Towards the Future A Memoir

In this memoir, Guta Kopel recounts her life from the day of her Liberation, three weeks before the end of World War II. She was finally free after six years of deprivation and loss. Guta was 15 years old and all alone.

It is 1945, and Europe is in chaos with vast population movements and survivors of a ruthless war searching for places to call home. Traumatised Holocaust survivors became displaced persons, contemplating their future and trying to find a country that would accept the remnants of European Jewry.

After leaving Germany, Guta regained her youthful spirit among the friendly and hospitable Italian people of Florence. Although the life of a displaced person was difficult and transient, she enjoyed living in Italy. She learned Italian and English and made many good friends.

Four and a half long years later, she, her cousin Inka, Inka’s husband, and their two little girls were granted permission to emigrate to Australia. Settled in Melbourne, Guta met Ludek Goldstein, the man she was to marry.

Ludek was also a Holocaust survivor and a displaced person in Italy. His painful and distressing story through the war is movingly described by Guta.

It was in the safety of Melbourne that they embraced a normal life.