Locked Bag 1797
Penrith South DC NSW 1797 Australia
Equity and Diversity
UWS Open Forum
21st April 2008
Surviving Genocide
Personal Stories from the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising
Welcome and Introductory Remarks
Dr Sev Ozdowski OAM
Director Equity and Diversity, UWS
Acknowledgments
It is my pleasure to welcome you all, particularly Ms Rhonda Hawkins, Deputy Vice
Chancellor, Corporate Strategy and Services; our presenters Halina Robinson,
Marcel Weyland and Phillip Hinton, other distinguished guests and especially the
many young people that I can see here in the audience. Today we will deal with
possibly the worst crime against humanity ever committed – the Holocaust. It is
important to transfer this information from generation to generation as a warning that
human nature is capable of committing genocide.
We have received many apologies. Today is Passover and some religious Jews could
not attend and have sent their apologies. Apologies came from many politicians,
including local members, and also from others.
Introduction
On 19 April 65 years ago, in 1943, an uprising started in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Today we have gathered here to commemorate it and to pay our respects to all
victims of the Holocaust and in particular to those who perished in the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising.
Before I introduce our speakers, I would like to provide you with a short factual
account of both the Holocaust, and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, to put Halina’s eye
witness account and the poetry we will be listening to, into an historical context.
The Holocaust
"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire."
In contemporary vocabulary, by the Holocaust we mean the genocide of Jewish
people by Nazi Germany.
The Holocaust, like any other genocide, was a systematic, state-sponsored, well
organised persecution and murder that resulted in death of approximately six million
European Jews.
Despite our contemporary historical awareness – we have witnessed genocide in
contemporary times – remember Cambodia, Rwanda, most recently Darfur –
organised to destroy a class of people because of their ethnicity, religion, social
status or political views.
Another characteristic of genocide is that it always has its deniers.
I initiated the topic of tonight’s meeting to remind us that it could happen in the
future again and in our region.
The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans
were "racially superior". The Jews, deemed "inferior," were seen as an alien threat to
German community. At that time there were about 9 million Jews in Europe.
During the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their
perceived "racial inferiority":
 Gypsies,
 the disabled, and
 some of the Slavic people (Poles, Russians, and others).
Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioural grounds,
among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals.
The Germans, for example, targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia and killed
and deported millions of Polish civilians for forced labour in Germany. My family,
both on my father’s and mother’s side, was deported from western Poland as early as
in October 1939. My uncle, Father Narcyz Putz died in Dachau concentration camp
in 1942.
Most of the killings took place between 1941 and 1944 in purpose build
extermination camps, using specially developed gassing facilities. In fact it was first
time ever that industrialised slaughter houses were build to kill people.
Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile
killing units) were organised to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews and
others. They murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and
hundreds of thousands of others.
Many other people were murdered in concentration camps or died as a result of
incarceration and maltreatment.
By 1945, the Germans and their collaborators killed nearly two out of every three
European Jews as part of the "Final Solution".
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The term "ghetto" originated from the name of the Jewish quarter in Venice,
established in 1516, in which the Venetian authorities compelled the city's Jews to
live.
During WW II, ghettos were enclosed city districts created by the Nazis as a
temporary measure to concentrate and monitor the regional Jewish population in
preparation for their extermination.
The Germans established at least 1,000 ghettos in German-occupied Poland and the
Soviet Union alone. The first ghetto was established in Piotrków Trybunalski in
October 1939.
Some ghettos existed for only a few days, others for months or years. With the
implementation of the "Final Solution" beginning in late 1941, the Germans
systematically destroyed the ghettos. They either shot ghetto residents and buried
them in mass graves located nearby or deported them, usually by train, to the
extermination camps.
The largest ghetto in Nazi occupied Poland was the Warsaw Ghetto, where over
400,000 Jews were crowded into an area of 4 square kilometres. Jews were required
to wear identifying badges or armbands, perform forced labour and their living
conditions were tragic because of hunger, lack of access to most basis services and
brutalisation by Nazis.
Between July and September ‘42, the Germans deported some 300,000 Jews from
Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. For the 60,000 Jews remaining in the
Warsaw ghetto, deportation seemed inevitable.
In response to the deportations, several Jewish underground armed self-defence
organisations were created, the key being the Jewish Fighting Organization
(Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa)) and the ghetto population began to construct
subterranean bunkers and shelters.
65 years ago, on 19 April 1943 the Germans entered Ghetto to begin deporting the
remaining Jews. It was the signal for an armed uprising. They knew they cannot
win, but some 220 mainly young Jews fought the Germans for nearly a month.
Outnumbered and outgunned, they held off German troops for three weeks with
homemade explosives and a cache of smuggled weapons. The Nazis killed most of
fighters, and then systematically burned down the Ghetto street by street and reduced
the Ghetto to rubble. The uprising ended when its main leaders — rounded up by the
Nazis — committed suicide on May 8, 1943. About 40 fighters escaped through
Warsaw's sewers and joined the Polish partisans.
Allow me to mention here Marek Edelman, the last surviving commander of the
1943 uprising in the Warsaw ghetto. In an interview with The Associated Press,
Edelman said the Nazis "wanted to destroy the people, and we fought to protect the
people in the ghetto, to extend their life by a day or two or five." Then 24 years old,
Edelman took command of one of the revolt's three groups. His fighters, between the
ages of 13 and 22, scraped together guns and ammunition that they and the Polish
resistance managed to smuggle in from the outside. His brigade included 50 fighters
known as "brush men" because their base was a brush factory.
"I remember them all — boys and girls — 220 altogether, not too many to remember
their faces, their names," says the 89-year-old doctor, who still works in a Lodz
hospital. Edelman will lay a wreath in their honor at the Monument to the Heroes of
the Ghetto on Saturday, the 65th anniversary of the uprising. "There weren't enough
guns, ammunition. There was not enough food, but we were not starving. You can
live for three weeks just on water and sugar," which they found in the homes of those
deported to death camps, he said.
They adopted hit-and-run tactics. With time, as supplies and forces began to run low,
they resorted to attacks at night, for more safety. "Every moment was difficult. It was
two or three or 10 boys fighting with an army," Edelman said. "There were no easy
moments." But they were outnumbered and outgunned. "It lasted for three weeks, so
this great German army could not cope so easily with those 220 boys and girls," he
said with a grain of pride.
The German Commander SS General Juergen reported to Berlin that he had captured
56,065 Jews and destroyed 631 bunkers. He estimated that his units killed up to
7,000 Jews during the uprising.
Mark Edelman, said in Warsaw recently that the Ghetto uprising is “a symbol of the
fight for freedom. A symbol of standing up to Nazism and of not giving in.”
Now it is my pleasure to introduce to you our tonight’s speakers.
Halina Robinson was born in Poland, the daughter of a well known Ear Nose and
Throat specialist. She lost over 140 members of her family in the Holocaust. Halina
lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, until September 1942 and then survived by living in 13
locations and had 4 sets of false documents. She was mostly under the care of the
members of a branch of the “Armia Krajowa” (Home Army).
After the War Ms Robinson stayed in Poland, married, had two children, completed a
degree in Psychology and worked as a broadcaster and editor. She then went to
Israel with her family, before coming to Australia in 1961. For close to 5 years Ms
Robinson worked as a nursing aide in lung cancer/tuberculosis hospital, whilst
studying for her Library qualifications privately. She then worked many years in
librarianship mostly in TAFE and Paramedical Studies and completed her Masters in
Librarianship at Monash University. Following on from this she worked in the
Federal Public Service and was one of the foundation members of the Ethics
Communities Council of NSW.
Ms Robinson participated in the creation of Ethnic Radio, she has broadcasted in a
voluntary Polish program and also as a paid broadcaster on SBS. Ms Robinson has
contributed to the Polish press in Australia and in Poland and started also to write in
English. Her first book ‘The Cork on the Waves’ covers her life story from 1930 to
1957 and was published in 2005. She was one of the first accredited
interpreter/translators and as a CES worker registered thousands of Poles arriving
after 1981. Twice married, Halina has two children and six grandchildren, and is the
matriarch of a very large family.
Mr Marcel Weyland OAM was born in pre-war Poland. He fled the advancing
German army, and probable death, to eastern Poland, then to Vilnius in Lithuania.
When the Soviets took over Lithuania he was again forced to flee. He was given a
Japanese Transit visa by the famous Japanese consul Sugihari, and travelled through
Russia to Japan. Mr Weyland was interned throughout the war, with about 20,000
other Jewish refugees by the Japanese in Shanghai. He completed his schooling
whilst in the camp. In 1946 Mr Weyland arrived in Australia, where he studied
architecture and later law. He married Philippa and they have 21 grandchildren.
Mr Weyland translated Adam Mickiewicz’s epic Polish poem ‘Pan Tadeusz’ first as
a hobby and then as a compulsion. The book was published in Sydney in 2004 and in
London and New York in 2005. Mr Weyland was the recipient of a Polish
Government grant to produce in English an anthology provisionally titled ‘200 Years
of Polish Poetry’. Whilst researching the book he came across a growing number of
verses that had been written during and about the Holocaust. These versions have
been published in a separate volume titled ‘Echoes-Poems of the Holocaust’. Mr
Weyland has been awarded the Order of Merit from the Polish Parliament and in
2008 he was honoured with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his
service to the Polish community "through the preservation and promotion of Polish
cultural heritage".
Mr Phillip Hinton will recite poems found in the ruins of ghetto after WWII. The poems
were translated into English by Marcel Wayland.
Phillip Hinton was born in war-time Britain and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa
to where his parents emigrated in 1947. He is married to a professional dancer Ann Constant
and they have three sons, Sean, Simon and Benjamin. After the Hinton family moved to
Australia in 1975 and Phillip has continued his acting career on stage, television, films and in
radio drama
Philip is an accomplished actor. His acting carrier started in 1963 in London where he has
worked with some of Britain's leading directors including The Royal Shakespeare Company.
He has also had guest roles in several US TV productions, The Flood, The Thornbirds, The
Missing Years, Tanker Incident, Time Trax and Flipper. He is in great demand as one of
Sydney's leading 'voice over' artists in radio and television advertising and for documentary
narrations.
Philip is also committed to human rights and peace and has been associated since 1961 with
the Bahá'í Community. His solo performance, Portals to Freedom, has toured major cities in
Australia and USA and was performed in Haifa, London and Auckland.
Before I invite Halina to tell as of her experiences of day to day life in Warsaw Ghetto, and
then Phillip to recite poetry created in the Ghetto and translated from polish into English by
Marcel I would like to offer a final observation especially to young people in our audience.
As the Holocaust of WWII demonstrates, genocide is something that can and does
happen under the right conditions. Think of post WWII genocides in Cambodia
under Pol Pot, Rwanda, Srebrenica and most recently Darfur. It is up to each of us,
as individuals, as a nation and as a community of nations, to ensure those conditions
do not arise. To paraphrase ‘the price of freedom from genocide is eternal
vigilance’. Therefore it is so important to have commemorations such as today.