Child survivors share their stories
Candles were lit and tears flowed at the Sydney Jewish Museum last Sunday as they witnessed powerful testimonies from four Holocaust child survivors.
CANDLES were lit and tears flowed among an audience of 200 at the Sydney Jewish Museum last Sunday as they witnessed powerful testimonies from four Holocaust child survivors.
It was a deeply personal way to mark the museum’s rededication of the children’s memorial and commemoration service in honour of the life of Janusz Korczak, an annual event presented in partnership with the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants (AAJHSD).
AAJHSD president Peter Wayne reflected on what Korczak‚ a Polish Jewish educator‚ represented and sacrificed. “Seventy-four years ago this week, the Nazis liquidated Korczak’s orphanage in Warsaw, they deported him, his assistants and the 200 children, to Treblinka extermination camp,” Wayne said.
“Korczak was a Zionist … in 1939 he had the opportunity to make aliyah‚ so he had the choice to save himself‚ but he chose to stay in Warsaw and maintain the children’s home. He refused to abandon the children and he accompanied them to the gas chambers. He was 64.
“Korczak was the father these children never had.”
Wayne touched on the geographic scale of the Shoah when
introducing the guest speakers, noting, “they came from four different corners of Europe, yet they were all persecuted because they were Jewish.”
Egon Sonnenschein told of how he and his parents were given safe passage out of Bosnia by a local mayor, were assisted across the border into Slovenia by a member of the Resistance, and relocated to Italy as civilian internees until the Nazis invaded. They were again helped to escape, this time into Switzerland, by two mountain guides and local villagers, where they were adopted by a family until the end of the war.
“My parents went straight away to Bosnia and found out that everybody [in the family] were killed, except a three-year-old cousin of mine, who was saved – by a Muslim family – at great [risk of] danger to themselves,” Sonnenschein said.
Austrian-born Litzi Lemberg, Hungarian Peter Halas and French-born Jacquie Dale also shed light on the tragic loss of family members murdered by the Nazis, but also the kindness and courage shown to them by others, often strangers.
Five names were added to the museum’s children’s memorial, which is due to reopen in November. They are: Erich Bassist, Klara Eizilovitz, Eva Grunbaum, Rachel Stammler and Sarah Stammler.
SHANE DESIATNIK
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