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Apr. 12th, 2009 11:09 pmToday was quite extraordinary. My niece and I and Mum (but mostly my niece) made the unbirthday cake. That was a lovely morning.
Mum decided it was time for a family afternoon tea, which is an old custom of hers during Passover. There were only a dozen or so of us, but I was at the very best end of the table. I say this with all due apologies to the near relatives at the other end of the table.
My mother was the youngest (apart from me) at my end. I'd been placed there to keep everyone in coffee and tea, and coffee and tea create conversation. The conversation was all about families.
There were family stories from Australia in the first decades of the twentieth century ("And they took out my tonsils there, while I was lying on your great-grandmother's kitchen table."), stories about how families arrived here (more of that shortly), and stories of the family members who didn't. I learned about cousins and which concentration camp they died in (mostly Auschwitz) and saw a beautiful photo of my mother's next-door-neighour's family, before World War II. Out of the the whole photo, only two of that family survived. It was very sobering, hearing R. describe (in slow Yiddish, so I could understand some) how she survived, and what she felt. This is why I can't watch Holocaust movies or read Holocaust books. It's not theory of good and evil: it's the life of the girl next door.
After a while the group switched to English and started talking about their friends. I heard stories of survival and stories of losing everything after going home to heal. I knew in theory about the murders of returning Jews, but being told "I caught the first train. On the second train, forty Jews were murdered." made it all very close and frightening.
Our end of the table boasted three different matriarchs (I hate calling them that - they're cousins and friends, really) from my mother's father's family and I got to ask them their versions of the coming-to-Australia story.
I always thought it amazing that so many cousins came out, that they started life in Australia with an extended family. A whole family who knew they had to leave Poland! (was it Poland then? I never know who owns Bialystock at a given historical moment)
Until today, I knew it as the cigarette case story. I'd been told that a silver cigarette case was pawned over and over and over again to get the sum of money necessary to underwrite the migration of more family. I need to check this out, because none of the three branches knew of it. They didn't even know if there as any underwriting needed, or just a guarantor.
Anyhow, my new theory is that my great-grandfather was the silver cigarette case. He certainly was the guarantor. He came out and, starting with nothing, made a living. Then (eventually - long story in this, one which includes advice on migration by a village idiot) my great-grandmother and my grandfather and my great-uncle came here. They were all happily Australian in Ouen and Sale (rural Victoria) by 1920. My great-uncle was notorious for preferring tennis to manning the till and he would leave a sign on the till saying that it was open and could people please just leave the money and he'd be back after the game. He wasn't able to do this when my grandfather and he worked in Melbourne.
It took until 1924 before my great-grandfather could help anyone else, but then he brought Anna's family out in 1924, and Diana's in 1926. After that, the path of my cousins to a safe land was steady until Arnold Zable and his family were on the way here, just before World War II. The Zables were barred from Australia, being Jewish and subject to the brand-new somewhat anti-Semitic restrictions that applied from then until after 1945. The Zables ended up in New Zealand. All the family who didn't come out, were victims of the Shoah. Zable documents some of them in one of his books (Jewels and Ashes - oh, but I wish I could write as well as he does!).
The amazing thing is how many of my family were saved by my great-grandfather. Every refugee needs a relative like that.
Mum decided it was time for a family afternoon tea, which is an old custom of hers during Passover. There were only a dozen or so of us, but I was at the very best end of the table. I say this with all due apologies to the near relatives at the other end of the table.
My mother was the youngest (apart from me) at my end. I'd been placed there to keep everyone in coffee and tea, and coffee and tea create conversation. The conversation was all about families.
There were family stories from Australia in the first decades of the twentieth century ("And they took out my tonsils there, while I was lying on your great-grandmother's kitchen table."), stories about how families arrived here (more of that shortly), and stories of the family members who didn't. I learned about cousins and which concentration camp they died in (mostly Auschwitz) and saw a beautiful photo of my mother's next-door-neighour's family, before World War II. Out of the the whole photo, only two of that family survived. It was very sobering, hearing R. describe (in slow Yiddish, so I could understand some) how she survived, and what she felt. This is why I can't watch Holocaust movies or read Holocaust books. It's not theory of good and evil: it's the life of the girl next door.
After a while the group switched to English and started talking about their friends. I heard stories of survival and stories of losing everything after going home to heal. I knew in theory about the murders of returning Jews, but being told "I caught the first train. On the second train, forty Jews were murdered." made it all very close and frightening.
Our end of the table boasted three different matriarchs (I hate calling them that - they're cousins and friends, really) from my mother's father's family and I got to ask them their versions of the coming-to-Australia story.
I always thought it amazing that so many cousins came out, that they started life in Australia with an extended family. A whole family who knew they had to leave Poland! (was it Poland then? I never know who owns Bialystock at a given historical moment)
Until today, I knew it as the cigarette case story. I'd been told that a silver cigarette case was pawned over and over and over again to get the sum of money necessary to underwrite the migration of more family. I need to check this out, because none of the three branches knew of it. They didn't even know if there as any underwriting needed, or just a guarantor.
Anyhow, my new theory is that my great-grandfather was the silver cigarette case. He certainly was the guarantor. He came out and, starting with nothing, made a living. Then (eventually - long story in this, one which includes advice on migration by a village idiot) my great-grandmother and my grandfather and my great-uncle came here. They were all happily Australian in Ouen and Sale (rural Victoria) by 1920. My great-uncle was notorious for preferring tennis to manning the till and he would leave a sign on the till saying that it was open and could people please just leave the money and he'd be back after the game. He wasn't able to do this when my grandfather and he worked in Melbourne.
It took until 1924 before my great-grandfather could help anyone else, but then he brought Anna's family out in 1924, and Diana's in 1926. After that, the path of my cousins to a safe land was steady until Arnold Zable and his family were on the way here, just before World War II. The Zables were barred from Australia, being Jewish and subject to the brand-new somewhat anti-Semitic restrictions that applied from then until after 1945. The Zables ended up in New Zealand. All the family who didn't come out, were victims of the Shoah. Zable documents some of them in one of his books (Jewels and Ashes - oh, but I wish I could write as well as he does!).
The amazing thing is how many of my family were saved by my great-grandfather. Every refugee needs a relative like that.