From chocolate to Anzac biscuits
CHANTAL ABITBOL
IT took child Holocaust survivor George Sternfeld more than five decades to experience what had been denied to him -— his bar mitzvah.
“This opportunity sort of spontaneously came up, and after contemplating for about a minute or so, I said, ‘Why not?'” recalls the 70-year-old retired researcher from Randwick, who grew up in Communist Poland and chronicles the event in the first chapter of his newly-released memoir, Chocolate to Anzac Biscuits, published by the Sydney Jewish Museum.
His decision to have his bar mitzvah came after an emotional return to Poland and the home where he grew up -— the first time back since leaving more than 45 years ago -— during the 2005 March of the Living program.
“When I walked into the dining area, I could almost visualise my mother,” he recalls. “It was an amazing feeling to realise that I had left and moved on, and nothing had changed. I discovered that Poland is not my country anymore.”
Sitting on a Polish coach, touring the death camps where most of his extended family had perished, Sternfeld began to share his story with a fellow participant, and mentioned that he had never celebrated his Jewish rite of passage.
With a trip to Israel next on their stop, his companion suggested a novel idea: to celebrate his bar mitzvah at the Kotel.
“Throughout my life, I always had a feeling, ‘Do I or don’t I belong to the Jewish community?’ My legacy was taken away from me by living in Communist Poland and not having my extended family,” explains Sternfeld, who had considered sharing the ceremony with his son years earlier, but later gave up on the idea.
“[Then] suddenly, I felt emotionally connected, with all the people that were there on that day focusing on this old man being lifted up in the air. What I had been robbed of all those years, suddenly came back.”
Apart from reconnecting with his faith and community, the experience also sparked a desire to write his story.
In his memoir, Sternfeld details his family’s heroic journey: from their escape to Siberia when he was just six months old after the Nazi invasion, returning to postwar, anti-Semitic Poland, and later to their eventual migration to the safe haven of Australia.
Interspersed between his recollections, he includes a family heirloom of photos and recipes from a bygone era, alongside more recent images of his new life and family in Australia.
“I’m still amazed at the memory that is still with me,” he muses, while insisting his story is, in essence, an Australian one.
“Australia gave me all this courage and freedom that I never had in Poland. [It is where] the renewal took place.”
Chocolate to Anzac Biscuits is available from the Sydney Jewish Museum.
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