Description
This anthology gives voice to the remarkable variety of experiences that make up the texture of the Melbourne community. Many of them reflect the fact that Australia had the highest percentage of Holocaust survivors of any diaspora Jewish community in the world. Each voice gives a picture of the family before the war, when life was sweet, so the reader knows what was taken away. Two photos accompany every contribution: when possible, one from the past and then a family group from the present – a celebration of the new life they were given.
Fortunately, not everyone is a Holocaust survivor. While the collection includes some of the most brutal stories imaginable from that time, it also features stories of Yiddish performers, migrants from Buenos Aires, a Dunera boy and an emeritus professor. It honours people who have served the community for decades: the devoted convert who heads the Chevra Kadisha, the unassuming sole survivor who engineered the Myer Music Bowl and the extraordinary philanthropist who raised over $15 million for charity. Many of these people are well known but their stories have never been published. The anthology is a testament to the courage, intelligence, inventiveness and love of life that abound in this unique Jewish community.
Table of Contents and Contributors:
| How my mother never left me | Marysia Kohn |
| The man who danced at Auschwitz | Adolek Kohn |
| Reflections of a fortunate Jew | Michael Hammerman |
| A survivor’s odyssey | Wolf Deane |
| A holiday romance | emeritus Professor Louis Waller AO |
| Four years in Siberia | Julek Sokal |
| Dunera Boy | Harry Unger |
| In my mother’s footsteps | Brigetta Paneth OAM |
| Before I met Richard | Lillian Frank AM, MBE |
| Before I met Lillian | Richard Frank |
| All I want is four good boys | Ian Samuel OAM/td> |
| How I survived | Mary Frydenberg |
| A legacy | Ida Klein |
| Making our lives in the lucky country | Helen Pinch |
| A teenage boy from Warsaw | Alex Blank |
| A very lucky life | Ilse Lamm |
| My pink life | Eve Lustig |
| Becoming myself | Lena Fiszman |
| To Melbourne from Romania, via Italy | Eva Levinson |
| Survival, my story | Helen Granek |
| Survived to become OK | Otto Kohn |
| A survivor from Chust, Czechoslovakia | Helen ‘Chajču’ Schon |
| A Yiddishist in shtetl Melbourne | Irene ‘Tomi’ Kalinski |
| Thirty years with the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha | Ephraim Finch OAM |
| Thirty years with the conversion team | Cas Finch |
| A Shanghai story | Leo Sherwin |
| From Buenos Aires to Melbourne | Pepe and Juanita Bekinschtein |
| The mikvah, my shlichut, my mission | Tamara ‘Timmy’ Rubin |
| Where to go … where to go … | Ruth Scheuer |
| A glimpse of my life | Assia (Chassia) New |
| A portrait of my parents | Yoshue Rapoport |
