Yom Hashoah in Sydney

More than 900 guests packed Sydney’s Moriah College as the NSW Jewish community commemorated Yom Hashoah and the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Following the screening of a video on the history of the Warsaw Ghetto, the combined choirs of the Emanuel School and Mount Sinai College sang Eli Eli before Michael Jaku the Chair of the Shoah Remembrance Committee welcomed the guests.

Lena Goldstein who witnessed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was one of the main speakers . Here is her story…

“I remember the Germans announcing to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto that each of us would be given a loaf of bread and a portion of jam when we presented ourselves at the Umschlagplatz for transfer to the East. Many Jews volunteered for this transfer as they were hungry —-they believed, or they wanted to believe that the Nazis were telling the truth. Whole families presented themselves hoping to escape the cruel reality of starvation in the Ghetto.

But over time fewer and fewer Jews volunteered for transfer and forced deportations began. With forced deportation came Selektion. To the right meant to stay and work, to the left to be deported. Each person was allowed only one suitcase, except that in some suitcases there was no clothing. There were in fact

little children whose parents were trying desperately to prevent separation by sedating them and concealing them inside the suitcases.

We also believed that if we worked for the German war machine we could avoid deportation. German factories, or rather conglomerates, employed Jews as slave labour. There were tailoring factories, shoe factories, fur and leather workshops and a laundry.

The biggest conglomerates were Schulz and Tobbens. My parents managed to get a job in the Schulz laundry washing German uniforms. But working for the Germans did not prevent deportation. This was a deception. My parents were deported after two separate selections and I managed to hide myself under a pile of bloody uniforms when my mother was taken away. Then, in order to exist, I managed to take over my mother’s job.

While I was working in the factory, a few escapees from Treblinka managed to come back to the Ghetto. That opened our eyes to the real purpose of the deportations. We discovered that there were no labour camps in the East; just gas chambers. Once you got on the train there was no return.

One of the escapees knew my father and he looked me up in the ghetto. He had met my father in Treblinka when all the men were lined up naked waiting to enter the gas chambers. My father led the Kaddish for the women and children who had already gone in before them. Somehow this man escaped. My father told this man that he worried about me. My father, waiting to die, was worried about his daughter having no money and no-one to care for her. I never saw this young man again. Succeeding in escaping death once did not bring an assurance of survival.

The Polish National Army declined to help us, and the Polish People’s Army that said it would support Jewish fighters demanded exorbitant prices for each revolver and each round of ammunition. To pay for the guns and ammunition, the resistance fighters decided to collect money – a tax – from the wealthy ones who were still in the ghetto.

The money was collected during the night after curfew, moving between the buildings through holes in walls, attics and cellars. As my building did not have a common wall on one side, sometimes fighters spent the night at my home until morning when the curfew was lifted.