The Collectors
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Friday 12 October 2007
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This week Justin visits the Jewish Museum in Sydney, a place that not only commemorates the atrocities of the Holocaust but also explores the history of Jews in Australia and the richness of Jewish life.
The Museum is filled with both chilling and inspirational images and stories, though none more moving than those of the children that survived the Holocaust and made their way to Australia. The exhibition looks at the experiences of those young survivors that made it out of the ghettos and concentration camps or were sent away on the Kindertransport by their parents.
During the early days of the war 10,000 children were relocated to relative safety on Kindertransport. One of those, Charles Feldman, was just six when his father was killed and his mother was forced to put him a boat bound for Australia. On display as part of the exhibition is the wooden boat his father carved for him in a French labour camp before his death. An orphanage became Charles’ new refuge once he arrived here.
The story of Paul Drexler, a volunteer guide at the Museum, is also part of the exhibition. When his family was arrested and ordered out of their home in the middle of the night, his mother wisely tied two blankets to her suitcase. After Paul and his mother were separated from his father, they both spent the next five days and nights on the back of an open cattle train in the middle of winter with only the blankets to comfort themselves.
Curator Ros Sugarman says the exhibition features a growing number of paper butterflies with hand-written messages of hope on them. Ultimately she wants to collect over six million of them. Butterflies of Hope is on until mid November 2007.
