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Interviewer: What was your barmitzvah like?

Dad: Naturally I had to have a cold so it was a blessing because I haven’t got a voice. I croaked my way through it. I had a reasonable teacher, the Chazan of the synagogue.

Interviewer: What did it mean to you, that barmitzvah, that special day, particularly given that you and your father weren’t hugely religious?

Dad: In reality my appreciation of it was, it just meant more obligations. I didn’t really appreciate what my parents had gone through to let me have a barmitzvah the way I did, and to follow it to the letter. It’s only when you become a parent you realize just you know what parents go through, and they kept me on the straight and narrow.

My father was religious in his own way. He actually was known as being a bit strange to people who decided to drift or wanted to be considered atheist out of convenience or people who criticized the Jewish religion – me being one of them – and used to lay down the law. He said if you criticize the Jewish religion it is a sure sign of your lack of knowledge. Criticize something that you know about, don’t criticize something you just don’t like. And he had a reputation that people better steer clear of him if they’re going to be anti-Jewish.

My father was also a man’s man. In 1946 our air-raid shelter had to be filled in, it was in the practice. Across the road there was a truck driver and he offered a load of sand for £5. When he delivered the sand and he said, “That will be £10,” my father said, “You said £5.” Now the truck driver was a really tall, strong truck driver. He said “You bloody Jew,” and my father went into him. He ended up in hospital.

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Interviewer: In relation to mixing within the community obviously that’s an issue to be faced today with people like John Howard saying that they have to learn English.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: Was that something that you experienced here in Perth in relation to there being an obligation to blend with the wider community, to become more Australian?

Dad: No, it was different in those days. Much different. I was going to Hale [School], and I had enough problems. I wanted to do boxing in school, Saturday morning but no go, synagogue, okay. Then when I became friendly with boys at Hale and we’d go out together. The boy I was most friendly with – his parents were clients of my parents – explained to me said, “Look, we’re friends, we’re together but I don’t go to your house and you don’t get invited to ours.” That was the attitude, the feeling.

Interviewer: How did you sense the wider community?

Dad: Not like that. I took it to be typical Hale School. I even discussed it with Mr Johns. For instance when I first went to Hale School after being there a couple of weeks, Mr Johns asked me “Have you got a tennis racket?” I said, “Yes, I got one from my Barmitzvah.” I had never played tennis in my life. He said, “Bring your tennis racket and shorts to school.” And he arranged for a couple of boys, Lloyd and Irvine, (and there was supposed to be a fourth but he couldn’t make it), and we played tennis. And I was very friendly with Michael Perry. We’d go fishing on the Swan and stay overnight. He came to my barmitzvah and he was very happy.

Interviewer: So there was no sense of an, ‘us and them’ scenario?

Dad: No, no we lived the same life.

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Interviewer: How were you finding Perth? How were you as a young bloke finding Perth, Western Australia as opposed to where you’d come from?

Dad: It was pretty tough. I hadn’t done English at school, I hadn’t been to school in Germany. In mathematics I was okay because my father had taught me on the boat coming here, several months of mathematics. I went to Highgate State School and there most kids were handicapped in that they were either Greek, Italian, Maltese, you name it. But I was a German and a Jew. Gradually, all that faded. There were a few school bullies because with the war going on several of the bigger boys in primary school were about 15 or 16 – they were repeating years because I don’t know whether they were that low intellect or because they wanted to stay out of doing what they were supposed to be doing. And Brisbane Street was very close to Highgate Primary School and we went to Hebrew School there, three times a week.

Interviewer: What was Hebrew School like?

Dad: I didn’t like it much.

Interviewer: Why not?

Dad: I got picked on. When Rabbi F was alive he took exception to me because I was taught to read or do Hebrew by my mother’s grandmother’s brother and it wasn’t the same as our very formal rabbi. He said, “I want you to read Hebrew by the stop watch.” Then when Rabbi Rubin Zachs came it all changed because he was very easy going. Wasn’t run like an army institution like under Rabbi F. I gradually got the message that you had to do a bit of work to learn your Hebrew. So by the time I was 12, I was able to cope. I got along with most kids, although I got into a couple of fights, mainly in connection with this Polish thing.

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Interviewer: How though did you settle into this Jewish migrant community here in Perth?

Dad: After that episode with the boarding house – one room – things dramatically improved. The committee handling it couldn’t do enough to make up for what had occurred. One of them bullied her relation who at that time had a luxury car, and he drove my parents -  and sometimes I was included – around outside Perth to find a suitable location for my father’s practice. My father had been brought out with that permit because they wanted qualified veterinarians. Anyway, we went as far as York and the people my father met, the dinkum Aussies, were very friendly and most helpful. They told my father – mainly through my mother because her English was close to perfect (and my father was partly deaf from the war, and hadn’t learned English at school) – that it was all a matter of money.

We gradually narrowed the field back to the city. Through friends my parents had made – both Jewish and non-Jewish – we came to this practice in Stirling Street run by a Canadian who had come out here. It was pretty rough compared to what my father had left in Germany. But the Canadian was very eager to sell because war was coming, everybody with eyes could see it, and he wanted to go back home. The Canadian got on very well with my father, they talked the same language, he was a proper veterinary surgeon and he showed my father a few tricks which a private veterinary surgeon practicing in the city knew or had to know, and which my father hadn’t learned while he was practicing in country Germany. He had come straight from university and from an abattoir to a large animal practice, and now we had small animals included in the city practice. Anyway, through the help of the Breckler family who guaranteed a loan, my father bought the practice.

The practice was at 74 Stirling Street and consisted of a very rough area which had been stables for horses in the days where horses were used for transport. The front was a very old house which had been condemned. We couldn’t move into the house after the sale because it needed urgent repairs. We moved into a one bedroom unit, in Pier Street, within walking distance. It was the next street parallel to Stirling Street. And we had friendly neighbours. One was an Irishman, and he took to me. My parents were busy in Stirling Street, and he would take me fishing down Barrack Street at night and tell me stories how he and his crowd in Ireland fought the Black and Tans before they came out here. He was especially good to me. And there were others like him.

My parents were occupied trying to improve the practice aesthetically with practically no financial resources. They bought the practice but they were renting the house from a landlord. The landlord was also especially nice, and she immediately became friends with my mother and helped my mother as far as advice as to how to go about repairs and how things are done in Australia. And out of the blue appeared a gentleman by the name of Smith, who was at a loose end. He’d studied engineering up to third year, had to toss it in, and had no money. Then he earned some money and went into medicine. He got to third year, ran out of money and got married and now his wife was earning. They lived in quite a nice unit down at Mount Street. Well, he went to work for my father as assistant or yardman. When war broke out, he was a reserve officer and went into the army.

All this had happened with mainly non-Jewish people. It was only when my parents were settled – working that is – that it was time to mix. Out of the blue we got an invitation in 1939 for “First night of the Jewish New Year and family” from Harry Cohen and his wife Bessie.  Bessie is a relation of my wife. From then onwards word got around and another family – the Adler family – became one of my parents best friends. Then  it boiled down to the practice, and our first clients were a few Jewish families who had a cat or a dog. We could see they were doing it to help us and the same with a few non-Jewish families who we’d run into.

Stirling Street and Pier Street was a very tough area. We didn’t know it but later on Eric Cooke (a Western Australian serial killer and burglar who was later hung -ed.) lived there with his family almost directly behind us. But they stuck together. Way down the street there was the ice man and he had a truck. Then on the corner of Stirling and James Street, two Greek brothers opened a steak house. But it was a communal meeting place as far as most of the people from around Stirling Street went, and we got to know one another.

Money was the main reason why people were reasonably close in those days. They needed one another. For example, in summer which was very hot due to the tin roofs and badly built places, everything was left open. I mentioned who lived behind us without us knowing it, and there were others around, but nothing bad happened.

Hat tip: Shy Guy, who found it advertised in a European airline’s duty free magazine, and woke up the whole plane laughing.

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Interviewer: You hear of things like the Free Loan Society and those things later on. But my sense is that there was this sort of global community that was helping the Jewish migrants…

Dad: Organised.

Interviewer: It was strong here in Perth?

Dad: Yes. When I say strong you could count them on the fingers of both hands. My parents insisted that they received nothing but kindness in that article in the Maccabean.

But for example, when my father opened up his clinic with my mother’s help because not only could she speak English but she had been registered as his assistant in Germany, my father became the Police Veterinary Honorary, the RSPCA, Veterinary Honorary… I’ll explain about the number of clients he had. Anyway at the RSPCA, there was a Jewish fellow named Hertz, and he was old, skinny and pretty irascible. He had a horse which was older and skinnier than him and he had a mikvah (Jewish ritual bath – ed.) in his backyard. The horse fell into the mikvah and resisted being removed by Hertz. He couldn’t have removed a fly if he tried. So the neighbors got the RSPCA and my father went out there and inspected it, examined the horse and realized why the horse was resisting – it had broken or damaged its leg. My father said, “It has to be put down.” So he made an enemy for life. Hertz then organized his family to put forward a petition to jail this Nazi war criminal, ex-soldier who was proud about his medals. And they went out of their way to be nasty for years, even when the war finished. That was one of the reasons my mother had trouble getting my grandmother in the quota.

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Interviewer: What were your initial impressions of Perth on your arrival?

Dad: Not good.

Interviewer: Why not?

Dad: Well I was restricted. It was bad enough on the boat. My father went out of his way, nearly bored himself to death looking after me. But here my parents had no time.

Interviewer: But literally as you were getting off the boat what did you see? Obviously the Fremantle wharf.

Dad: We were met. They were getting organised here and we were met with a car and a committee of ladies. And were taken to this boarding house in Norfolk Street, Highgate or North Perth. I hated it there. We had one room.

Interviewer: Why?

Dad: Well the story had started here in Perth that all German Jews, apart from being arrogant and all being professors and all having this and that, were very rich, and they ripped us off. Normal rent for a flat was about 10 shillings and my parents, who didn’t want to cause any waves, paid over the pound and then everything was extra. And it was only when the parents met other people who had arrived earlier than us that they learnt what was going on and they complained.

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Interviewer: What were you being told about Perth and why not stay in Adelaide?

Dad: Rabbi Rubin Zachs had contacts and he said Perth was small and more migrant friendly, a very large German colony in Adelaide’s Barossa Valley, and a very small, practically non-existent Jewish community in Adelaide. So Perth it was.

Interviewer: You told the story off air about needing £50.

Dad: With 50 English pounds you could have bought an acre block in Applecross. It was a lot of money. Basic wage in Perth at that time in the depression was £3. People used to go to Kalgoorlie to work. Why? Because the basic wage there was £3.10. The first place we lived in here – a rooming house – rent, £1 for a room!

Interviewer: You mentioned that you needed this £50 but your father didn’t have it. Where did he get it from?

Dad: It was given to him by Rabbi Ruben Zachs. It had been arranged. Organisations stretched from Berlin to other parts of the world.

Interviewer: You mentioned a chap jumping a barrier to do this.

Dad: That was the reverend who became Rabbi Rubin Zachs.

Interviewer: You likened him to a particular chap.

Dad: Yes, he reminded me of one of the movies I saw of Douglas Fairbanks junior. The moustache, build, agility.

We learnt as we lived here that there were some families here who gave permits. In other words, they would put up the bond for people to come out….One permit that I will never forget was given by the Catholic Archbishop of Perth.

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Interviewer: I would like to talk about all of those things in post-war experiences. But coming out on the boat presumably you didn’t know much, you weren’t getting much news about what was going on.

Dad: I was a nuisance to the other passengers because I had been treated like a prince by my families and here were people with problems, middle aged people, not young. They weren’t wealthy by any means. My father was the only professional man there. There was a painter there, there was a type of plumber there. That’s all I can remember.

Interviewer: So here you are approaching Adelaide – what were your immediate thoughts on arrival?

Dad: Well I was pretty happy, I had my eighth birthday in Adelaide Harbour and they made a big fuss of me. I was given a present by the ship’s captain. We were met by Rabbi Rubin Zachs and a couple with a car (they had driven the rabbi because cars in 1938 were at a premium). And there was an uncle, a bookmaker, with his niece named Flora. Anyway, Flora looked after me – she was older than me – and I think we played darts or something. Then I got on to a boat that was even worse than the German boat. It was even smaller, an interstate boat, and we were third class. But the crew took pity on us. We were all horribly seasick and they came and brought us what they thought would be a delicacy and that’s frankfurts and sauerkraut but they had to make it, it wasn’t… they had to put vinegar with the cabbage and… but they went out of their way to try and make things nice for us. I remember that. And we were very grateful about that.