For a number of years, I had been planning to write my family’s story so it would not be lost to future generations. My mother, already in her 80’s, was the last link to life in Vienna, having escaped with her parents at the age of 2. While I had already sorted through many of the original documents kept by my grandfather, it was only during the long hours of lockdown in Melbourne that I had the time to pour over these documents more thoroughly. This was when I discovered the letter from ‘Tante Kathe’, which had never been seen by any living members of my family. Kathe, my grandfather’s cousin, was sent to a concentration camp with her father, Otto, and my grandfather’s mother, Elsa. Unlike Elsa, she was not murdered by the Nazis. In her letter to my grandfather, written from Prague in 1945, Kathe recounts exactly what happened to Elsa. By this time, my grandfather had already received a telegram from the Red Cross notifying him that his mother had been murdered in Auschwitz. My mother tells the story how she came home from school one day to find her father sitting in the loungeroom crying, the telegram in his hand. Although there had been no word from Elsa after September 1941, for over 3 years he had lived in hope that she would be found alive after the war.

It remains a mystery why Kathe wrote this letter to my grandfather in English when their mother tongue was German. Written on a flimsy piece of paper in minute hand writing, my son and I began to decipher and transcribe the letter using a magnifying glass. As the details of Elsa’s fate unfolded, it became clear to me that I needed to tell her story through my paintings. With no photographic evidence, I used my imagination to create 5 paintings which symbolically told Elsa’s story from the time before the war when she was with her family to the moment she was sent to Auschwitz. These I flanked with 10 more paintings based on family photos – 5 paintings from my family’s life in Vienna before the rise of Nazism and 5 paintings from the early days in Melbourne of the family members who escaped. Elsa’s story thus became the centre around which everything else revolved.

Background

Artist Statement

This project tells the story of the persecution of my family in Europe during WWII. It focuses on the fate of both those who were able to flee and those who were unable to do so, most of whom perished. The suite of paintings and accompanying documents highlight the complex and enduring experience of refugees who not only are forced to abandon a familiar way of life and adopt a new identity in a foreign land, but are also often forced to leave loved ones behind. If these loved ones die, there is no opportunity for closure. Elsa Schwabach was my great grandmother. A Jewish woman living in Prague in the 1940s, her family obtained a Landing Permit for her that should have enabled her to join those who had already fled to Australia. Tragically, she never received the permit and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. It is my wish that by giving Elsa a voice through the telling of her story, her dignity is reinstated and her memory can be laid to rest.

Furthermore, I believe that telling stories of systematic human injustice that have occurred throughout history is of great importance for raising our awareness as a nation. During the last decade I have witnessed the Australian Government adopt policies that have dehumanized asylum seekers under the guise of national security. These risk us taking part in a collective injustice that perpetuates ‘the banality of evil’ – a state of mind where cruelty is presented as being perfectly reasonable.

Elsa’s story is thus of ongoing relevance. As wars rage around our planet, this exhibition can contribute to building a community that rejects all forms of discrimination and is instead guided by compassion and mutual respect.