The Testimony (18 page)
Authors: Halina Wagowska
On 21 December 2004 Judith stepped off a Buenos Aires flight at Melbourne Airport. We embraced for a long time, speechless with excitement. It was fifty-eight years since we were together, sisters by acceptance.
Shared persecution is a bonding experience for many. For Judith and me, growing up together in a slave-labour prison for the first half of our teen years, the bond acquired a special quality. It was reinforced by meeting again during the postwar chaos, amazed by our survival and learning to lead the lives of free people.
In 1946 she and her father emigrated to Argentina. I left for Australia in 1948. Our subsequent correspondence revealed remarkable parallels between events in our lives: early marriage, work, dealing with culture shock—and catastrophes. Judith had two small children, Monica, aged three, and one-year-old Alexander, when her husband was killed in a car accident. Judith’s father was, as ever, of greatest support.
A few years later my husband Zdzich died of cancer after a long and dreadful illness. He was thirty-six years old. We had no children.
Years later Judith and I both found the loves of our lives in our second marriages. Judith’s children grew to adulthood, adopted and loved by Jan, the only father they remembered. I met Monica with her husband and two young sons on their very brief stopover in Melbourne some years ago. She said that a better father and husband than Jan would have been hard to find.
George and I enjoyed our marriage, the second for both of us. We found a large common ground, similar interests and a similar sense of humour. We loved being together. His mother, Maminka to all, visited from Prague and stayed with us for a year in 1969. On school holidays—George was a teacher—we took her to Sydney, the Snowy Mountains, Kosciuszko National Park and country Victoria. France-Anne, George’s daughter from his first marriage, was a frequent visitor. These were very good years.
In 1972 George and I, both on long-service leave, travelled to Vienna, Paris and London, and drove through Italy. After that we went to Washington and New York. Plans to visit Judith in Buenos Aires had to be postponed due to George’s illness. He died of brain cancer some months later.
Judith’s husband, Jan, died several years later. We were both now widowed twice.
In 2004, in my home in Melbourne, we talked each night into the small hours. Not about war time: a little about Lodz after the war, about the need to testify and the emotional cost of it; about people we knew and loved, about her children and five grandchildren, who were growing up in a hurry; about adapting to new cultures; about my various projects and involvements.
In the daytime we rushed to galleries and botanic parks in Melbourne and Ballarat, on scenic trips in the Dandenongs, and we staggered from lunches to dinners given by my friends in Judith’s honour. It was a very festive season indeed; a very merry Christmas and New Year. The Reads, the Spindlers and the Martins of Ballarat opened their homes and hearts to Judith and, like I, she felt that she belonged.
The fortnight she spent here wasn’t nearly long enough. It was most likely the last time we hugged. Now, in 2011, we are both in our ninth decade, and too old for a long flight.
Back to the phone and posting updated photographs.
‘Black Saturday’, as it has come to be known, occurred on 7 February 2009. Extreme weather conditions—prolonged drought, temperatures of 47 degrees Celsius and gale-force winds—combined to turn a bushfire into a rapidly moving inferno that engulfed several townships and villages north of Melbourne.
In that fire, 173 people perished.
Over 2100 houses burned down to the ground, and only a few structures remained standing, saved by a sudden change of wind.
Local and global TV coverage of the event and its aftermath was extensive. The nation watched in horror; condolences came from abroad. Survivors huddled in shock. Their basic needs were quickly met by generous donations of money, tents, caravans, food, clothes, bedding, camping gear and toys. Many were sifting through the ashes of their homes, hoping to find items of sentimental or material value.
A reconstruction authority was convened, portable community barracks set up to distribute food and goods, provide advice, services and counselling. Several families left the area, most stayed to rebuild their homes. The massive task of removing the debris began.
In the TV footage there was a memorable interview with the curator of the Marysville and District Historical Society, Mary Kenealy, a retired teacher. She and her husband Reg had compiled an impressive collection of documents, books and artefacts of historical significance for the area. Mary has also written a book, a well-researched history of the district called
The High
Way to Heaven
.
During the interview Mary Kenealy described how, while their house was on fire, she and Reg carried the historical items to a safe place. It was in vain; the ‘safe place’ also burned down. Mary’s grief was palpable, and it was not for the loss of their own possessions.
I thought of books—the great enrichment of life—and of the many thousands destroyed in that fire. And now, with the long winter evenings approaching, books would be of use to the campers. A call to the Reconstruction Office confirmed that, yes, books would be a welcome donation, and they put me on to Libby Kotchet, librarian in the nearest town undamaged by the fire. Her library and the mobile library in the area—a busload of books serving the small villages—lost hundreds of books that were out on loan during the fire. I was told which types of books would be needed: general literature, historical novels, spy and detective stories, biographies of the famous, cookery and children’s books. Text books, special interest and coffee-table books could not be accommodated.
A long-time member of the Humanist Society of Victoria, I put a notice in the newsletter asking for book donations for the fire victims. This message spread unexpectedly far and wide through friends, relatives and neighbours and then their friends, and the response was overwhelming. Hundreds of books were arriving at my place daily, often delivered by total strangers who were only remotely connected to someone I knew. Soon my place was full of large cardboard boxes bursting with books. In the remaining limited space I served tea and biscuits to many donors and heard fascinating stories of their lives.
This little project of mine escalated beyond my capabilities, and I had to ask for help. Several true and trusty Humanist mates formed a working bee, and we sorted over 800 books in one long day. Sorting consisted of assessing the condition of the book and its suitability for the libraries, and carrying out minor repairs, erasing scrawls and removing from the books items such as recipes and love letters. A few books ended in the recycling bin due to their poor condition.
Packaging was a problem at first. En masse books are jolly heavy, and I could handle them only in small boxes. The employees of two nearby liquor stores obliged by saving six-bottle wine boxes, and each week or two three dozen were ready for collection. I became known there as the ‘wine-box lady’, and I said I was flattered to be called a lady. Nearly 450 boxes were used in this project.
I met Libby Kotchet early on, when I delivered my carload of books to her library. She impressed me with her energy, resourcefulness and extensive knowledge of the people, issues and needs of the whole district.
It was now several months after the fire and the landscape was bizarre. Many trees in the area had no canopies, only tall, charred trunks pointing at the sky. But at ground level lush-green branches of new growth were sprouting—forests and avenues of upside-down trees.
The next delivery was a hired truck that took some 2000 books; the rest was delivered by several obliging friends during the year. The initial avalanche of books turned into a stream, and then a trickle. The total for the libraries was just over 3500. Some 1600 of the donated books, mainly text- and special interest books, went to a second-hand bookshop frequented by university students.
The most outstanding donation arrived early in the project. It was the
Encyclopaedia of Australian History
, twelve volumes, beautifully bound, illustrated in colour and in pristine condition—clearly not books for borrowing, but of possible interest to the Marysville and District Historical Society, which was to be rebuilt.
It was easy to get hold of the Kenealys, as they were so well known in the area. And yes, they told me they would like to come and see the books. They arrived, we introduced ourselves and, while Mary examined the books, I chatted to Reg. After quite a while Mary turned around and, crying quietly, embraced me. It was a very emotional moment.
Mary and Reg now collect items of historical value donated or found in the ashes. The resilience and optimism of the Kenealys, both in their seventies, was impressive.
Having replenished the losses of the libraries, Libby Kotchet placed books in centres for a ‘borrow or take’ arrangement. Several people found copies of much-valued and lost books which were now out of print. Libby conveyed their tearful thanks.
The project became time-and-effort consuming but ultimately very gratifying, not least because of the generosity of all who gave and helped so gladly.
The prominent German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller was a critic of Hitler’s regime, and was therefore held in a concentration camp from 1937 till the end of World War II in 1945. He wrote:
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade
unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Martin Luther King Jnr, African-American leader and campaigner for civil rights, was often harassed and arrested by the police. He said, memorably:
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
My need to speak out about the things that matter to me is great, and my limited time and capacity to do so a constant frustration. Current social, political and legal reforms lag behind so many urgent human needs. Minority groups worldwide still suffer as a result of ingrained prejudices and racist attitudes, and the denial of basic human rights.
In my Australian lifetime, I have seen some steps taken towards a more civilised way of life, such as the abolition of capital punishment and of corporal punishment in schools, and the classifying of the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation as a criminal act. Women seeking abortion are no longer subjected to dirty backyard practices (my work in hospital emergency units all too often dealt with the horrific outcomes of those practices).
But human rights abuses continue, particularly for the First Australians, for asylum seekers arriving by boat, for same-sex couples, and for people with disabilities or mental illness.