Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History
Abstracts of articles in Issue JHS 16.3

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AFTERMATH: HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN AUSTRALIA

• Deborah Staines, Introduction
• John Zeleznikow, Life at the End of the World: A Jewish Partisan in Melbourne
  • This study seeks to discuss how one type of Holocaust survivor, namely partisans who fought in the forests, coped in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Through a discussion of the life of Avram Zeleznikow, in the Vilna Ghetto, the forests of Rudniki and post-war Melbourne, it becomes evident that life after the Holocaust was an anti-climax. By the time he was 20, Zeleznikow was a renowned hero. His past 65 years have been dull in comparison. He is only now starting to reflect on ethical dilemmas faced by the partisans.
• Suzanne D. Rutland, Resettling the Survivors of the Holocaust in Australia
  • In 1945, the majority of the surviving remnant of European Jewry wished to leave the European continent. For some, distant Australia seemed a hopeful refuge. In the period from 1945 to 1961 around 25,000 Jewish Displaced Persons migrated there, reinforcing a community that only numbered 23,000 in 1933. Despite this significant intake, Jews continued to constitute only 0.5 per cent of the overall population. As a result of anti-refugee hysteria against Jewish migrants, the Australian governments, both Labor and Liberal, insisted that the reception and integration of the refugees was the responsibility of the Jewish community. This period marked the beginning of a partnership between Australian and American Jewry in this enormous resettlement task. Without this support, there would be fewer Jewish Holocaust survivors in Australia.
• Jenny Wajsenberg, Landsmanschaft Postscript: The Bialystoker Centre in Melbourne, Australia 1927–1977
  • This essay offers an account of the creation, development and demise of the Bialystok landsmanschaft established in Melbourne Australia, 1927–70s with particular emphasis on the post-war years. The Bialystok Centre changed direction in the immediate post-Second World War years to accommodate numbers of expatriate Bialystok Jewish refugees who were sponsored and assisted by the Centre to establish new lives for themselves in Melbourne after the war. Whilst this essay describes an episode of post-war Australian immigration history, its primary focus is on the role of the Centre, its place as both a support and identity core for the community it served.
• Michele Langfield, Memories of Jewish Child Refugees in Australia
  • Located in the city of Melbourne, Australia, the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre (JHC) is an important repository of memories of Jews subjected to Nazi persecution who subsequently migrated to Australia. Among those who found refuge in Melbourne were a small number of children who came under organised schemes. These included 20 teenagers who sailed on the Jervis Bay in May 1939 under the auspices of the Welfare Guardian Society and the Save the Children Fund, and 17 children sailing on the Orama in June 1939. Some of the Kindertransport children and adolescents also later migrated to Australia from Great Britain. The JHC has documented their Holocaust experiences, especially the aftermath, through its ever-expanding videotestimony collection and the ‘Shelter from the Storm’ exhibition. It becomes clear through their testimonies that these now elderly survivors were highly traumatised through the separations and displacements forced upon them as children.
• Paul Valent, Holocaust Traumatology in Australia
  • This essay is a personal perspective of the history of views on Holocaust trauma in Australia. It looks at attitudes to psychological consequences to the traumatic events of the Holocaust from soon after the war to the present day. It discusses the contribution of Holocaust traumatology to traumatology generally, as well as Holocaust traumatology’s dilemmas and potentials.
• Annabelle Baldwin, Sexual Violence and the Holocaust: Reflections on Memory and Witness Testimony
  • This study looks at the intersection of Holocaust trauma and memory and that of sexual violence. It focuses on the psychological aftermath of sexual violence as described by survivors of the Holocaust in the Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. It examines how female Australian survivors articulate their experiences of rape or sexual molestation and how they have struggled to cope with the memory of these experiences. It discusses the concept of ‘silence’ as both an obstacle and as an agent of coping, and examines survivors’ own interpretations of their experiences five decades on.
• Joseph Toltz, ‘Se non ora, quando?’ The Hidden Musical Testimony of Holocaust Survivors in Australia
  • In Australia, personal recorded testimony has been a feature of readings of the Holocaust since the early 1980s. Yet up to now, no specific studies in Australia have focussed on a notion of music as a testimonial device. This essay presents a cross-section of musical testimonies gathered from Holocaust survivors living in Australia. Such memories are a crucial part of the psychological and musical life of survivors, post-Shoah, where a wealth of hidden experience lives on in the songs and memories preserved, and each memory is used as a reflexive pedagogical tool in discussing the nature of those experiences. Music acts as a powerful medium in the context of traumatic isolation, describing, educating, mocking, soothing and distracting.
• Matthew Feldman, Debating Debates on the Holocaust