. In August, she was transferred to Birkenau. A month later came the devastating discovery of uniforms bearing her sisters’ numbers at the clothing collection point for the gas chambers.

Feeling hopeless, Lotte was then transferred from road construction work to the ‘Kanada’ block, sorting the belongings confiscated from prisoners. She was selected for sterilization, but managed to escape. Despite lying about her secretarial skills, she was chosen to work in the office of a German mining company. Whilst conditions at the office were much better than in the rest of the camp, she still suffered frequently from boils and throat infections.

By January 1945, prisoners could hear the Russians advancing; Auschwitz was evacuated. Fortunately, Lotte remained under the custodianship of the mining company, moving from camp to camp. She arrived in Theresienstadt in April 1945, where, after a few days, she was liberated by Russian troops.

Lotte still dreamed of her family. “When I do, it is a wonderful feeling. I thank God that they don’t have to suffer any more.”

Lotte held her concentration camp mug shot, taken in Auschwitz, 20 June 1942. Her prison number, 2065, was tattooed on her arm. She recalled trying to burn the numbers off by holding her skin against a hot pipe. When the skin healed the numbers were even darker than before.

Lotte passed away in February 2021.

Mimi Wise

“On 5 November 1943, in Felletin, France, the Chief of Police sent his wife to warn my parents, Lola and Chaim Goldman, that they had to leave immediately. The Vichy police would soon be coming, the family name was on an arrest list. We left immediately, no personal belongings. My parents separated in order to have a better chance of finding a hiding place.

My early recollections are of continuous displacement. After the Nazis came to pick up my family, my brother and I were hidden on a pig farm in Le Mas-d’Artige using false identity papers. It seemed in the middle of nowhere, but I was grateful to have Sam with me. My brother was the most important person in my life. We relied on one another.

When the police began searching for Jews in hiding, they came to the farm. The farmer was afraid for his family’s safety, and sent word that we should be picked up. We were reunited with our parents in Arboureix, a tiny village where we found shelter. My parents told the Mayor that we were Jews looking for safety. He replied, ‘We don’t like the Jews but we hate Germans more,’ and agreed to assist.

I remember sensing the danger and being acutely aware of our surroundings. One morning, Sam and I were playing on a village dirt road when we heard and felt rumbling. We quickly ran home as a convoy of German soldiers traversed the village.”

Memories of her stay in Arboureix culminate in a vision of hundreds of planes flying overhead while she was hiding in the fields. Mimi sensed her parents’ apprehension, unsure if “good or bad”. Liberation was only a matter of time.

“At age eight, after the war, I was told my real name was Miryam. I was shocked, as I was always Mimi. Miryam, being a biblical name, could have betrayed us as Jews.”

This jug belonged to Mimi’s mother, and is one of the few household items retained from their home in Felletin, France.