Honouring their memory Dani & Arnold Mahemoff
Photo of Lusia with armband (and unknown relative), 1939.
In 1997, I made my way to JHC as a volunteer needing to hear Holocaust survivors confront and share their stories. I observed students’ emotions after hearing a survivor story or touching a tattooed arm. I heard their stories and established a better grasp of our parents’ plight. Sometime after, Saba Feniger, former JHC curator, made the connection. “We came to Melbourne on the same ship,” she said. “Your father was a photographer! Bring in your photos and documents as the museum is doing an exhibition called Regeneration, which is part of a series of Melbourne exhibitions on the Australian family.” The process began of piecing together our parents’ journey, with me bringing in a shoe box of photos, telegrams, postcards and letters, written mostly in Polish. All were translated with great respect and diligence by survivor guides and volunteers. The JHC, with their Holocaust survivor guides and volunteers, helped piece together our parents’ story, filling in the voids and helping us further our research and knowledge for which we are eternally grateful. It has been a privilege and honour to work as a volunteer at the JHC for many years. I am committed to support the JHC and believe my choice of the Memorial Room is an appropriate place to acknowledge and remember the many family members who perished in the Holocaust. We support the JHC education programs which grow more relevant by the day in a world of rampant racism, prejudice and war. We can forgive but never forget.
Lotte & Paul Porges
D
ani’s parent’s, Lotte and Paul Porges arrived in Melbourne in 1949, both having suffered horrors, cruelty and deprivation at the hands of the Nazis. They were sent first to Theresienstadt, then Auschwitz-Birkenau, Neuengamme Hamburg and finally to Bergen Belsen from where they were liberated. Dani’s mother was born in Frankfurt but lived in Prague and her father was born and lived in Prague. Dani’s father lost all his family in the Holocaust, but her mother managed to save her mother, brother and stepfather as well as a number of other prisoners. Dani was 18 months old when they came to Australia and her sister was born 4 years later. The plan was to emigrate to Canada where Paul could continue his family business as a fur merchant. Unfortunately, the wait for a ship to Canada was too long and, as they wanted, understandably, to get out of Europe as quickly as possible, they took the next ship available which was bound for Australia. Arnold does not share the same background, as his family came to Australia in the 1920s from Russia. However, he has had a very deep interest in the Holocaust and strong feelings and empathy for what the Jewish people suffered at the hands of Hitler’s maniacal actions. Dani and Arnold say: “We feel very strongly that we wanted to dedicate a space at the JHC in memory of Dani’s parents who suffered outrageous horrors and survived the Holocaust, giving my sister and me a happy and privileged life in this country. We also feel very strongly that we must educate, particularly the young, that hatred and bigotry can lead to more genocides in the future as lessons have not been learnt over millennia. We believe that we have a responsibility, not only as Jews who have suffered these atrocities, but also to stop atrocities to other minority groups from happening in the future. We often wonder why, as Jews, we have always suffered discrimination but we hope that, one day, places like JHC might help to dispel all the prejudices.”
JHC Centre News
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