Israellycool

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Interviewer: You wouldn’t necessarily have taken much notice that there was a war coming on but do you remember people talking about that? Do you remember conversations being had about what was going on at home?

Dad: Well yes. They’d left everybody behind. My father his mother. My mother, her family, a very large family. She was very worried about them because they were in a bad part of what had become Poland. Also they were slightly more prominent than my father’s family, financially speaking. My mother’s family had a small abattoir, a tavern which was like a pub and something like a motel except instead of cars, there were horses. Human nature being what it is, they were singled out first. Germans had barely crossed the border, started World War Two, when my grandfather on my mother’s side was beaten to death by Poles. My grandmother and her family ended up in the Warsaw ghetto. My mother had a brother and a sister who was married with a young girl. The sister with the young girl went together with my grandmother into the Warsaw ghetto. The brother was a bit more astute - he was supposed to have been a bit of a rogue - and he got away. My grandmother survived the Warsaw ghetto, her daughter and granddaughter didn’t, and she ended up in Auschwitz.

And this is where my memory gets a bit romantic because I was very fond of my uncle, my mother’s brother. He came and took her out of Auschwitz. He bribed a guard or two. The story goes he knocked out somebody’s gold teeth and he used them as bribes. My grandmother then was left with a Polish family. She spoke fluent Polish and she became the housekeeper, masquerading as a Catholic Pole. During the rest of the war she had to listen to them celebrate every time there was a German victory or Jews were killed. Anyway, she got away with it. Ended up in a D. P. camp where my mother found her through correspondence in ‘46. But she was old and she was ill. She was in her fifties.

There was a quota system here in Perth, Australia for three, and my grandmother missed the quota and things were pretty tough. I think ‘46 was the worst year in the D. P. camps. They hadn’t realised just how bad people were living there. So my mother went and tried everything. She had a friend, a school teacher, a Miss Harrison who had later told her she had some Jewish blood and she said, “I think I may be able to help. I’ve got a cousin, he’s just got back from the war and he’s been elected MP for Fremantle, Kim Beazley, senior.” (father of Kim Beazley, former leader of the Australian Labor Party - ed.). So she arranged for my mother to meet Kim Beazley, and he said, “Look I can’t help, I’ve just been elected, I have nothing to do with Immigration. There is nothing I can do.” He spoke nicely. Anyway, as we were leaving he took my mother by the arm and he gently said, “Now if it was my mother, I would get her to England if you have relations there, and from England I would get her to America, and from America I’d get her to New Zealand and once you have her in New Zealand you are home because no papers are necessary to get from New Zealand to Australia. And that’s what my mother did. She mortgaged and borrowed and begged - didn’t steal – and got her mother here some time in ‘47. It took about a year.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Interviewer: So why Australia then?

Dad: That we came? Because of the permits by McEwen. Jack McEwen I think it was.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about that.

Dad: Because my father was immediately recognised at the university through a couple of friends he made here in Perth. Even though my father couldn’t speak English too well - my mother could, she did it at school, and father had a hearing difficulty because of the horse artillery - he made friends with the Silbert family…Stuart Silbert’s father lived in Darlington. They had a place there. And their neighbour was a Dr McKenzie-Clarke who lived in Darlington away from Perth. He was Director of Veterinary Services in W.A. McKenzie-Clarke took my father to the university. McKenzie-Clarke had been outside Australia, and he vouched for the qualifications which was very important. My father was about the only one at that time who was immediately recognised. It was only when the war broke out and necessity stepped in that other people were recognised.

Interviewer: So Australia sort of presented itself.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: So you were talking of your trip and the boredom of that trip.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: How was the average day spent? You mentioned your father teaching you to play chess. When did you get up, what did you do and then when did you go to bed?

Dad: Well I found the adults very boring on board the boat because all they could do was huddle together and talk about what they were getting into and how they were going to make a living and what the prospects were. And they wanted to know the news because we knew war was coming. Ship news were eagerly sought after. I didn’t understand most of it. That’s how the day was spent.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Interviewer: You were talking about the situation on board the boat.

Dad: That’s when I first learnt something about anti-Semitism. There were the 10 Jews including me, the crew and one or two other passengers. One was a tall good looking blonde - even at that age I recognised a tall good looking blonde - and she was supposed to have worked for Phillips Wireless. Anyway, she was coming to Australia and she became very pally with the political officer. Things could have got rather nasty except for one fact, the captain was another old dog from World War One, and he had my family, at his table and he kept a fatherly eye on us. When the tall blonde made a big fuss about my father daring to go in the swimming pool they’d erected when we got to the equator, he shushed it up because non-Aryans were not allowed to go into a pool with the Aryans. My father wasn’t an angel, he lost his block, and my mother warned me, “Don’t go near your father for a while.” Then I realised… I had to behave. I couldn’t behave like I did with my grandparents. I had to keep as much away from annoying other people as possible. And that’s where the boredom set in and that’s where my father came to the rescue with teaching me chess, Hebrew and mathematics. All which came in handy when we got off the boat, because I’d missed several years schooling.

Interviewer: But you were continuing your trip.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: You mention this boat was particularly slow.

Dad: Yes. Four to five months. It was literally a small steamer and it hugged the land.

Interviewer: Did you know anything of Australia?

Dad: No, I think our parents had an atlas and they were told by the committee in Berlin, “Watch out for bush fires and droughts in Australia” and “Careful, they’re the biggest con men in the world.” So no-one sold us the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Interviewer: Talking about your childhood memories you were also talking about travelling around to relatives houses…what do you remember of those occasions? Was that a sort of communal assistance?

Dad: It was wonderful. They all went out of their way. I was staying with my father’s family, his mother, who lived with her brother and he was a very religious man, had asthma, and he used to roll his own cigarettes. And because he could see I was bored, he let me roll the cigarettes. There was a theatre in that little place where they lived and through some connection he had a free pass so I practically lived in that theatre. He would come and bring me lunch and I would be watching the movies, Tarzan and you name it. Within reason. My mother’s side was also wonderful. It was also in the country. And I gradually began to know my relations. Apart from my grandparents, I never met them before.

It was Poland, the Danzig Corridor. And things began to worsen there because Poles by nature in those days were very anti-Semitic and when German influence began to move in, they showed it openly. You could imagine it wasn’t too pleasant if you were a German Jew, because there were two counts against you - German and a Jew.

Interviewer: So here you are in the midst of this anti-Semitism but having a bit of a holiday by the sound of things as well.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: What other stories do you have associated with that time?

Dad: Well, we got on the boat in Bremenhaven, North Sea, and…

Interviewer: Did you understand why you were getting on the boat?

Dad: No, we were leaving but my life was filled with activity. It was only on the boat that I began to learn what boredom was. But I was occupied and they were… those old people and my grandparents, they knew their stuff. Keep him occupied. They taught me how to ski, how to skate, a number of things.

Interviewer: All the talents you’re going to need in a place like Australia.

Dad: Yes. Anyway, on the boat there was already Nazism. They had a political officer and there were German passengers on the boat.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3, 4

Interviewer: I hear stories of German Jews leaving the country with no money. Literally you leave, you leave with nothing. Hear of stories of people leaving without visas even for getting out. And other countries for instance, England, discouraging this movement of people. What stories do you have in relation to that – obviously your family is part of that?

Dad: Yes. Part of Hitler’s… now when I talk of Hitler and his boys I don’t talk of Germans generally. First of all that bastard was an Austrian and secondly he lied, he was never in World War One, he was not gassed. His behaviour can be best explained by what happens when you have syphilis and there is no penicillin - number one. Now after Hitler came to power and by 1935 they realised, Hitler and his boys, no country wanted Jews. Not only because let’s say they preferred other people but the economics was very bad. Australia, for instance, was in the grips of a huge recession, depression, there was no money, nothing.  And they felt they couldn’t afford to have lame ducks.

Okay, so what Hitler did was he told the world and his Jews, you’re free to go with our blessings. You can go wherever you want. Except leaving with nothing, no-one wanted them and they couldn’t get out.

Interviewer: In relation to your story, what are your earliest memories, growing up in Germany?

Dad: Very kind memories. Only child. My father had a government position. Parents felt guilty having me away from communal life and I became a ruff neck. I was very big for my size in those days. I had a dog, a wonderful dog, a boxer. And once Hitler after ‘35, then others, became more openly anti-Semitic and taking my dog for a walk with a boy who lived next door and someone called out, “Dirty little Jew boy,” and the boy next-door said, “Do you hear what he called you?”  So I set the dog on him and the dog took out his crutch and naturally months later the dog went missing. We heard later that he had evened the score by shooting the dog. From ‘35 onwards things like the neighbour with that …figure.

Interviewer: With the caricature?

Dad: Yes, and I, idiot of a boy, lost my dog.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2, 3

Interviewer: I want to talk about how life was to change. Presumably you didn’t have much knowledge of what was going on being a young boy?

Dad: No.

Interviewer: But from stories that your parents would tell you let’s go back to how things would change gradually for Jewish people in Germany from ‘33 onwards for instance.

Dad: Well Lipke was a village of about 100 people. It had a few necessities and my father, because of his position, was able to have a car so there must have been a petrol station. Anyway, we had a neighbour, Vanzerloper, I remember the name. He was an optician, or type of optician. If you were that way out in the country..your qualifications would be dubious. He was also a cripple, a hunchback, lame, and as a matter of fact he was the propaganda minister Goebbel’s caricature of what a Jew looks like. When Hitler came to power he put up a device which worked with the wind and it had a hook-nosed Jew gyrating around a pole.

Anyway, my father didn’t take any notice, it didn’t worry him. But when he lost his job in 1935, he realised what he had to do. So he went to the necessary Jewish committees in Berlin and they said “Oh yes, we can get you into Siberia, Shanghai China, Venezuela South America” but I think that’s where it stopped at that time. The rest of the time was visiting relations because we had to preserve our funds living with them and going back and forth - I was left with the relations in Berlin to see what could be done about getting out. But it had been left rather late and it was only through an Australian politician who had toured Europe earlier. McEwen was his name, and he was leader of the Country Party. He noticed there were a pool of professionals and craftsmen and he worked at it and he got 3,000 permits. You need a permit to be allowed to enter the country. I don’t know whether they were all filled but one of the requirements was the age and my father told a polite fib, he said he was under 40. In 1938 he was 42. He had to leave his mother, the widow, behind because she had a heart condition and was old.

Now I am going to say something I probably shouldn’t. My mother was pregnant, and you weren’t allowed in if you were pregnant so my mother had to have an abortion in Berlin. Once we had the permits, things became more organised and we got a ticket for the steamer “Bremenhaven, North Sea”. We left on the steamer in 1938 and came via West Africa to Adelaide.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous installments: 1, 2

Interviewer: As I understand your father’s military career would affect his life later on.

Dad: Yes.

Interviewer: In what way?

Dad: He came here and the war broke out, and when a couple of people he had met here told him they were going to join up, he went with them. They were very polite but they laughingly showed him where he’d been wounded and…I mean it was the upper body and one leg particularly badly.

Interviewer: But earlier on in Germany I understand that because he had served he was treated in a different way.

Dad: Yes… All government servants lost their job in 1933 when Hitler came to power. But there was a figure head, President of the Republic, he was a General and he said, “My soldiers will not lose their job.” So in 1935 he got the boot from Hitler because Hitler won that election and my father lost… oh my parents lost their jobs because my mother worked with my father, and no eating money. My parents lived very… we lived very well where we were but when you worked as a civil servant you don’t get fat.

Interviewer: Not in those days anyway.

Dad: No.

Interviewer: You were mentioning obviously his war service. What stories did he tell you about his war service in World War One?

Dad: Well No. 1, like most people who saw service in the First or Second World War, when the war ended and he came home he was about seven stone. He wasn’t a prisoner of war but lost a lot of weight. And he told me that he had learnt that his war service consisted of 95 percent sitting around waiting and five percent having to do something, and he found that particularly trying. He was very young. He found that horse meat wasn’t too bad when you’re starving. Young horse was a delicacy. What else did he tell me? I’ve got photos of him and they were close, his unit. It was only when Hitler came to power that they laid it on the line, they could not afford to have anything more to do with him.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Previous instalments: 1

Interviewer: I did want you to tell us what you know of your father’s military background. His experiences during World War One.

Dad: Well he was in the Horse Artillery, and his little unit - the ones who survived - ended firm friends after the war. You get a medal for volunteering, you get a medal for serving in the front line, you get a medal for being wounded twice badly and you get a few other things but those were the three medals my father was proud of. Because anti-Semitism had always been in Germany or Europe - even England - and even though Jews lived better in Germany until after World War One, they still could not achieve the ultimate. A Jew could not become a regular officer in the regular army. He could become a reserve officer but not a regular officer. I repeat that because of my father, because he never reached the rank he thought he had earned.

Interviewer: Did he ever explain to you possibly as a boy why this racism existed – why Jewish people were always going to be in a particular strata?

Dad: He tried to on the boat. We were together for about four, five months and he taught me Hebrew and he taught me chess and he taught me mathematics and I think he possibly tried to explain. All I knew was there were do’s and don’ts, full stop. When it came time for me to go to school I arrived all dressed up there and nothing too bad except it became embarrassing when I wanted to go to the toilet because all of a sudden there was a crowd of people there waiting to see what my penis looked like. The headmaster was a friend of my father. He told my father it was a bad mistake to go to school because under Hitler’s edict I wasn’t actually allowed to go.. So I didn’t understand too much because when the parades went past our little village of kids and the Hitler Youth etc, I asked my parents… I told them I would like to join. It was only later I learnt.

A number of years ago, my father was interviewed for the Jewish Migrant Oral History Project. Thankfully, I have a copy of the interview, and I will be publishing excerpts from it in his memory.

Interviewer: John can we begin the interview by you telling us your full name and where and when you were born please?

Dad: My full name, birth certificate, Joachim David —–. John David —–, born Lipke, L I P K E near Landsberg an der Watte, Province Brandenburg. Landsberg was the nearest town and Province Brandenburg about one million people, predominantly farming. Small farming.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about your family background. Who were your parents? Could you name them for us?

Dad: My father Hans David —– born 1896. Nicholai, Upper Salesia, Danzig Corridor. My mother Freida —– born Catowitz, also Upper Silesia – Danzig corridor. The importance of the Danzig Corridor being mentioned is it changed hands every war between Germany, Poland and whoever.

Interviewer: What was their background? How did they come to be in this part of the world?

Dad: My father’s family; his mother became a widow when my father was four and she lived with her brother Louie Berger. My father had schooling and then he went to war. He was the only Jew in the class and the whole class volunteered so he volunteered. He came back from the war and his relations there were quite well off. They were merchants. And because of them being so smug about everything my father developed an aversion to business people and he was going to study medicine. But lo and behold he didn’t have the money so he got into a veterinary course in Giessen. End of story he decided to really rub it in, he finished his veterinary course and then did a doctorate by working in an abattoir as director. He worked in the abattoir because that was close to where his mother lived and she was getting old and she hadn’t seen very much of her son.

I had assumed that the marriage was arranged because my father was 32 when he married, and my mother turned 21. Also my mother’s parents or family bought that practice in Germany, in Lipke. It was a government practice and he could have private patients if he wanted. It was a fixed income. So they moved there to Lipke after marriage. My mother found it a little hard at first because her family were closer to being more German than my father’s family who were ultra-religious. As my mother tells the story, she was introduced to my father’s family and the men sat in one part of the room, the women in the other. They moved to Lipke, and I was born in 1930 and all went well. My father belonged to all the organisations there, the ex-servicemen, the Front Line - that means active service - who have seen active service and had the medals. Due to my father’s background, my parents left Lipke and drove something like 15 kilometres to Landsberg, where there was a Jewish community, for the Sabbath. They drove there Friday afternoon and came back Saturday after the Sabbath. And they did this without thinking.

Part of my father’s work was servicing what they called a ‘gutt,’ a large property owned by, I won’t say nobility, but so-called junkers, the aristocracy. One was an ex-serviceman, ex-officer and he hadn’t married yet, and they were running wild, and doing things, but he was also like my father; he couldn’t sleep too well and he read a lot. So he and my father started exchanging books, but then he got married and domesticated and they became friends. He was the one later who told my father not to be crazy, to get out of Germany.