Commemorating Wallenberg
APPROXIMATELY 100 people attended the annual Raoul Wallenberg commemoration earlier this month, held by the Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B’nai B’rith Victoria in conjunction with the City of Port Phillip.
APPROXIMATELY 100 people attended the annual Raoul Wallenberg commemoration earlier this month, held by the Raoul Wallenberg Unit of B’nai B’rith Victoria in conjunction with the City of Port Phillip.
Wallenberg, who was conferred with honorary Australian citizenship in 2013, was a Swedish diplomat who is celebrated for having saved thousands of Jewish lives during the Holocaust.
The commemoration at the St Kilda Town Hall marked the anniversary of Wallenberg being taken into captivity in January 1945.
Professor Frank Vajda, who was saved by Wallenberg in Hungary when he was nine years old, was among those who spoke at the ceremony.
After the event, Vajda told The AJN that he shared two stories through which he sought to “bring the character and the persona of Wallenberg to life”.
He recalled the protected house he lived in for a time being attacked by the Arrow Cross, which resulted in 35 people being dragged away to be murdered – including his cousin’s mother.
His distraught cousin sought the counsel of Wallenberg, who although lamented he could do nothing to bring the young man’s mother back, “radiated sympathy” and provided much-needed comfort.
Vajda also spoke about a friend who was a prisoner of the Arrow Cross, but was saved like many others with a Swedish passport signed off by Wallenberg.
He said coming annually to the Wallenberg commemoration is of great significance to him personally and “a stand for human rights”.
“I think it is a way of keeping the memory alive, teaching the younger generation. It evokes sad memories but also pride to have been the beneficiary of Wallenberg’s actions,” Vajda said.
Dr Avril Alba, lecturer in Holocaust studies and Jewish civilisation at the University of Sydney, also spoke on the day, focusing her oration on the Oyneg Shabes archive.
Created by a documentary group led by historian Dr Emanuel Ringelblum in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, this project was dedicated to chronicling life in the ghetto, and collected documents, testimonies and other materials to this end.
Alba drew a parallel between this significant exercise in Jewish resistance and the efforts of Wallenberg.
“Their resistance and those of individuals like Raoul Wallenberg restored to us our heritage and to the world its humanity, and our task must be to seek their words and actions out and to give them renewed meaning,” she said.
Deputy Mayor of the City of Port Phillip Serge Thomann also spoke on the day.
PHOEBE ROTH
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