JEWISH HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SUFFERING FROM TRAUMA
AND MENTAL ILLNESS: APPROACHES IN POST WAR SYDNEY
An Untold Story
DEBORAH GREEN B. Soc. Stud. M.A. (History).
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy.
Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies
University of Sydney, December 2019.
This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purpose. I certify the intellectual content is the product of my work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and identifying sources, is acknowledged.
Signature
Name: DEBORAH GREEN
1 ABSTRACT
Between 1938 and 1960, over 31,000 Jewish refugees found a new home in Australia, at no cost to government for a period of five years after arrival. After surviving the
Holocaust, some few arrived with extreme trauma. PTSD was only recognised as a diagnosis in 1980, and the study of Holocaust trauma only matured in the last 30 years. The lives of these survivors and those who helped them has not been explored although in 1955 over ninety were mental hospital patients.
In 1938 the government did not have a genuine refugee policy and
Rutland confirmed that responsibility for survivors was delegated to the
AJWS for five years. Case studies of these survivors are reviewed to help understand and explain what happened to this group by studying the role of the
Australian Jewish Welfare Society (AJWS) and a number of doctors. Jewish refugees embodied the dominant narrative of successful migration, but this is not true for all arrivals. This thesis aims to show that understanding those who suffered extreme trauma is important as evidence of how genocide affects survivors and how they were treated in Sydney in the 1950s.
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Table of Contents
ABSTRACT ...... 2 ABBREVIATIONS ...... 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... 7 INTRODUCTION ...... 8 Aims and Focus ...... 10 Research Setting and Population ...... 16 A Journey through the Archives ...... 17 Case Study Methodology ...... 21 Chapter 1. A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF TRAUMA ...... 23 In the Beginning ...... 24 World War One ...... 25 World War Two ...... 27 The Vietnam War ...... 30 Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) ...... 31 Holocaust Trauma ...... 31 Early Studies ...... 33 Compensation and Treatment ...... 35 Healing and Living with Extreme Trauma ...... 37 Resilience of Survivors ...... 39 Getting to Understand Trauma ...... 44 Trauma in Australia ...... 45 Conclusion ...... 48 Chapter 2. THE STATE OF THE RESEARCH ...... 51
3 Global Jewish Migration ...... 51 Jewish Refugee Migration to Australia ...... 57 Immigration and Mental Illness ...... 64 Trauma Studies in Survivors ...... 66 A Long Silence ...... 68 Testimony as Therapy ...... 69 Trauma Studies in Australia ...... 72 Refugee Doctors ...... 78 Conclusion ...... 81 Chapter 3. THE AUSTRALIAN JEWISH WELFARE SOCIETY ...... 85 Policy towards Jewish migration before World II ...... 87 Government Policy towards Jewish Migration after World II ...... 90 Why Choose Australia? ...... 93 The Development of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society ...... 94 Walter Levi Brand ...... 100 AJWS Lay Leadership: Saul Symonds and Sydney David Einfeld ...... 99 Funding for Survivors ...... 105 Jewish Refugees Doctors ...... 107 Conclusion ...... 109 Chapter 4. SURVIVORS, TRAUMA AND MENTAL ILLNESS ...... 114 Mental Distress Treatment ...... 115 New South Wales Mental Hospitals ...... 117 Mental Hospitals and Migrants ...... 119 Wolfgang Matsdorf ...... 122 Public Attitudes to Mental Illness in the 1950s ...... 125 Problem Cases ...... 127 Crisis Management ...... 129 Long Term Cases ...... 132 Conclusion ...... 139 Chapter 5. DR HANS KIMMEL: THE CASE STUDY ...... 142 Monasterzyska the Early Years ...... 142 Life in Vienna ...... 144 The Kimmel Family Returns to Galicia ...... 150 The University of Vienna ...... 152 The Impact of World War I ...... 153 The Anschluss ...... 155 Emigration ...... 158
4 Life in Sydney ...... 159 In a Mental Hospital, 1939 ...... 160 The Sydney Jewish Community ...... 160 Back in Hospital ...... 161 Tragedy Strikes the Kimmel Family ...... 162 Sydney Life in the 1950s ...... 163 The Jewish Board of Deputies ...... 164 The Later Years ...... 167 Conclusion ...... 168 CONCLUSION ...... 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 181 Interviews Conducted by Author ...... 181 Published Oral History Interviews ...... 181 Archival Material ...... 181 Newspapers, Periodicals and Newsletters ...... 182 Newspaper Articles ...... 183 Books and Book Chapters ...... 185 Articles and Conference Papers ...... 192 Graduate Research Projects/Dissertations ...... 196 Websites ...... 197
ABBREVIATIONS
5 AJHSJ Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal
AJPH The Australian Journal of Politics and History
AJT Australian Jewish Times
AJHS Australian Jewish Historical Society
AJWS Australian Jewish Welfare Society
ADB Australian Dictionary of Biography
AJPH Australian Journal of Politics and History
ANZJFT Australia New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy DSM III Diagnosis and Statistical Manual DP Displaced Persons
ECAJ Executive Council of Australian Jewry
HIAS Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
IRO International Refugee Organisation
JDC American Joint Distribution Committee
MJA Medical Journal of Australia
NAA National Archives of Australia
PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
SMH Sydney Morning Herald
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
6 First and fore-most I want to thank Professor Emerita Suzanne Rutland who has been endlessly patient and supportive in her encouragement of me. Her wisdom and amazing knowledge of the subject matter have been critical in getting to the point of thesis submission and her support has been very important during the period of writing up the thesis. My second supervisor Avril Alba has greatly assisted by providing sage advice for improvements which have enhanced the quality of the thesis substantially. Emeritus
Professor Konrad Kwiet has generously assisted by proving a range of key references which were essential in shaping the early years of Hans Kimmel.
I would like to acknowledge the Claire Vernon and the staff of Jewish Care for which providing access to the AJWS archives and my thanks also go to all the historians and researchers who have published on my subject. In particular, thanks go to Professor
Henry Brodaty for sharing his personal experience and wisdom and for discussing the
Sydney Holocaust Study. Special thanks also go to Professor Garry Walter who spent time discussing much of the clinical history and subject matter with me, to Paul Valent who answered my questions, to Marie-Louise Bethune for her suggestions, to Jonathan
Kaplan who helped so much with the editing and to Lisette Engel a new friend who shared her personal knowledge about the Kimmels. Each of these people provided their assistance and time and their work has been an invaluable help to my own research. I also want to thank the staff at Fisher Library Rare Books, the Medical Journal of
Australia, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the NSW Archives Office.
To Albert Landa, my partner, I say thank you for your enduring support and encouragement both as an enthusiastic editor and as a man who has studied the
Holocaust for decades.
INTRODUCTION
7 The research statement asserts that little has been written about those extremely traumatised and mentally ill survivors1 who arrived in Sydney after fleeing the Nazis in
Europe in the 1950s. Over the last forty years much has been written by key historians about the forced migration of Jewish survivors and their integration into Australian society. These historians include Suzanne Rutland, Anne Andgel, Paul Bartrop and
Konrad Kwiet to name only a few who have thoroughly reviewed the archives and comprehensively covered Jewish historiography in Australia. In more recent years there has been a growing interest in extreme trauma and survivors as a growing understanding of Post -Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has emerged. The thesis statement builds on this clinically focused research, particularly as identified in Australia and then applies it to a group of survivors living in Sydney in the 1950s.
Then in 2010 Australian historian Deborah Staines posed a challenge. She observed that while Jewish migration has been thoroughly explored, much less has been published on the problems faced by survivors and how their Holocaust experiences affected their life in Australia.2 During that same year Australian child survivor and psychiatrist Dr Paul Valent completed an overview of Holocaust Trauma in Australia and concluded there is much more yet to learn about the Holocaust in a country like
Australia.3 The research statement responds to these identified challenges by explicitly
1 ‘How is a Holocaust Survivor Defined,’ A survivor is anyone who was displaced, persecuted or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, social, and political policies of the Nazis and collaborators between 1933 and 1945. This includes inmates of concentration camps, ghettos and prisons, and refugees or those were in hiding. ‘Frequently Asked Questions,’ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 26, 2016, https://www.ushmm.org/remember/resources-holocaust-survivors-victims/individual- research/registry-faq#11. 2 Deborah Staines, ‘Aftermath: Holocaust Survivors in Australia. An Introduction,’ Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 16, no. 3 (Winter 2010): 2. 3 Paul Valent, Holocaust Traumatology in Australia,’ Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 16, no. 3 (2010): 95–111.
8 studying those survivors who arrived with extreme trauma to ascertain what happened to them and how they fared in a post-war Sydney.
The research statement contemplates these gaps in the historiography by exploring the impact of trauma and the experience of silence on the lives of those most affected by the Holocaust. The study also focuses on how the Sydney Jewish community and the medical profession responded to the severe cases which required hospitalisation during the late 1940s and 1950s. The role and efforts of the Australian Jewish Welfare
Society (AJWS) will be examined in terms of their response to the most challenging cases. A thorough review of the published research will seek to identify those doctors, both Jewish and non- Jewish, who sought to assist those most in need of help. Several case studies will be identified in order to illuminate as far as the records allow, the massive challenges faced by this group. The sad reality is that some attempted suicide, others received shock treatment and several experienced extended stays in mental hospitals at a time when there were no interpreters. As well the hospital doctors would not have understood the Holocaust experiences of their patients to explain their traumatic symptoms. In exploring some of these key areas of study, the thesis extends an understanding of the effects and impact of extreme trauma and the diagnosis of PTSD within the Australian context. It helps to bear witness to the tragedy of the Holocaust through case studies presented as the stories of those victims who survived.4
I first became very interested in mental illness after a schoolfriend attempted suicide at age sixteen. Subsequently I trained as a social worker and spent a decade working at Callan Park and Gladesville Hospitals where many patients were long-term inmates who had suffered abuse and trauma as children. Decades later in 2011, on the
4 Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 7.
9 way to a performance by the Berlin Philharmonic I came upon a plaque set in the pavement at the bus terminal on Herbert-von-Karajan-Strasse, Tiergartenstrasse 4, the former headquarters of the Nazi euthanasia program. The plaque refers to 200,000 victims murdered because they were mentally ill or physically handicapped. The plaque is simply headed ‘In honour of the forgotten victims.’ These experiences provided the inspiration for writing this thesis.
Aims and Focus
This Introduction chapter seeks to provide a conceptual framework and background to the thesis statement which asserts that little is known about mentally ill survivors in the early decades after they berthed in Sydney. The exploration of trauma and silence within the overall context of the thesis is undertaken in order to better understand the meaning of survival. The chapter also seeks to define the scope of the topic and the questions raised in response to the research statement. It provides an introduction into the literature review which is focussed on the main subject areas using a wide range of local and international sources. Another key area of exploration is to identify the AJWS staff and
Board Directors who became directly involved with this group. It is equally important to explore in some detail, those doctors involved in the care and treatment of survivors at a time when mental illness had few treatment options available. There is also the opportunity to identify what research was undertaken in Australia in order to learn more about what survival meant for those with mental illness.
Today PTSD is understood as a response to traumatic experiences often associated with war or genocide, but even at the end of the twentieth century such knowledge was largely confined to mental health professionals. Survivors in the middle
10 of that century encountered a complete lack of understanding of the impact of protracted trauma, a community fear of mental illness and a post-war silence about the extent of horror experienced in the Holocaust. It is no surprise to learn that some survivors were unable to resume normal lives in a new country. Though there is now an extensive body of work on the Holocaust and memorialisation of victims, the story of this group of survivors was not been significantly explored within historiography in the early decades after the war.
The inclusion of PTSD as a diagnosis in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual
(DSM III) in 1980 5 was a belated development in psychiatry considering the massive level of psychic damage experienced by armed services and civilians through the two world wars. Clinician Judith Herman released her book Trauma and Recovery in 1992 and brought an understanding of trauma theory to a new level by describing the most terrible violations of the social compact.6 This exemplifies the challenge confronting survivors for whom in many cases a future was one where few if any family remained, no graves were dug for the dead, and language, culture and home lost forever.7 Many survived prolonged, enduring trauma where a victim is captive and controlled by the perpetrator.8 There are lessons to be identified by studying the history of trauma and how survivors were supported or not supported to overcome such an horrific experience.
5 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 1980). 6 Herman, ‘Introduction,’ in Trauma and Recovery. 7 U. H. Peters, ‘Die physischen Folgen der Verfolgung: Das Überlebenden-Syndrom,’ Fortschritte der Neurologie-Psychiatrie 57, no. 5 (1989): 169–91.
8 Judith Herman, ‘Complex PTSD: A Syndrome in Survivors of Prolonged and Repeated Trauma,’ Journal of Traumatic Stress 5, no. 3 (1992): 377–79.
11 The second aspect of the conceptual framework is to explore the experience of silence and its effect on survivors. Traumatologist Yael Danieli described a conspiracy of silence between survivors, families and mental health professionals.9 Australian linguist Ruth Wajnryb noted that silence can be an important mode of communication within the homes of survivors.10 Silence can of course be a sign of respect such as when the dead are honoured and an observation of silence is a profound communication of loss and grief. Silence can also be an example of a survivor's sense of identity through qualities like personal strength and courage. For survivors, silence may also be respect for what was witnessed during the Holocaust. Therapist Moshe Lang refrained from publishing his experiences of treating survivors for thirty years due to his own fear that this may somehow trivialise the Holocaust. The challenge in finding the language is illustrated in the words of one of his patients:
When they walked into the gas chambers, they were silent. Those who watched
them watched in silence. The whole world remained silent. To talk about it now
in order to gain personal relief is to desecrate their memory.11
Most post-war clinical assessments diagnosed survivors in pathological terms.
Decades later, research showed despite psychopathological damage, most survivors functioned well both socially and at work and were able to create new lives in their adopted countries. PTSD became understood as a response to the experience of trauma, relived through intrusive thoughts, nightmares, fear, anger and estrangement. Valent
9 Yael Danieli, ‘Psychotherapist’s Participation in the Conspiracy of Silence About the Holocaust,’ Psychoanalytic Psychology 1, no. 1 (1984): 23–42. 10 Ruth Wajnryb, The Silence: How Tragedy Shapes Talk (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001). 11 Moshe Lang, ‘Silence Therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their Families,’ Australia New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy (ANZJFT) 16, no. 1 (1995): 1–10.
12 reviewed survivors and PTSD in Australia throughout the decades in his overview publication and concludes there is still much learn.12
The thesis then builds on this study of the effects of trauma on survivors by interrogating the main literature on government policy, antisemitism, sudden economic crisis, migration, trauma studies, the AJWS, refugee doctors and any identified gaps.
These subject areas enable exploration of the relationship between survivors' Holocaust experiences and life in Australia. Government and Jewish reception policies, forced migration, sudden alienation from one’s social community and antisemitism are subjects have been thoroughly explored by Suzanne Rutland,13 Ann Andgel,14 and Konrad
Kwiet.15 The dominant overt narrative of migration especially Jewish migration to
Australia is one of successful adjustment and integration. Learning English, finding work and a home are cornerstones of this national narrative. For those migrants who were accepted, careful medical examinations were undertaken after the war, to prevent those with evidence of mental illness being accepted. Publications and research in
Australia were extensively investigated to ascertain what was written in those early decades about traumatised survivors in Sydney.
The thesis then aims to carefully examine the establishment and activities of the
AJWS. The work of key AJWS Board Presidents, Saul Symonds and Sydney David
Einfeld and Walter Levi Brand, General Secretary for twenty-five years is examined.
12 Valent, ‘Holocaust Traumatology in Australia,’ 98. 13 Suzanne Rutland, The Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (Sydney: Collins Australia, 1988). 14 Ann Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring: The History of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society, 1936–1986 (Sydney: Australian Jewish Welfare Society and the Australian Jewish Historical Society, 1988). 15 Konrad Kwiet, ‘The Second Time Around: Re-Acculturation of German-Jewish Refugees in Australia,’ The Journal of Holocaust Education 10, no. 1 (2001): 34–49.
13 The organisation was effectively responsible for organising travel, accommodation, setting up the new arrivals in small businesses and expediting community integration.
The role of the AJWS is also explored in relation to how it structured and funded its response to mentally ill survivors who under the sponsorship agreement, could not to be a financial burden on the state for five years after their arrival.16 Such an undertaking also focuses on the fundraising efforts of the AJWS by building relationships with key
American Jewish organisations, advocating with government in relation to refugee policy and seeking to engage with the medical and psychiatric professions in order to assist the challenging cases. American historian Beth Cohen pointed out that managing such cases must have been quite confronting at a time when Jewish welfare societies globally did not understand Holocaust trauma.17
Sometimes these traumatised survivors were admitted to mental hospitals and the thesis seeks to develop an understanding of the conditions and treatment in such facilities in
Australia in the 1950s. Mental illness was a cause of fear in the community and often resulted in social isolation and difficulty in finding work or a home for sufferers.18 Migrants were even more disadvantaged as interpreters and culturally tailored services were decades away.
The standard of the facilities, treatments available and legal framework are explored in order to gain an insight into the experience of being in a mental hospital. In 1955 there were almost one hundred survivors who were patients in mental hospitals and this section of the thesis helps bring the subjects of the research statement into sharp focus. The President of the
16 Rutland, Diaspora, 229. 17 Beth Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Post-War America. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 32.
18 Jo C. Phelan, Bruce G. Link, Ann Stueve and Bernice A. Pescosolido, ‘Public Conceptions of Mental Illness in 1950 and 1996: What Is Mental Illness and Is It to be Feared?’ Journal of Health and Social Behavior 41, no. 2 (June 2000): 188–207.
14 AJWS referred to this group as ‘Problem Cases’ and wanted to take personal responsibility in sorting out their mental illness and behavioural problems.19
It is in the context of these aims as outlined above that a number of questions emerge.
What happened to survivors with mental illness in Sydney? How were they helped and by whom? What studies and documentation occurred? What was it like to be a traumatised survivor in Sydney in the 1950s? In order respond to these questions and to illustrate the effect of trauma, migration and difficulty in adapting to a new country, it was decided to use case studies most of whom were identified in the AJWS documents of 65 years ago.20 There were several challenges and opportunities in in adopting this method and narrative approach.
The last section of this chapter responds to the challenge posed by cultural historian Peter
Burke who called for historical writing to include first-person narration in academic writing.21
In the majority of cases it was difficult to identify additional information as the only sources were the AJWS minutes between 1953 and 1955, which have since been mislaid.
However, it can be claimed that even in these cases information has been identified which was previously unknown. In two of these narratives much more detail and analysis was possible through the identification of a variety of sources in addition to information in the
AJWS Executive Minutes.22
19 AJWS Executive Committee Meetings February 1953, February 1955, May 1955.
20 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, February 1953. 21 Peter Burke, ‘History of Events and the Revival of Narrative,’ in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 234–37. 22 Jennifer Rowley, ‘Using Case Studies in Research,’ Management Research News 25 no. 1 (2002): 16–27.
15 Hans Kimmel, Viennese Jewish lawyer is the most important case study which merits a full chapter. His memoir Twice a New Citizen includes a detailed study of his life as a child and teenager in Galicia and Vienna. He documents the evidence of growing antisemitism, the Anschluss and his early bouts of depression a condition which would severely affect the trajectory of his life over the subsequent sixty years. The
Kimmel narrative is the experience of separation from family at a young age, antisemitism, the rise of Nazism, escape and chronic mental illness and provides the most comprehensive response to the research statement in the whole thesis. It is also in large part a first-hand account of his life, especially his formative years.
Staines argued there have not been detailed studies within historiography on the relationship between survivors' Holocaust experiences and life in Australia.23 However there was one major peer reviewed study undertaken in 200 on the health of Holocaust survivors in
Sydney, which showed that 40 per cent of survivors still had symptoms of extreme trauma six decades after the Holocaust.24 This study was perhaps the last opportunity to undertake a quantitative review given the passage of time and the age of survivors. In these circumstances it was determined that the methods and methodology would focus on the data collection techniques and selected use of case studies within the target population. These approaches and strategies are outlined in the latter part of this chapter.
Research Setting and Population
23 Staines, ‘Aftermath,’ 1. 24 Joffe et al., ‘The Sydney Holocaust Study: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Other Psychological Morbidity in an Aged Community Sample,’ Journal of Traumatic Stress 16, no. 1 (2003): 39-47.
16 The core setting is severely traumatised survivors after their arrival in Sydney between
1938 and 1960. Given the total Jewish population of Sydney after the war, the proportion who were survivors was very high and yet any real clinical understanding of trauma had barely emerged at the time. Early studies were intermittent, fragmented and based on clinical caseloads vulnerable to criticism of methodology because they did not include a control group or were based on the caseload of a doctor. Jewish patients were rarely separately identified in these studies.
The AJWS papers reveal details of those refugees, described as 'Problem Cases.’25
Detailed notes were recorded in the minutes about the journey through the mental health system of these individuals. Several survivors attempted suicide and were transferred to
Darlinghurst Reception Centre and others were treated at Callan Park Mental Hospital and
Gladesville Mental Hospital with shock treatment. So, case study methodology meets the requirement for examining the research problem in a defined time period.26 It provides a platform to undertake story telling about this population and the events surrounding their lives.
A Journey through the Archives
Barbara L 'Eplattenier said that archival study facilitates a strategy designed to better assess the validity and quality of the presented information.27 At the same time archives is a finite source of truth, and the conclusions reached will be necessarily partial. In fact,
Kaplan asserted that archives as sites of historical truth is outdated and possibly
25 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, March 31, 1956, 4–6. 26 Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan, eds. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press 1992), 2. 27 Barbara E. L’Eplattenier, ‘An Argument for Archival Research Methods: Thinking Beyond Methodology,’ College English 72, no. 1 (2009): 67–79.
17 dangerous because the archives are created by individuals and organisations and used to support their values and mission.28
However, for this thesis the primary case study research derived from the AJWS is supported by a clear articulation of the values, limitations and knowledge base of the organisation. It is also quite clear that while a unique set of information was discovered, it narrates an incomplete story.29 This is because of the sensitivity and stigma relating to mental health issues, and the fact that the minutes often only included information when there was a crisis or the bare facts of the case being discussed. As well no access to the patient files of mental hospitals was possible because the NSW Ministry of Health has made an access stipulation, which effectively closes all psychiatric patient records for
110 years. Effectively this narrowed possible sources of information and meant it was not possible to follow up on the information gleaned from the AJWS archives.
Most importantly access was made possible to a number of key archives in order access and use a range of primary sources. In relation to Jewish immigration, most records were hard copy books and the documents available in the Archive of Australian
Judaica section of the Rare Books in Fisher Library,30 all of which were generally produced before 1990. By contrast most information on migration and mental illness was articles in the Medical Journal of Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.
One key figure in the AJWS was social worker Dr Wolf Matsdorf, who left his papers to the Archive of Australian Judaica. Documents include personal records,
28 Elisabeth Kaplan, ‘We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are: Archives and the Construction of Identity,’ American Archivist 63, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2000): 125–51. 29 Robert C. Williams, The Forensic Historian: Using Science to Reexamine the Past (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2013), xiii, 160. 30 Archive of Australian Judaica, Rare Books Section, University of Sydney, https://judaica.library.sydney.edu.au.
18 newspaper articles and conference papers on the problems of migrants, prison after-care, the aged and mental health, Jewish patients and Jewish youth. A key speech speaks to the special needs of Jewish migrants and recommends a tailored model of care. These documents are in good condition, non-digitised and stored in boxes. They were very important in filling out the picture of attitudes and policies towards dealing with the mentally ill in Sydney in the 1950s and had not been accessed by other researchers.
Given Dr Matsdorf 's key role in the AJWS at this time, his perspectives were very valuable in shedding light on this issue.
The New York Center for Jewish History contains the ‘Hans Kimmel
Collection 1945–1968.’ This is a rich source, which includes annotated articles and manuscripts in newspapers, like the Australian Jewish Forum and the Sydney Jewish
News. Folder 1 contains a manuscript about the Australian Jewish Forum and an article about the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1945–1968. Folder 2 is annotated manuscripts of articles, published in the Sydney Jewish News during his years living in
London, 1958–1960. Folder 3 is a scrapbook of newspaper clippings of articles; 1959-
1967. The important find from the Center is the 187-page digitalised diary, typed with annotations. As well, in Australia, the National Archives has published on the website some 72 items of correspondence relating to his admission to Australia and his treatment in mental hospitals. My supervisor made me aware of this latter documentation, which has not been previously used as part of a research project.
It is important to record that a significant amount of background material in the thesis is secondary and the result of other historians' archival work. Particular acknowledgement is made of the research and publications of Suzanne Rutland, Ann
Andgel and Paul Valent. Additionally, thanks go to those doctors and psychiatrists who
19 did try to assist survivors in those early post-war decades through undertaking research and offering treatment, most of which has been acknowledged in this thesis.
D. E. Smith argues that organisations like the AJWS are really structures that can facilitate discussion and become a point of entry into those times. Fortunately, the AJWS
Executive Committee Minutes of the 1950s pertaining to survivors with mental illness were available and permission to access these minutes was given by the host organisation, which today is Jewish Care. However, some of the AJWS files which I was originally able to access have subsequently been misplaced limiting an opportunity to revisit certain information.
Other key sources used to augment information about the various case studies included Trove which has digitised newspapers up until 1956 and passenger arrivals and sponsorship in the National Archives. For example, Jacob Bresler a Buchenwald survivor was clearly identified in the AJWS minutes and subsequently in contemporaneous news articles, although it was not possible to identify his records in any overseas archives.
Various books, articles and clinical studies were consulted to synthesise quantitative and qualitative findings, rendering the literature review a mixed research study. To gain a broad understanding of the literature on Holocaust traumatology, an extensive consultation of international medical journals was undertaken using pertinent search terms and over 3,000 such studies have been conducted, but few were Australian.
Narration is a fundamental human tool to share experience and communicate a story. Learning about people, their lives and identities using narration has been used to animate experience and support identification of meaning. Surviving the Holocaust and migration, developing a mental illness and undergoing treatment, are all aspects of the
20 narrative. Narrative enquiry was first used by Connelly and Clandinin31 as a methodology in 1990, to create real-life experience through story telling.32 It was determined as the best approach to support an exploration of the meaning of survival and to give voice to those who otherwise would not be heard in the historical discourse.
A qualitative approach to the ‘who,’ ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions can enhance constructs of meaning and knowledge.33 The 'how' question is answered through the archival toolbox of minutes, letters and news articles. Storytelling through case studies has been designed to answer the ‘who’ and ‘why’ questions by establishing connections, exploring events, and enhancing knowledge within the research setting.34
Case Study Methodology
Seawright and Gearing state that case studies should be able to represent the chosen group or population. Case studies may be a better solution when multiple sources of evidence are utilised, as was the case in this thesis 35 and may reveal life experience and help to shape the survivor narrative.36 These assumptions were taken into account in selecting the cases and while practical factors such as access to information had some influence, it was not the principal factor. The two key elements which justified the
31 F. Michael Connelly and D. Jean Clandinin, ‘Stories of Experience and Narrative Inquiry,’ Educational Research 19, no. 5 (1990): 2–14. 32 D. Jean Clandinin and F. Michael Connelly, Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000). 33 Judith Green and Nick Thorogood, Qualitative Methods for Health Research (London: Sage Publications, 2004), 25. 34 Clandinin and Connelly, ‘Narrative Inquiry,’ 98–115. 35 Robert Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1984), 23. 36 Ibid.
21 methodology were the opportunity to explore new research territory and to reveal new ways to consider the research statement. Most of the cases are small micro-histories created to enhance understanding of this group of survivors through an exploration of their social relationships and how they adjusted to the challenges faced.37
To better understand what it might have meant to be a traumatised survivor in Sydney after liberation the next chapter explores this experience through the lens of traumatology to situate this group in its global and local context. As will be demonstrated, understanding traumatology is very recent with the concept of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome only being defined in 1980. Hence, for the survivors who had gone through six years of the trauma of the
Holocaust, there was little understanding of their mental health problems. Hence, it is important to have an understanding of the history of the study of traumatology as will be discussed in the next chapter.
37 Jerome Bruner. Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
22 Chapter 1. A HISTORIOGRAPHY OF TRAUMA
The research statement of this thesis argues that little is known about the experiences of survivors suffering from mental illness in post-war Sydney as a result of the extreme trauma they underwent during the Holocaust. To understand the impact of such trauma, this chapter situates their survival within the now well understood context of Post-
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It charts the history of trauma as it emerged over the last two centuries, with the gradual emergence of an understanding of its impact. The historical lens of trauma examined in this chapter is a useful means to reveal and understand the way in which the Australian Jewish Welfare Society (AJWS) to was able to respond to survivors with mental illness in the 1950s.
The history of extreme trauma has been evident throughout the history of war and other extreme life experiences. While some never recover from trauma, others emerge seemingly unscathed. This partly explains how historically PTSD symptoms were often judged to be caused by genetic factors or were present in the pre-traumatic personality.
Belief in predisposition to mental illness to explain trauma symptoms persisted as a socially accepted trope until quite recently as scholarship has shown that factors contributing to mental illness associated with trauma are much more complex.
Description of symptoms after protracted trauma are rather consistent. However, the overwhelming emotion is fear, a vital response to physical and emotional danger, but often difficult to eradicate once the source of terror is no longer present.
Trauma history traverses two centuries before World War One, but it was during and after this event, that traumatised soldiers were diagnosed as of a neurotic personality type and predisposed due to genetics or early childhood.1 The term shell shock proved
1 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 168.
23 relatively easy to integrate into the narrative of countries involved in a war largely fought in the trenches, utilising artillery and machine gun. By contrast, the Second
World War was waged on many diverse fronts so that explanations for traumatised servicemen and civilians were more difficult to articulate. It was only after the Vietnam
War that descriptions of trauma symptoms emerged which could be applied to other groups like rape victims, child sexual abuse survivors, prisoners of war, and Holocaust survivors. Healing and recovery usually took place without the involvement of mental health professionals.
In the Beginning
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, psychiatry began to play an increasing role in the assessment of casualties of war who suffered stress and bore witness to death.
With it a patchy but cumulative body of evidence began to emerge which supported the notion that war can leave chronic debilitating trauma. After the French Revolution the renowned French psychiatrist Phillipe Pinel was the first to accurately document the psychiatric symptoms of patients. He took detailed case histories and concluded that mental disorders could be caused by external circumstances.2 During the Industrial
Revolution, civilian-produced disasters such as train crashes and workplace accidents became commonplace and physicians noted that some survivors of such disasters had developed psychological symptoms. German doctor Hermann Oppenheimer studied over forty such cases to create the diagnosis he called traumatic neurosis in 1884.3
2 Stephanie Pope, ‘Philippe Pinel (1745–1826): More than Liberator of the Insane,’ Journal of Humanistic Psychiatry 1, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 12. 3 Hermann Oppenheim, Die traumatischen Neurosen, (Germany: Hirschwald, 1892); Marc- Antoine Crocq and Louis Crocq, ‘From Shell Shock to War Neurosis and Posttraumatic Stress
24 It is likely that the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-1905 was the first time when the existence of post-battle psychiatric symptoms was acknowledged. The Russian psychiatrist, Avtocratov, and others initiated treating psychiatric casualties in the combat zone at Harbin in Manchuria and pioneered on-site treatment.4 His colleague the German physician Honigman, worked with the Red Cross of Russia in assisting thousands of casualties and pioneering the diagnosis of Kriegsneurose—war neurosis—in 1907. He then documented the similarity of symptoms in the Russian cases and those evident in
Oppenheim’s study of civilian accidents.5
World War One
During the early days of World War One fighting, psychiatric casualties were being reported in numbers beyond expectations. The French physician Milian diagnosed battle hypnosis in 1914 6 and the German psychiatrist Robert Gaupp noted that the large artillery battles in December 1914 resulted in hospital admissions of many unscathed soldiers and officers presenting with mental disturbances. The numbers became so large that specialist hospitals were established to cope with what was now the most common health problem in the services. The symptoms were fright, muteness, general tremor and anxiety due to shelling and bearing witness to the maiming or death of comrades.
Disorder: A History of Psychotraumatology,’ Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 2, no. 1 (2000): 49. 4 Crocq and Crocq, ‘From Shell Shock to War Neurosis,’ 50. 5 P. S. Ellis, ‘The Origins of the War Neuroses,’ Journal Royal Naval Medical Services 70, no. 1 (1984): 168–77. 6 Crocq and Crocq, ‘From Shell Shock to War Neurosis,’ 50.
25 Captain Charles Myers was the first physician to use the term shell shock in the
Lancet medical journal.7 By the end of 1914, up to ten per cent of officers and four per cent of those from other ranks in the British Expeditionary Force were casualties of nervous and mental shock. 8 Dr Aldren Turner, a highly regarded neurologist, prepared a report for the War Office in May 1915, in which he described the condition witnessed as a form of temporary nervous breakdown where even the waking hours may be distressful from acute recollections of these events. However, if one emotion was to be identified above all else by Turner, it was overwhelming fear.9 The fear was fearing for their life, of injury, of death, of the death of mates, of failing in duty and the fear of being afraid.
Smith and Pear observed that, for some patients, the symptoms of shell shock were present prior to an explosion and they recommended that a thorough patient history was required in order to undertake diagnosis and treatment.10 They concluded that symptoms like nightmares and obsessive thoughts made life for these patients a veritable hell.
These findings demonstrate that some clinicians were studying what we have come to describe as trauma a century ago and seeking to identify treatment options.
In his work The Silence After the War, written for the British Library, Julian Walker suggests that the impact of trauma, the likely use of censorship and the general post-war mood contributed to soldiers being unwilling or unable to talk about their experience of
World War One.11 He notes there was a ten-year literary silence after the war, followed by a
7 Charles S. Myers, ‘A Contribution to the Study of Shell Shock,’ The Lancet 185, no. 4472 (13 February 1915): 316–20. 8 Shephard, War of Nerves, 101. 9 William Aldren Turner, ‘Remarks on Cases of Nervous and Mental Shock Observed at the Base Hospitals in France,’ British Medical Journal 1, no. 1 (1915): 833–35. 10 Grafton Elliot Smith and Tom Hatherly Pear, Shell Shock and its Lessons (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1918), 12–13. 11 Julian Walker, ‘The Silence After the War,’ The British Library, accessed September 21, 2017, https://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/the-silence-after-the-war.
26 deluge of publications describing violent deaths. A. D. McLeod also asserted that the
Armistice was followed by a decade of silence, when survivors were reluctant or did not wish to share wartime experiences.12 In fact there were occasional publications by writers such as
Wilfrid Owen and Henri Barbusse which were read widely during the war. By 1929 former serving officers began writing autobiographies, novels and poetry, including a translation of
Remarque’s All Quiet on The Western Front, Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That, Charles
Edmonds’ A Subaltern’s War and Helen Z Smith’s Not So Quiet. 1930 saw the release of
Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We and Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.
These are a few of over sixty books on the war that were published in these two years.13
Not everyone welcomed their memories and personal accounts, especially of violent death. Military historian Brian Bond described them as biased and contributing to the creation of an anti-war myth. Bond discounts these memories in favour of official military archives to recast the historiography of World War One.14 Walker described the 1920s as a decade of silence as being ‘as much about holding on as holding back,’ creating an expectation that the state of silence must ultimately come to an end.15
World War Two
It has been argued that the First World War advanced the knowledge of trauma in
European psychiatry while the Second World War and Vietnam War achieved a similar result for American psychiatry.16 Most of this Second-World-War research does not even
12 A. D. McLeod, ‘Shell Shock, Gordon Holmes and the Great War,’ Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 97, no. 2 (2004): 86–89. 13 Walker, ‘The Silence After the War.’ 14 Brian Bond, The Unquiet Western Front: Britain’s Role in Literature and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 15 Walker, ‘The Silence after the War.’ 16 Crocq and Crocq, ‘From Shell Shock to War Neurosis,’ 47–55.
27 mention trauma in Holocaust survivors, a subject of quite separate if, at times, parallel study. Yet, the estimates for deaths in World War Two are between 21 to 25 million military losses, 29 to 30 million civilian losses due to crimes against humanity, and 19 to
28 million civilian deaths due to war-related famine and disease.17 These enormous civilian figures clearly confirm that this devastating conflict unleashed a deliberate strategy of targeting civilians, be it in the millions murdered in the Holocaust, those killed by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or those killed in the air raids targeting civilians in European cities.
In 1947 Abram Kardiner and Herbert Spiegel published findings of a chronic syndrome they called traumatic war neurosis, a preoccupation with the trauma, nightmares, irritability, increased startle responsiveness, and a tendency to angry outbursts.18 This was an important publication in the timeline of understanding trauma.
Kardiner argued that many doctors diagnosed traumatic neurosis prematurely rather than waiting for the syndrome to properly emerge from the defences which would be put up as an appropriate response to a massive psychic blow. He argued for benefits of taking a full patient history in order to understand the pre-trauma personality of the victim.
As the understanding of trauma was evolving and growing, so too was the variety of research. One important study which showcased this evolution was a study of Dutch veterans conducted 47 years after the war. The study found that 59 per cent of those still suffering trauma had not seen any health care professional in the previous three years.
The researchers concluded the key reasons for not seeking help were an acceptance that
17 ‘Historical Estimates of World Population,’ United States Census Bureau, accessed September 21, 2017, https://www.census.gov/population/international/data. 18 Abram Kardiner and Herbert Spiegel, War Stress and Neurotic Illness (New York: Paul B. Hoeber, 1947).
28 trauma after war is likely, the high value placed on self- reliance and an ongoing hope and belief that symptoms would abate.19 This conclusion raised a series of further questions and recent retrospective studies have been undertaken to explore some of these questions. For example, historian Elizabeth Roberts- Pederson conducted a review of the leading British medical journals published during the war to understand how doctors viewed trauma. She concluded that trauma experienced in war was generally diagnosed as the result of an unstable personality due to inherited traits or as a result of early adverse childhood experiences.20
Another historian and veteran of the war, Paul Fussell, explored the impact of the war on common soldiers and civilians. He formed the view that because the war was considered just and justified, memorialisation of war experience became romanticised, reshaping the reality of combat in spite of what was experienced. He focussed on what the experience of war did to a person’s values and beliefs. He also explored what he described the high- mindedness of the era and the idea that it was important to accentuate the positive. He believed that the Allied war has continued to be romanticised beyond and concluded these tropes and reshaped narratives may have had the effect of diminishing or even dismissing the effect of stress endured in war.21 The work of these historians signals how little was understood about the effect of extreme stress and trauma in the mid-twentieth century by doctors and by those who wrote about the war.
19 Inge Bramsen and H. M. van der Ploeg, ‘Fifty Years Later: The Long-Term Psychological Adjustment of Ageing World War II Survivors,’ Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, no. 100 (1999): 350–58. 20 Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen, ‘A Weak Spot in the Personality? Conceptualising War Neurosis, British Medical Literature of the Second World War,’ Australian Journal of Politics & History 58, no. 3 (2012): 408–20. 21 Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behaviour in the Second World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
29
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War post-dated the end of the Holocaust by twenty years, but returning veterans experienced severe symptoms of trauma with little evidence of enhanced understanding and treatment. They also came home to a hostile environment to add to their life stressors. It has been estimated that around 700,000 Vietnam veterans or almost
25 per cent of soldiers sent to Vietnam between 1964 and 1973 required psychiatric care.
Despite some small success in the attempts made to prevent and manage such casualties onsite in Vietnam, chronic traumatic symptoms were exhibited in returning veterans in what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-1) described in
1968. In the 1970s, thousands of veterans were assessed, and in 1980 a revised diagnosis of PTSD was published by the American Psychiatric Association within the Diagnostic
Manual of Disorders (DSM-III) and accepted internationally as the standard.22
Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD)
Today PTSD is broadly understood to as the emotional reaction to a shocking event like abduction, hostage taking, war, rape or a major disaster. History demonstrates that war is the means by which diagnosis, research and treatment of emotional trauma have been progressed in psychiatric terms and that it has finally been accepted that PTSD can be triggered by extreme external events and not just by combat.
22 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed.
30 As further evidence was accepted a broadening and refinement of the term has occurred since its first official use. PTSD was first described as an anxiety disorder but was later reclassified a trauma and stress or related disorder to reflect a more inclusive definition. Signposts for PTSD include where no such symptoms existed before the traumatic event and the person seeks to avoid trauma-related thoughts and discussion of the event or may experience amnesia of the event. However, it may also manifest in the event being re-lived by through intrusive, recurrent recollections, flashbacks, and nightmares. While it is common to have symptoms after any traumatic event, these must persist to a level that becomes a more chronic dysfunction, classified as PTSD. A response to a traumatic event that is outside the realm of human experience, PTSD is usually a combination of three key sets of symptoms: avoidance, including detachment, attempting to forget, nightmares and intrusive persistent thoughts, and arousal, including angry outbursts, irritability, poor concentration and insomnia.
The contemporary definition of PTSD is ‘direct personal experience of an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or witnessing such an event.
The response will involve intense fear, helplessness or horror.’23
Holocaust Trauma
The first part of this chapter has sought to provide the general historiography of trauma and the latter part of the chapter focuses specifically on Holocaust trauma. The word
Holocaust24 is derived from the Greek holokauston, meaning burnt offering. Holocaust
23 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2000), 463. 24 ‘The Holocaust refers to the Nazi objective of annihilating every Jewish man, woman, and child who fell under their control.’ Jack R. Fischel, Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010), 115.
31 survivors were uniquely exposed to a policy of radical genocidal persecution, deprivation and loss. Antisemitism25 had prevailed for many centuries before the rise of
Hitler and the racism of a single-minded organised genocide. It is accepted that many
Holocaust survivors experienced severe mental and physical trauma, and the accumulated burden of extreme protracted trauma would now be diagnosed as PTSD.
Several aspects of surviving genocide contrast it with a more circumscribed traumatic event. The burden of stress for survivors was exacerbated by a layering of traumatic experiences like immigration, loss of family and community and living in poverty in an alien culture. Frequently there would be no reuniting with family or friends because they had been murdered and the Holocaust was an experience of long-term victimisation where the victim is captive under the control of the perpetrator in concentration camps and slave labour camps.26
During the decade after PTSD was accepted as a diagnosis, survivors were not included. This began to change in the early 1990s when clinicians became less opposed to using it to describe the symptoms of some survivors.27 In addition, a significant array of publications on survivors did not reference PTSD to describe the symptoms
25 ‘a persisting latent structure of hostile beliefs towards Jews as a collective manifested in individuals as attitudes, and in culture as myth, ideology, folklore and imagery, and in actions—social or legal discrimination, political mobilization against the Jews, and collective or state violence—which results in and/or is designed to distance, displace, or destroy Jews as Jews,’ in Helen Fein ‘Dimension of Antisemitism: Attitudes, Collective Accusations, and Actions,’ in The Persisting Question: Sociological Perspectives and Social Contexts of Modern Antisemitism, ed. Helen Fein (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1987), 67–85.
26 Herman, ‘Complex PTSD,’ 377. 27 Natan P. F. Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma: Psychological Effects and Treatment (New York: iUniverse, 2009).
32 identified.28 A change in both diagnostic practices and in the literature has been attributed to the advocacy of Krystal, Yehuda and Giller who were pioneers in offering treatment for survivors with extreme trauma.29 To illustrate the contrast between survivors of prolonged trauma and those exposed to one-off disasters, the evidence shows around half the prisoners of war and concentration camp survivors suffered from chronic PTSD compared with about 4 per cent of natural disaster survivors.30 PTSD is not an inevitable outcome of severe and prolonged traumatic events as many recovered or never developed the disorder.31
Early Studies
Early studies undertaken in the first decades after liberation help to illustrate how survivors were viewed and assessed at that time by treating doctors. Dr. William
Niederland was the first to use the term survivor syndrome, which he argued was expressed as self-reproach and severe guilt among survivors of Nazi camps, various disasters and car accidents. His study of about 800 camp survivors in 1964 revealed symptoms of insomnia, intrusive thoughts and nightmares titled survivor syndrome.32
28 Rachel Yehuda, and Earl L. Giller, ‘Comments on the Lack of Integration Between the Holocaust and PTSD Literature,’ PTSD Research Quarterly 5, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 5–7. 29 Kellerman, Holocaust Trauma, 35.
30 Rachel Yehuda, Alexander C. McFarlane, and Arieh Y. Shalev, ‘Predicting the Development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder from the Acute Response to a Traumatic Event,’ Biological Psychiatry 44, no. 12 (December 15, 1988): 1306–1313.
31 Yehuda et al., ‘Predicting the Development of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,’ 1312. 32 Papers of William G. Niederland Collection (1904-1993) AR 7165; box 7; Leo Baeck Institute, New York, accessed June 19, 2018. https://www.lbi.org.
33 Subsequently, the very term survivor syndrome was criticised as it was seen to imply that to be a survivor is to be a person with a mental illness.
The experience of constant stress, torture, loss of loved ones and prolonged starvation would inevitably affect the physical health of survivors. In order to understand the extent of this damage, Robert Jabłonski reviewed the medical records of 250 former prisoners who had undergone medical examinations in 1950, five years after liberation.
They repeated this study in 1975 by which time only 125, or fifty per cent of these former prisoners were still alive. The surviving prisoners were examined and surveyed again some thirty years after leaving the camps.33 Jabłonski concluded the results of incarceration in camps were multi-morbidity, premature ageing and a dramatic increase in mortality rate compared with a control group, and that morbidity was even more apparent in older prisoners who were incarcerated for longer periods. This study really reveals the effect on physical and mental health for those who endured life in concentration camps.
Early studies did focus on the pathology in survivors, but subsequently researchers began to examine their capacity to overcome extreme adversity and create new lives. This shift in the historiography of survival evolved from studying symptoms of PTSD to understanding the source of strength which supported survival. This change was reflected in the language descriptors which began during and after the war with the term ‘victim’ which became ‘survived’ and evolved into ‘survivor’ as a better attempt to reflect the active role played in surviving the horrors of the Nazis.34
33 Robert Jabłonski et al., ‘The Progressive Nature of Concentration Camp Syndrome in Former Prisoners of Nazi Concentration Camps – Not Just History, but the Important Issue of Contemporary Medicine,’ Journal of Psychiatric Research 75, no. 1 (April 2016): 1–6. 34 Katarzyna Prot-Klinger, ‘Research on Consequences of the Holocaust,’ Archives of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy 2, no. 9 (January 2010): 61–69.
34
Compensation and Treatment
In 1952, a reparations agreement for the loss of Jewish life and property plundered by the
Nazis during the Holocaust was signed by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, for West Germany,
David Ben Gurion, Prime Minster of Israel, and Dr Nahum Goldmann, representing Diaspora
Jewry through the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.35 Its first pillar provided funding for infrastructure on a collective basis to both Israel and the Diaspora
Jewish communities which received refugees and survivors. Diaspora funding was administered through the offices of the Claims Conference in New York, which held an annual meeting of representatives of the countries involved. The second pillar was individual restitution, which was based on German federal restitution laws passed in 1952 and 1956.
This funding aimed to provide individual compensation to victims of Nazism for their loss of freedom and property, as well as for resultant physical and emotional medical problems and was administered through the World Jewish Restitution Organization.
Individual claims for restitution were subject to medical examinations designed to ascertain the extent of physical and emotional medical problems. From 1953, Niederland was appointed by the German Consulate General to German courts, ruling on indemnification claims by Holocaust survivors. The question was to what extent a camp survivor, slave labourer or someone who had lost the entire family in the Holocaust was damaged in terms of capability to work. If the extent of physical and psychic damage was 25 per cent or higher, claimants were indemnified.
35 Germany was represented by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israel by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. See Ronald Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World (London: Routledge, 2001).
35 After the war some few survivors did receive treatment. Several decades later
Bessel van der Kolk, a trauma expert, studied documentation of psychoanalysts who treated those survivors of concentration camps, concluding that only a few ever documented the impact of the Holocaust on an individual’s emotional health. Dr Henry
Krystal was one of these clinicians. Born in Sosnowiec, Poland, Krystal was the only member of his family to survive. From 1942 to 1945, he was an inmate at the Auschwitz,
Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps and worked as a slave labourer at a factory operated by Siemens. His own experiences enabled him to understand the burdens carried by the many patients he assisted. When speaking in a 1996 interview with the Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, he said about liberation, ‘I couldn’t muster the feeling of joy, of celebration. Maybe a day or two before I was liberated, a thought occurred to me, that if I should die, nobody in the world would know and nobody would miss me.’36
This evolving assessment is supported by research showing some survivors did not suffer trauma. In 1994 Rachel Yehuda, Traumatic Stress Studies Program, Manhattan, reviewed 24 survivors and 18 control subjects matched for age and background. Half the group still had PTSD, a quarter of survivors once had symptoms but had diminished, and the final quarter seem never to have suffered PTSD.37
Time demonstrated that it was important to both survivors and their families that discussion of survival was properly and sensitively described. Persuasive arguments
36 ‘Henry Krystal – September 19, 1996,’ Interview, Vision/Voice: Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, University of Michigan Dearborn, accessed 21 September 2017, http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/krystal/section021.html. 37 Rachel Yehuda, Boaz Kahana, Steven M. Southwick, and Earl L. Giller Jr., ‘Depressive Features in Holocaust Survivors With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,’ Journal of Trauma and Stress 7, no. 4 (October 1994): 699–704.
36 have been developed and matured to demonstrate knowledge about extreme trauma evolves through population studies rather than just clinical studies. Kahana asserted that clinical and case studies overestimate vulnerability but underestimate resilience. This view is supported by the fact that case studies are not representative samples and therefore are not capable of replication and validation. The importance of understanding that each survivor and his/her experience of the Holocaust is unique, has taken many years to evolve. Kahana found there is a consistent picture of a small but statistically significant elevation in indicators of psychological distress among survivors. However, he counselled against diagnostic labelling because survivors as a group function physically and socially but remain wounded story tellers who bear witness.38
In 1998 the Jewish Claims Conference, Germany set up a $110 million compensation fund for seriously impaired Holocaust survivors, only reported in The
Lancet. Rachelle Fishman argued that for decades, German psychiatrists and general psychiatric opinion refused to accept that survivors with mental illness had suffered trauma.39 Research was constrained by difficulties in locating documents, but evidence gathered now is inspiring commemoration of these special victims after the long silence.
Healing and Living with Extreme Trauma
Even in the Displaced Persons camps there was evidence of healing. Whilst whole
Jewish communities had disappeared, landsmannschaften40 began to form within the
38 Boaz Kahana, Zev Harel, and Eva Kahana, Holocaust Survivors and Immigrants: Late Life Adaptations (New York: Springer Science+Business Media, 2005). 39 Rachelle H. B. Fishman, ‘Compensation for Mental Illness Resulting from Holocaust Trauma,’ 352, no. 129 The Lancet (August 1998): 718. 40 Social groups based on those coming from the same town or district in Eastern Europe.
37 camps and subsequently re-formed following migration, in the diaspora. According to
Menachem Rosensaft, who was born in the Bergen Belsen DP camp, the process of rebuilding Jewish cultural, social and religious life had begun.41 An illustration of this was that one of the highest birth rates in the world between 1946-1948 was within DP camps. For example, in Bergen- Belsen alone, some 555 babies were born in 1946.42
However, for all survivors many challenges lay ahead including living with the experiences that they had endured and for many it was also living with extreme trauma.
Krell said about his early life was one surrounded by survivors as his community and social circle.43 This perspective of a child survivor, later to become a psychiatrist, provides valuable insight into the world of survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
Krell also grew up believing that survivors faced unique psychological challenges and the special responsibility of being the witnesses of the destruction of European Jewry and that these issues should have been taken up by the psychiatric profession. However, during those years extreme trauma was not understood, survivors resisted seeking help and services that might have assisted them were usually unavailable. Such challenges were exacerbated for survivors as new immigrants who did not speak English and may have found the culture of their new country to be alien.
By 1975 support groups begin to emerge. Dr Yael Danieli, traumatologist, co- founded the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and their Children in New York. The
41 Menachem Z. Rosensaft, Life Reborn: Jewish Displaced Persons, 1945–1951, Conference Proceedings, Washington, D.C., January 14–17, 2000 (Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001), 5. 42 Yad Vashem, ‘Displaced Persons Camps,’ accessed June 2017, https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/displaced-persons-camps.html. 43 Robert Krell, ‘The Resiliency of the Survivor: Views of a Child Survivor/Psychiatrist,’ paper presented at the Pike Conference of The Holocaust and Its Legacy: Resiliency, Fragility and the Restitution of Survivors, Boston University, October 2011, http://kavod.claimscon.org/2013/02/conference-presentation-survivor-resilience/.
38 group was created to overcome profound sense of isolation and alienation experienced by some survivors and made worse by what she described as neglect by the mental health professions.44 She defined four post-traumatic types of families that she encountered in her therapy sessions: victim families, fighter families, numb families and families of those who made it. She emphasised the potential range of responses within families to their Holocaust and post-Holocaust lives. Whether such categorisation progresses an understanding of PTSD is difficult to say but she wanted to stress the variety of responses within families to their Holocaust and post-Holocaust lives. Her work enhanced an understanding of the long-term effects of trauma and the silences that can often cross generational lines within families. She argued that the ability to achieve social engagement, to confide and be involved with community were all important elements necessary to support the healthy ageing of survivors.45
Resilience of Survivors
Exploration of survivor attributes despite the trauma they had experienced began to occur in the 1980s and continued into the 1990s. Survivor and therapist, Barbara
Schwartz Lee, undertook a survey of survivors and confirmed that the capacity for happiness was related to the achievements of their children or positive experiences within their social group. Most of the survivors she surveyed fared well in a post- liberation world and had the capacity to view the world around them in a positive way despite their suffering.46 Lee believed that the existence of a pre-Holocaust experience of
44 Yael Danieli, ‘It Was Always There,’ in Mapping Trauma and Its Wake: Autobiographical Essays by Pioneer Trauma Scholars, ed. Charles R. Figley (New York: Routledge, 2007), http://doi.org/10.4324/9780203956472. 45 Henry Krystal and Yael Danieli, ‘Holocaust Survivor Studies in the Context of PTSD,’ PTSD Research Quarterly 5, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 1–2. 46 Barbara Schwartz Lee, ‘Holocaust Survivors and Internal Strengths,’ Journal of Humanistic Psychology 28, no. 1 (1988): 67–68.
39 love and warmth in a family offered the capacity to reconnect with those memories, despite the challenges faced in learning a new language and adapting to a new culture.
The existence of a pre-Holocaust experience of a loving family for many survivors, supported the capacity to reconnect with those memories, despite the challenges faced as refugees having to recreate new lives in a new country. For some, the Jewish faith provided an essential spiritual support for reflection on the suffering and loss, while others renounced all belief but found other ways of identifying with their Jewishness and there were others who rejected any connection with their Jewish identity.47
It was also during the 1980s that survivors began to bear witness publicly through publishing memoirs, organising broader public commemorations within their communities and facilitating the opening of museums dedicated to memorialisation of the Holocaust.48 These publications and remembrances all contributed to a reassessment of the health status and quality of social life of survivors. This became very important for survivors not being seen through the pathology lens of earlier decades.49 Eventually these two perspectives of one narrative finally merged into a new perspective about the meaning of survival. While trauma left an indelible footprint, most survivors created a social and personal life that statistically appeared successful. For most their focus was on building a new future, rather than remaining in the past, which they saw as a victory over
Hitler. Some survivors did seek treatment for trauma symptoms, but the majority never did. Survivors who had lived with terror and loss for years were able to avoid psychic
47 Ibid., 73. 48 One of the earliest such museums was the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne, which opened in 1983. 49 Maria Rosenbloom, ‘The Holocaust Survivor in Late Life,’ Gerontological Social Work Practice in the Community 8, no. 3–4 (1985): 181–90.
40 paralysis and moved forward in life. It has been suggested that perhaps because of this, a myth developed about the level of psychic disability and functionality of survivors.
Aaron Hass, psychiatrist and child of survivors, pointed out that this myth was necessary to preserve the horror of the Holocaust within collective memory and that this myth was not properly challenged because of the risk that it may be seen to diminish the severity of the trauma and suffering.50 He also criticised studies that targeted these more negative psychological effects of trauma among survivors, including the study by
Niederland of his survivor syndrome.51 Hess argued such studies in the early decades after the war saw a limited number of survivors and only the most disturbed and that this resulted in further stigmatisation of survivors from a clinical perspective.
Sophia Richman, survivor and writer, said every survivor of a disaster feels lucky and those who survived the Holocaust know this to be so: ‘It may have helped to be smart, resourceful, courageous and well connected, but more than any other factor, it is to luck that we owe our life.’52 Jewish identity was itself reshaped by the Holocaust and whether secular or Orthodox, that connection to identity was often strengthened. This has been stated by many writers on the subject but the one that resonates is the composer
Wolfgang Erich Korngold who had great success with his opera Die Tote Stadt until
1933 when it was banned. After the Anschluss, Korngold said ‘We thought of ourselves as Viennese; Hitler made us Jewish.’ This reconnection with Jewish identity has been a key feature of research into the quality of life experienced by survivors of the Holocaust.
50 Aaron Hass, The Aftermath: Living with the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 2. 51 Schwartz Lee, ‘Holocaust Survivors and Internal Strengths,’ 71–72. 52 Sophia Richman, ‘Review of Renewal of Life: Healing from the Holocaust by Henri Parens,’ Psychologist–Psychoanalyst 27, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 40.
41 In studying this aspect William Helmreich formed the view that survivors tended to have more successful lives than other American Jews of the same generation. He points out that their marriages were longer lasting. In 1989, 83 per cent of the survivors were still married, compared with 62 per cent for American Jews of the same ages. 80 per cent of survivors married other survivors and this benefited the couples in that they were less likely to need mental health services since they had someone to share their suffering with and who understood what they had experienced. They were able to speak about wartime experiences, supporting a better adjustment to their narrative of grief, loss and anxiety. He concluded these survival traits were evidence that survivors were able to lead much more successful lives and overcome trauma better than once predicted.53
However, it should be noted that Dr Henry Krystal said ‘if I had been part of Dr
Helmreich’s study, he would see me as very well adjusted. But I don’t see myself that way; I have lots of post-traumatic stress-type problems. Many survivors look better from a sociological point of view than from a psychiatric one.’54
This selection of comments, conclusions and opinions unfortunately does reflect the lack of evidence collected and high-quality research even into the early 1990s. This was noted in the 1992 American Journal of Psychiatry where Koch argued that survivors could be expected to be at risk for PTSD but little empirical data had been published to establish the rates of symptoms.55 The researchers selected 124 survivors exposed to trauma documented in their West German compensation board files. Those selected did
53 William B. Helmreich, Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America (New Jersey: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 267. 54 Sam Roberts, ‘Henry Krystal, Holocaust Trauma Expert, and Survivor, dies at 90,’ New York Times, October 14, 2015, 8, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/15/science/henry-krystal- holocaust-trauma-expert-dies-at-90.html. 55 Klaus Kuch and Brian J. Cox, ‘Symptoms of PTSD in 124 Survivors of the Holocaust,’ American Journal of Psychiatry 149, no. 3 (April 1992): 337–40.
42 not have a diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder or organic brain syndrome. Twenty were Auschwitz survivors with tattooed identification numbers. The assessments were reviewed according to the diagnostic criteria for PTSD and showed 63 per cent of the total group had been detained in concentration camps.56 78 per cent of their first-degree relatives were reported killed in the Holocaust. 46 per cent of the total sample met the PTSD criteria with the common symptoms of sleep disturbance, recurrent nightmares, and intense distress over reminders. They presented evidence that tattooed survivors had significantly more symptoms and were three times more likely to meet criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD than those who had not been in concentration camps. The importance of these results is that they show that the greater the trauma experienced, the greater the likelihood of living with chronic PTSD and most of the group had not received adequate psychiatric care. While these conclusions are not so surprising, they highlight the fact that even survivors who endured the worst atrocities did not receive appropriate care, a conclusion made almost 50 years after liberation.
Since 1994, remembrance has been made easier through the Steven Spielberg’s
Shoah Visual History Foundation which has collected more than 50,000 videotaped interviews with survivors. In this way the role of memory and narrative has provided a healthy engagement with trauma. Rachel Yehuda argues that while there is a corner of life saved for memories, the past must not overwhelm and prevent a future. 57 This balance between healing and memory became an important aspect of understanding
56 Concentration camps served primarily as detention and slave labour centres. The concentration camps held large groups of prisoners without trial or judicial process. In modern historiography, the term refers to a place of systemic mistreatment, starvation, forced labour and murder.’ The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Concentration Camp,’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed August 10, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp. 57 ‘Rachel Yehuda: How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations,’ interview by Krista Tippett, The On Being Project, aired July 30, 2015, https://onbeing.org.programs/rachel-yehuda-how- trauma-and-resilience-cross-generations-nov2017/.
43 survival. Creating new lives and new families or regathering survivors of an original family became critical elements which helped to shape new identity and create new memories. The role of memory and family, community and collective responsibility were important in supporting healthy life.58
Getting to Understand Trauma
Dr Judith Herman, psychiatrist, said that each individual experience needs to be assessed and integrated in the broader cultural and social context. Her book, Trauma and
Recovery, was a milestone in exploring concepts of extreme trauma and healing through reintegration into culture and society. She observed that the attitude of Western cultures toward trauma is one of episodic amnesia evoking the familiar concept of silence. The psychological trauma confronts what is human vulnerability in the natural world and the capacity for evil in human nature.59
In the decades since, research has revealed survivors experienced higher rates of attempted suicide, physical and emotional distress, and a greater chance of osteoporosis and heart problems arising from prolonged malnutrition.60 Evidence also suggests that misdiagnosis occurs due to a lack of understanding about the severity and extreme trauma of Holocaust experiences. In 2011, Harald Jürgen Freyberger German psychiatrist presented a paper where he studied 600 medical experts' opinions on applications to German compensation boards for survivors diagnosed with PTSD,
58 Roberta Greene, ‘Holocaust Survivors: A Study in Resilience,’ Journal of Gerontological Social Work 37, no. 1 (2002): 8. 59 Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1. 60 Jennifer van Pelt, ‘Supporting Elder Holocaust Survivors,’ Social Work Today 13, no. 1 (January 2013): 8.
44 concluding that PTSD had not occurred progressively in over half the patients. He focussed on salutogenetic elements 61 an exploration of the relationship between health and stress. Factors that promoted better health included being married to another survivor, the birth of children and support for the existence of Israel.62 Some of this suffering would be heal in the course of time due to the various salutogenic factors and some of it never would.63 In seeking to better understand positive responses to the
Holocaust Dalia Ofer documented the economic and cultural contributions made by survivors, and how Holocaust memory was incorporated into the creation of personal and communal life within Jewish communities.64
Trauma Study in Australia
Robert Kushner, contemporary historian, studied the historiography of the Anglo-
American world and the Holocaust. He observes that in places like Australia, public interest in the Holocaust gained momentum from around 1976 with an emerging reflection in cultural representations.65 While this statement is correct and much has changed, there were few studies by Australian psychiatrists in the decades after the war.
61 Factors that support human health and a sense of well-being, rather than those that cause disease. 62 Harald Jürgen Freyberger, ‘60 Years Later: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders, Factors, Medical Expert Opinions in Holocaust Survivors in the Longitudinal Section,’ European Journal of Psychotraumatology 2, no. 10 (2011): 4. 63 Berthold P. R. Gersons and Ingrid E. V. Carrier, ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: The History of a Recent Concept,’ British Journal of Psychiatry 161, no. 6 (1992): 742–48. 64 Dalia Ofer, Françoise S. Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz, eds. Holocaust Survivors: Resettlement, Memories, Identities (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 345. 65 Tony Kushner, ‘Britain, the United States and the Holocaust: In Search of a Historiography,’ in The Historiography of the Holocaust, ed. Dan Stone (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2004), 253–75.
45 What evidence that is available does indicate their views about predisposition and PTSD did not differ from their international colleagues.
One Australian longitudinal study of trauma experienced through war has been identified. John Raftery’s Marks of War66 is a ten-year study of Kokoda veterans, following them at reunions and other events that reinforced the closeness of their relationships with each other. They came home with the symptoms and pain of PTSD, including those who presented as successful businessmen or in other careers. They were not helped by Australian psychiatrists after returning home and it was the families who lived with the nightmares and panic attacks. Raftery showed that relationships created on the Kokoda Trail probably remained the closest experienced by these men, suggesting that extreme trauma binds those who survive it together more tightly than almost any other experience. Several years passed before the veterans were able to recount their horrific experiences and to share the symptoms they continued to have for years. Raftery recounts the silence experienced after returning home, the incredible closeness of those who shared the trauma experience and the commonality of symptoms.
Early case studies of migrants and mental illness were published in the mid-1950s and early 1960s by five doctors including E. Saint,67 A.T. Edwards,68 J. M. Last,69 Ignacy
Listwan,70 and Salomon Minc.71 Such studies did not differentiate between Jewish and
66 John Raftery, Marks of War: War Neurosis and the Legacy of Kokoda (Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2003). 67 Eric G. Saint, ‘The Medical Problems of Migrants,’ MJA 1, no. 10 (1963): 335–40. 68 A. T. Edwards ‘Paranoid Reactions,’ MJA 1, no. 19 (12 March 1956): 778–79. 69 J. M. Last, ‘Culture, Society and the Migrant,’ MJA 48, no. 1(18 March 1961): 420. 70 Ignacy A. Listwan, ‘Paranoid States: Social and Cultural Aspects,’ MJA 1, no. 19 (12 May 1956): 776. 71 Salomon Minc, ‘Of New Australian Patients, Their Medical Lore and Major Anxieties,’ MJA 1, no. 19 (11 May 1963): 681–87.
46 non-Jewish patients but, in 1973 Jerzy Krupinski et al published the first epidemiological study of East European refugees, studying war experience, their lives in Australia and mental illness.72 In comparing his three groups of migrants, Krupinski noted that the
Jewish refugees who had suffered the worst persecution and symptoms were able to achieve upward mobility compared with both the other migrant groups and even with
Jews who had migrated to Australia pre-war. He concluded survivors had the strength to cope despite severe losses and not even mental illness delayed their progress in adjusting to life in Australia.
Hocking and Bower were two of the few psychiatrists to publish on trauma and survivors. Hocking concluded that the 300 survivors he studied had been subjected to brutality and torture unique in scope and duration. The murder of family and friends was postulated as an even more severe trauma than that experienced by a prisoner of war.
While the latter is removed from his family, the prisoner of war is generally not exposed to the deprivations of the loss of his entire family and community, as occurred with many survivors.73 One of Hocking’s key observations concerned the patients sitting in his Melbourne medical waiting room. Nearly all of those who were survivors presented an apathetic appearance or flat affect, distinguishing them from other patients. He also observed a marked degree of anxiety overlaying their depressive symptoms. More than half of the survivor patients described the symptoms of what is now called PTSD. These included nightmares, anxiety, irritability, poor concentration and a startle reaction to innocent stimuli. He thought the very concept of disaster had not been established in psychiatry because it overlapped with other disciplines like sociology. He also thought it
72 Jerzy Krupinski, Alan Stoller, and Lesley Wallace ‘Psychiatric Disorders in East European Refugees now in Australia,’ Social Science and Medicine 7, no. 1 (1973): 46–47. 73 Fred Hocking, ‘Psychiatric Aspects of Extreme Environmental Stress,’ Diseases of the Nervous System 31, no. 8 (1970): 542–45.
47 challenged the existence of the boundary between illness and health, and that it was rather remote from traditional psychiatric approaches like psychoanalysis.
Herbert Bower, a Viennese Jewish psychiatrist emigrated to Melbourne in 1939 and was also appointed to assess survivors for restitution, observing the presence of overwhelming stress in survivors some three decades after liberation. He described symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and difficulties in interpersonal relationships of an aggressive type. One of his conclusions was that childhood survivors who suffered identical trauma compared with adults, were three times more likely to show this type of aggressive behaviour.74
The most important work is the 814-person Sydney Holocaust Study, which compared survivors with other refugees and Australian/English-born (AE).75 Survivors showed much higher ratings for depression, agitation, and hostile suspicion with intrusive thoughts, avoidance and nightmares. The effects of the trauma were still evident more than fifty years after the event.
Conclusion
The development of knowledge about the effects of extreme trauma as outlined in this chapter shows us that the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors was not fully understood until at least 50 years after the event. Whilst the necessity to document a full patient history was identified by some doctors as an important element of diagnosis and treatment, it rarely took place. The history of trauma demonstrates that in
74 Herbert Bower, ‘The Concentration Camp Syndrome,’ Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 28, no. 3 (September 1994): 391–97. 75 Joffe et al., ‘The Sydney Holocaust Study,’ 39–47.
48 general trauma was diagnosed as due to genetics or childhood experiences, with the concept of PTSD only emerging in the 1980s. PTSD today is understood to involve fear, helplessness and horror yet those survivors who experienced these symptoms in the
1950s were rarely treated due to the lack of understanding. These survivors had endured the Holocaust, immigration and the loss of family and community with those who had been in concentration camps being three times more likely to experience such symptoms.
At the same time the impact of the trauma was not universal: only 50 per cent of survivors had PTSD symptoms and 25 per cent had never experienced these symptoms.
This chapter has discussed the occasional MJA articles by some doctors in
Australia who studied mental illness in migrants and began to have some insight in the psychological impact of trauma. One of these articles is by Krupinski who compared
Jewish refugees with two other groups of migrants. He concluded that the Jewish migrants, even those with mental illness, were adapting to life in Australia more successfully than the other groups in spite of the severity of their war experiences.
Frederick Hocking was one Australian psychiatrist who treated survivors whom he noted had been subjected to brutality and torture unique in scope and duration and also published from his experiences beginning in the 1960s. Much more recently in 2010 Paul
Valent completed an overview of Holocaust Traumatology in Australia. His findings and analysis in his paper contributes significantly to this thesis and to the research statement.
It also contributes important insights and observations which help to answer some of the questions posed by the thesis.76
The capacity of most survivors to endure their torment under the Nazis and then commence new often, seemingly successful lives, is hence an extraordinary chapter in
76 Valent, ‘Holocaust Traumatology in Australia.’
49 the history of trauma. Many survivors never accessed mental health care, largely because the relevant knowledge and understanding did not exist after the war, but also as a result of not wanting to seek treatment. Most were not even properly assessed until old age.
This chapter shows that survivors in the 1950s were managed in the absence of any real understanding of the extent of damage caused by the Holocaust. The relevant research o was only carried out in 2000 with the 814-person Sydney Holocaust Study, when there was already a much clearer understanding of PTSD.
While this chapter has illuminated how knowledge evolved within the field of traumatology, the next chapter undertakes a critical summary of published literature pertinent to a range of relevant subject areas for this thesis.
50 Chapter 2. THE STATE OF THE RESEARCH
This chapter evaluates the key literature published in the major relevant subject areas of government policy, Jewish migration, refugee doctors, trauma and mental illness. The views of different researchers are compared and differing views are identified and discussed. Exemplary research studies have been highlighted and any gaps identified.
The literature review considers the various approaches, debates and conflicts within these subject areas to inform and contribute to the research statement. This chapter also outlines how this thesis is placed within the existing literature.
Australian Jewry almost trebled in size from 1933 with the arrival of approximately 9,000 Jewish refugees before and during the war and an additional 23,000
- 25,000 survivors between 1945 and 1961.1 Given the catastrophic experience of the
Holocaust following Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933, it is important to establish what the literature does and does not tell us about traumatised survivors. Key Australian scholars have thoroughly researched the immigration policies of successive governments and most reached consistent conclusions about the important objectives underpinning the policies. The various works dealing with this issue will be analysed, as well as the gaps in the literature relating to dealing with the impact of trauma of the Jewish newcomers.
Global Jewish Migration
The challenges of Jewish attempts to escape Nazism and antisemitism in the 1930s has developed into an important topic in historiography. Chaim Weizmann noted at the 1937
Peel Commission in Britain, designed to investigate the unrest in Mandatory Palestine,
1 Suzanne D. Rutland and Sophie Caplan, With One Voice: A History of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies (Sydney: Australian Jewish Historical Society, 1998), 318.
51 that the world is divided into places where Jews cannot live and places where they may not enter.2
A key foundational work by Michael Marrus focused on the broader European refugee problem. He argued that European nations implemented strategies designed to limit support of refugees and that the outcomes of the Evian Conference of July 1938, designed to address the refugee crisis, expose those nations as bystanders.3 Marrus examines the crisis in terms of international diplomacy and considers the evolution of refugee support agencies. In his review of the book, Holocaust historian Bob Moore argued that Marrus addresses a vastly complex subject given that the history of refugee movements in Europe had been a somewhat neglected area. However, Moore notes that the lack of a bibliography is an omission of substance given the fact that no such set of references had yet been compiled. Despite this absence, Moore argued that this book helped created the impetus for more in depth studies at the national level.4 Indeed, there have been a number of key studies of migration policies of countries towards Jewish refugees and survivors in the context of contemporaneous social and economic factors, and these studies generally concluded that these nations retained the role of bystanders.
David S. Wyman, American historian of refugee policy studied the socio-political environment up to World War II when German Jews were trying to escape their country.
Wyman wrote a number of key works, including Paper Walls which covers the years between 1938 and 1941 and assesses the restrictive immigration policies of the United
States, which allowed only 150,000 survivors to emigrate during the period from Hitler's
2 Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 185. 3 Ibid., 130. 4 Bob Moore, ‘Review of The Unwanted by Michael R. Marrus,’ European History Quarterly 18, no. 2 (April 1988): 254–56.
52 assumption of power in 1933 and Pearl Harbour in December 1941. He argues that in
America during the depression years there were four key sources of resistance to Jewish survivor immigration: antisemitism, unemployment, nationalism and anxiety that refugees could be a subversive element or fifth column. Wyman concludes the government's response reflected the attitude of the American people.5 Henry Feingold also documents American attitudes and the limited impact of advocacy groups, arguing that what Americans believed, did shape defined government policy.6 Leonard
Dinnerstein concentrated his study on the post-war period and the American response to
Displaced Persons (DP) in America and the survivors of the Holocaust. His work is one of the few studies of American attitudes towards survivors during the 1980s, showing there existed a continuing lack of empathy to the welfare of European Jewry who had been in DP centres. He also highlights the methods used by the Truman administration to restrict Jewish survivor immigration in the period 1945-1948, whilst masking the antisemitic intent of these policies.7
Tony Kushner’s 1994 research on Britain challenged its popular national view of tolerance and positive Anglo-Jewish relations.8 In her more recent study, Louise London, daughter of Jewish refugees, argued that the antisemitism expressed in Britain was based on a belief that refugees should assimilate immediately upon their arrival in London.
During the years between the rise of Hitler and the creation of Israel, Britain limited
Jewish immigration to those who would benefit the nation, such as children and
5 David. S. Wyman, Paper Walls, America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938–1941 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968). 6 Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1970). 7 Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 8 Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994).
53 domestic workers. Her book validates a substantial body of work published on Britain's attitude towards Jewish refugees of Europe.
The response of the British Commonwealth countries varied from complete opposition through to implementing policies designed to minimise immigration, as illustrated in a number of key works and reflective of the attitude of Great Britain. The title chosen by scholars Irving Abella and Harold Troper’s 1982 book None is Too Many, reflects an off-the-cuff comment of a Canadian immigration office when asked how many Holocaust survivors Canada would accept. Their book is a detailed study of
Canadian immigration policies about Jewish refugees between 1933 and 1948, the year that the British mandate expired in Palestine resulting in the creation of Israel as a new home for many refugees. They analyse the total Canadian opposition to an intake of
Jewish survivors, and the fact that the Canadian government was not swayed by petitions from the international community or Canadian Jewish groups. The authors do argue that
Canada’s immigration policy underwent a change after 1948 with the economic boom requiring a migrant workforce at the same time as Israel was created, and these two events did bring about a softening of attitudes.9
Milton Shain’s study of South Africa argues that as Nazism developed in the
1930s there was a rise in antisemitism combined with a period of economic depression in that country.10 Notwithstanding the evidence of the successful integration of Jewish immigrants in South Africa, together with their significant contributions to the fields of medicine, law and culture, or perhaps in part because of it, Eastern European Jewish
9 Irving Abella and Harold Troper, None is too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933– 1948 (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1982). 10 Milton Shain, The Roots of Antisemitism in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), 81,144.
54 immigration was terminated by the Quota Act in 1930 and immigration of German Jews to South Africa was closed by the Alien's Act in 1937.11 Green argues these views did not change and ultimately that very few survivors migrated to South Africa after 1937.12
Several studies have been published which examine the response by European countries. One such example is Bob Moore's 1986 publication on the Netherlands which focuses on some common areas of inquiry to those undertaken in Australia including the role of groups sympathetic to the refugees, the financing of relief and the attitudes of successive Dutch governments.13 Vicki Caron provides a persuasive argument about
France, asserting German Jewish refugees were treated differently due to their socio- economic status which was challenging to certain middle- class groups such as doctors, lawyers and merchants. She concludes that the antisemitic policies of the Vichy
Government reflected the views of those French middle classes.14 This is consistent with much of the literature relating to Australia's antisemitic policies such as Rutland’s study of the restrictive policies introduced for Jewish refugee doctors15 and the attitudes towards Austrian and German refugee lawyers.
In America there have been several key works published which deal with the integration of Jewish refugees after arrival. One of these is the 2007 Beth Cohen study of
11 Louis Hotz, ‘The Refugees en Route: Restrictions on Immigration in South Africa’ in From Refugee to Citizen: A Sociological Study of Refugees from Hitler-Europe who Settled in South Africa, ed. Frieda H. Sichel (Cape Town: AA Balkema, 1966), 26–32. 12 Michael A. Green, ‘South African Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, 1941–1948’ (MA diss., University of South Africa, 1987), 167. 13 Bob Moore, Refugees from Nazi Germany in the Netherlands 1933–1940 (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986). 14 Vicki Caron, Uneasy Asylum: France and the Jewish Refugee Crisis, 1933-1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 15 Suzanne Rutland, Take Heart Again: The Story of a Fellowship of Jewish Doctors (Sydney: Fellowship of Jewish Doctors of New South Wales, 1983).
55 the experience of some of the 140,000 DPs who eventually made the journey to
America.16 She refutes the image of enthusiastic well assimilated refugees through her studies of case files, agency meeting minutes and oral testimony. She found many survivors had symptoms that proved difficult to diagnose and relatively frequent talk of suicide was quite inconsistent with the triumphant narrative showcased in the media.17
An important aspect of Cohen’s analysis is that support for survivors continued for a period of only twelve months, after which their cases were officially marked as closed.
This would potentially create great difficulties for survivors who experienced significant financial, emotional or integration problems. Cohen concludes that there was a desire to close cases, meaning that these challenges were dismissed or forgotten.’18 Her assessment is that for many survivors the early years in America were an experience of illness and bitterness. In his review of Beth Cohen's study, Holocaust historian William
Helmreich argues that works such as this concentrated on the difficulties experienced by survivors in the early years rather than on themes of adaptability and achievements, a cornerstone of his own scholarship.19 This is an example of the debates that have taken place in America where different conclusions have been have been drawn as to how survivors fared in the years after immigration, varying from successful integration through to significant trauma related behaviours consistent with experience of PTSD.
16 Beth Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Post-War America (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007). 17 Beth Cohen, ‘Case Closed: Beth Cohen Discusses her Research on Holocaust Survivors,’ Psychology International (January-February 2008): 16–20. 18 Cohen, Case Closed, 71. 19 William B. Helmreich, ‘Review of Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Post-war America,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22, no. 1 (2008): 134–36.
56 Similarly, Aaron Hass chose to study post-war adaptability and resilience during the
1990’s.20 His book is based on lengthy interviews with 58 survivors from 14 countries, as well as extensive reading of journalistic and clinical studies of survivors. His focus was on adaptability rather than pathology, though in undertaking his own research, he noted that a significant number of survivors were highly, if understandably, pessimistic, mistrustful, sad and secretive. He concluded that survivors had two lives – an external one that was visible to others and an internal one in which they managed their trauma and memories and he concluded that in this context they were quite normal, given their traumatic experiences.
Jewish Refugee Migration to Australia
In Australia, published works have thoroughly explored government policies and attitudes towards survivors by the media, the existing Jewish population and other
Australians. During the 1980s, several works appeared dealing with Jewish refugee archival material and survivor migration from key scholars including Michael Blakeney,
Suzanne Rutland and Paul Bartrop, exploring government attitudes and shaping the scene for the reception of Jewish refugees. Blakeney's study of Australian attitudes to migration is a multicultural perspective setting the scene before 1933.21 He acknowledges much of the original scholarship is Rutland's based on her MA (Honours) thesis completed in 1978, but also offers source material from government and Jewish organisations. He argues that the policy framework sought to prevent Jewish migration, although he notes that until 1938 European Jews had not considered Australia as a
20 Hass, The Aftermath, 2. 21 Michael Blakeney, Australia and the Jewish Refugees, 1933–1948 (Sydney: Croom Helm, 1985).
57 possible option.22 He believes their acceptance may have been unintentional as the government expected shipping problems to be prohibitive.23 Between 1933 and 1939,
Australia accepted almost 8,000 refugees fleeing Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia with 5,000 of those landing in 1939.24
Bartrop's study of Australian government policy is the most comprehensive for the 1930s. He confirms that the Australian government was aware of the crisis in
Germany by 1933, though this did not have much impact on policy, a view validated at the Evian Conference of 1938 which Bartrop critiqued in regard to Canada and Australia.
He concluded that while Canada stood alone in virtually refusing to take any refugees,
Australia came a close second and its policies aligned with most other countries in creating false havens for desperate survivors 25 and by March 1938 most European Jews seeking to enter Australia had but two chances of doing so: almost none and none at all.26 His assessment was that Australia continued to embark on an immigration policy, rather than a real refugee policy, a view validated by the absence of any real government support for Jewish refugees.
The most notable arrival of refugees once the war commenced was aboard the
HMS Dunera. This has been admirably covered by historians such as Konrad Kwiet and
Michael Blakeney, as well as Benzion Patkin, Cyril Pearl, and the volume of documents
22 Ibid., 103–33. 23 Ibid., 305–08. 24 Rutland, Diaspora, 399. 25 Paul R. Bartrop, ‘Indifference of the Heart: Canada, Australia and the Evian Conference of 1938,’ Australian Canadian Studies: A Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences 6, no. 2 (1989): 71. 26 Paul R. Bartrop, Australia and the Holocaust 1922–1945: Entry Denied (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1994), 47.
58 edited by Paul Bartrop and Gabriel Eisen.27 After the fall of France in the war, refugee numbers increased, and the British government decided to define German and Austrian refugees as enemy aliens. They also asked former colonies to take some of these male refugees and of the 2,542 sent to Australia on the Dunera, two thirds were Jewish. The men were interned at camps in Tatura and Hay along with Nazis. The Dunera Boys were ultimately released in mid-1942. Their story is one of great hardship on the voyage to
Australia and during their internment, but Kwiet and Moses reviewed the story of these refugees and concluded they were lucky, not only to escape Europe, but to be eventually freed in a democratic society where those who decided to remain in Australia became valuable citizens.28
When trying to get a better understanding of the emotional damage experienced by these survivors it is worth referring to the research by Blakeney, that a physical and mental assessment of them was undertaken by Dr S. E. Morris a member of the European
Emergency Committee in Sydney during November 1940. He noted that while these survivors longed for freedom, they appreciated the sympathy and understanding shown by the authorities.29 Ann Andgel argues that Walter Brand and the AJWS were key advocates for these survivors to be reclassified from enemy aliens to refugee aliens.30
Charlotte Carr-Gregg emphasises the role of the European Emergency Committee in her study of the Dunera boys. Overall the literature identifies the key roles of advocacy and
27 See Benzion Patkin, Dunera Internees (Stanmore, NSW: Cassell Australia, 1979); Cyril Pearl, The Dunera Scandal (North Ryde, NSW: Angus and Robertson, 1985); and Paul R. Bartrop and Gabrielle Eisen, eds., The Dunera Affair: A Documentary Resource Book (South Yarra, VIC: Schwartz & Wilkinson and The Jewish Museum of Australia, 1990). 28 Konrad Kwiet and John A. Moses, eds., ‘On Being a German-Jewish Refugee in Australia: Experiences and Studies,’ special issue, The Australian Journal of Politics and History 31, no. 1 (1985). 29 Blakeney, Australia, 261. 30 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring.
59 the support groups which lobbied the government on behalf of these survivors to achieve their eventual release from internment.
James Jupp, immigration policy specialist, argues the Chifley Labor government introduced the first ever non-British immigration programme and in his work he identifies some of the racial bias against Jews that informed the policy framework.31 He studied the visit of then Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell and migration officers to the DP camps in Germany in order to fill post-war immigration quotas. He concluded recruitment of refugees was a selective process whereby Jews were actively discouraged in the early post-war period, reflecting the level of antisemitism in Australia.32 Andrew
Markus and Margaret Taft noted that the extent of cultural diversity created by the assisted immigration programme was unprecedented but at the same time this vision was to be implemented by underfunded, unprepared government services and welfare providers.33 This work is one of the few which has highlighted the lack of preparedness for the many arrivals. In terms of the Jewish survivor immigration, this placed even greater reliance on the small local Jewish communities.
Australia, New Zealand and Canada did share practical issues such as the physical geography and shipping challenges of long distances making travel more difficult. At the same time, each nation was confronted with the highest priority: the need to repatriate ex-servicemen from various war zones. Catherine Panich explored these shipping challenges, mass migration programs and the British ten-pounders. Jewish
31 James Jupp, Immigration (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1991), 70. See also Suzanne D. Rutland, ‘Subtle Exclusions: Postwar Jewish Emigration to Australia and the Impact of the IRO Scheme,’ The Journal of Holocaust Education 10, no. 1 (Summer 2001): 50–66. 32 Jupp, Immigration, 72. 33 Andrew Markus and Margaret Taft, ‘Post-War Immigration and Assimilation: A Reconceptualisation,’ Australian Historical Studies 46, no. 2 (2015): 240.
60 survivors are only mentioned once in almost two hundred pages, and in the forward, not in the body of the book.34 She makes one mention of serious mental health issues faced by refugees succumbing to despair, nervous breakdowns and self- annihilation through alcoholism but these statements are not referenced.35 This did not refer to survivors, who were largely excluded from the mass migration schemes discussed by Panich.
A shift in historiography occurred after archival sources became available to reveal the successful assimilation of refugees. Suzanne Rutland has published the most comprehensive Jewish history in Australia including her 1988 book, Edge of the
Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia, and more recently in 2005,
The Jews in Australia. Rutland's almost 500-page history has been described as
‘magisterial’ providing evidence of exhaustive archival research presented in a concise clear way.36 Australian attitudes to Jewish migration are explored between 1933 until after the war including antisemitism, advocacy by Australian Jewish leaders and the discriminatory measures of government.37 Rutland noted by 1954, 17,000 Jewish survivors had arrived from Europe and Shanghai with a further 10,000 by 1961.38 She also extensively examines government policies, the reactions of Jews and non-Jews and the role of the AJWS in resettlement. Responsibility for the arrivals was delegated to the
AJWS as Rutland confirms the government decided that Jewish survivors would not be
34 Catherine Panich, Sanctuary? Remembering Post-War Immigration (Sydney: Allen & Unwin Australia, 1988), xv. 35 Ibid., 173–74. 36 Evan M Zuesse, ‘Review Article, Australian Jewish Historiography,’ Australian Religion Studies Review, 1, no. 30 (1989): 67–72. 37 Rutland, Diaspora, 230–33. 38 Suzanne D. Rutland, The Jews in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 51.
61 financially supported, creating reliance on American Jewish welfare organisations.39 She reveals that the scale of successful migration and assimilation of refugees in Australia was due in part to the financial support of three American Jewish organisations. The secrecy of this support was maintained until 1954, so her article brings into the light, a little-known story of international cooperation in support of bringing Jewish refugees to
Australia and in helping them create new lives. The major reason for the secrecy was a fear that the information would be used by anti-Jewish immigration campaigners. This publication also illustrates the fact that the Australian government did not contribute financially to the support of the Jewish survivors.
Rutland refutes criticism of the AJWS for not advocating larger scale migration, arguing that a cautious approach supported successful assimilation of refugees, a conclusion founded on meticulous study of the AJWS minutes.40 Following a detailed study of the documents she was able to conclude that anti-Jewish immigration policy persisted in Australia until 1954.41 The responsibility for Jewish refugees was largely vested in the AJWS. The history of the first 50 years of the AJWS was researched and written by Ann Andgel, who contributed significantly to our understanding of how the refugees were welcomed, supported and accommodated by the AJWS.42 Andgel's book does not deal with mental illness until the 1980s but identifies individual Board
Directors and staff members who assisted survivors needing extra support.
39 Suzanne D. Rutland and Sol Encel, ‘Three “Rich Uncles in America”: The Australian Immigration Project and American Jewry,’ American Jewish History 95, no. 1 (March 2009): 80. 40 Rutland, Diaspora, 184. 41 Rutland, The Jews in Australia, 62. 42 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring.
62 A dissenting voice opposing the critics of the Australian response to the refugee crisis was Bill Rubinstein, who first developed his thesis that the Australian government did everything it could to assist Jewish survivors in an article published in the Australian
Jewish Historical Society Journal. He then developed his arguments to apply to all the allied countries in his book, The Myth of Rescue43 where he asserted the Allies did all that was reasonably possible in relation to rescuing Jews from Nazi persecution of Jews.
In fact, his work refuted any criticism of Britain and the Allies by various well-regarded historians on the basis that the Holocaust was not predictable and the genocide unpreventable. He argued strenuously against Wyman’s assessment of the United States and describes all these views as revisionist. In a review of his own book, Rubinstein concludes that the Allies had no case to answer.44 This assessment was refuted by
Rutland and other scholars on the basis that he has not undertaken intensive archival research. Indeed, his only archival source was in fact a reference to her own book The
Edge of the Diaspora. She concluded he did not undertake substantial research in the archives.45 Another key scholar David Cesarani, expressed disappointment that
Rubinstein refused to engage with contemporary scholarship and failed to use footnotes or acknowledgements appropriately. Cesarani was also of the view that the well- regarded publisher should not have even consented to release the work, suggesting that perhaps it was actually seeking to target the popular market.46
43 William D. Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (New York: Routledge, 1997). 44 Rubinstein, ‘The Historiography of Rescue,’ in The Myth of Rescue. 45 Suzanne Rutland, ‘Research in Transnational Archives: The Forgotten Story of the Australian Immigration Project,’ Holocaust Studies A Journal of Culture and History, 19, no. 3 (Winter 2013): 106. 46 David Cesarani, ‘Review of The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis, by William D. Rubinstein,’ The English Historical Review 113, no. 454 (1998): 1258–60.
63 These works provide valuable context in terms of the integration of survivors, but such scholarship is infrequent and intermittent in Australia. The Australian Journal of
Politics and History did dedicate a whole issue to Jewish immigration in 1985, with contributions from historians like Rutland, Bartrop and Kwiet. This special issue provides an insight into government policies and the challenges the refugees faced integrating into Australian life, while maintaining Jewish identity. Writing in 2001,
Kwiet concluded that nearly all German refugees over time had regained their lost social status within the middle classes of Australian society despite the stigma of being
German, Jewish and foreign.47 However, the scholarship in this general area of integration of survivors into the community and the challenges that were experienced has been patchy and an absence of longer term studies is apparent.
Immigration and Mental Illness
A key area of literature inquiry is the relationship between immigration and mental illness, another field in which research has been somewhat limited and rather inconclusive. Not all migrants go through the same experiences and or settle in similar social circumstances. They prepare differently for migration and reasons for emigration vary. The process of migration and subsequent cultural and social adjustment also play a key role in the mental health of the individual. Various arguments have been put forward in literature since 1932 when it was argued that predisposition increased the risk of mental illness in migrants.48
47 Konrad Kwiet, ‘The Second Time Around: The Re-Acculturation of German-Jewish Refugees in Australia,’ The Journal of Holocaust Education 109, no. 1 (2001): 34–49. 48 Ørnulv Ødegaard, ‘Emigration and insanity,’ Acta Psychiatrica Neurologica Scandinavica, no. 4 (1932): 1–206.
64 It is considered inevitable that the process of emigration places some additional stress on those undertaking the migration. Writing about migrants in Australia in 1966,
Minas asserted that it is the social constructs around migration that influence this connection, rather than the experience of migration itself. 49 This assessment contributes to an understanding of the range of issues that can influence the mental health of a migrant. In 1968, Bagley's review of immigration and mental illness research in England and America, concluded that better qualified migrants actually experienced more discrimination in terms of work opportunities and that such individuals could be at increased risk of mental illness.50 This conclusion supports some of the research undertaken in Australia and France where lawyers and doctors struggled to resume practice unless they underwent full re-qualification.
During 1975, the psychiatrist Harvey Barocas reviewed twenty-five years of specific survivor literature and concluded the effect of relocation and creating a new life can and does affect mental health.51 While these conclusions were not definitive and did not follow a group of survivors, they helped inspire further inquiry, such as the extent of cultural differences between the old society and the new and the type of reception experienced by the migrants.52
49 Harry I. Minas, T.J.R. Lambert, S. Kostov, and G. Boranga, Mental Health Services for NESB Immigrants: Transforming Policy Into Practice (Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1996), xiii. 50 Christopher Bagley, ‘Migration, Race and Mental Health: A Review of Some Recent Literature,’ Race 9, no. 3 (1968): 343–50. 51 Harvey A. Barocas, ‘Children of Purgatory: Reflections on the Concentration Camp Survival Syndrome,’ International Journal of Social Psychiatry 21 no. 2 (1975): 87–92. 52 V.D. Sanua, ‘Immigration, Migration and Mental Illness: A Review of Literature with Special Emphasis on Schizophrenia,’ in Behavior in New Environments, ed. E.B. Brady (Beverley Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1969).
65 In general, immigration is viewed as a complex process where old values and relationships are left behind and resettlement in an unknown culture presents new challenges. Survivors were fleeing genocide rather than seeking a better life, so their experience of migration is very much that of seeking refuge and safety rather than a life of economic security, a common reason for migration. Studies have successfully shown that many different variables impact on the life of a survivor migrating to a new country.
It is the fact that there are so many variables including pre-migration life and personality, reasons for leaving, the journey itself and reception in the new country which creates real challenges in reaching meaningful conclusions about the impact of migration on stress levels and as a potential source of additional trauma.
Trauma Studies in Survivors
Clinicians writing in the 1950s and 1960s like Chodoff 53 and Eitinger,54 reported a picture of extreme trauma and overwhelming pathology, and concluded survivors experienced
‘concentration camp syndrome’ with symptoms of nightmares, depression, intrusive thoughts and indecisive dependent behaviour. By the 1970s, such findings had become subject to criticism that their conclusions were unsupported by data or comparative studies and, further, that the dire circumstances of survivors had been unfairly discounted.55 In the 1980s, researchers like Harel raised more concerns about the validity of the sample groups used and
53 Paul Chodoff, ‘Late Effects of the Concentration Camp Syndrome,’ A.M.A. Archives of General Psychiatry 8, no. 4 (1963): 37–47. 54 Leo Eitinger, ‘Concentration Camp Survivors in Norway and Israel,’ Israeli Journal of Medical Science 1, no. 5 (1964): 883–95. 55 Terence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
66 the practice of publishing clinical observations to reach what he claimed were spurious conclusions.56
Many survivors also objected to these studies, pointing out that since the war they had created new lives, families and careers and contributed to Jewish communal life.57 In
1983 Zev Harel published an article in Society and Welfare which was the result of interviews with survivors and he concluded that they had pursued living to the full extent possible, including surviving the stress arising from exposure to protracted extreme trauma.58 By the 1990s, knowledge of extreme trauma evolved further with writings such as those by Judith Herman, Harvard psychiatrist.59
Those who were writing about the Holocaust survivors in these years faced the challenge described as a dilemma of documentation. There is a need to record the horrors and damage done, while preserving the dignity of survivors and showing their capacity to survive and create successful lives. Yehuda’s trauma publications highlighted this challenge as having been a key obstacle in identifying and providing the resources needed to help survivors to deal with the symptoms of trauma.60
56 Zev Harel, ‘Coping with Stress and Adaptation: The Impact of the Holocaust on Survivors,’ Society and Welfare 5 (1983): 221–30. 57 Ibid., 230. 58 Zev Harel, Boaz Kahana and Eva Kahana, ‘The Effects of the Holocaust: Psychiatric, Behavioral and Survivor Perspectives,’ Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 11, no. 4, (December 1984): 915–29. 59 Herman, Trauma and Recovery, 1. 60 Rachel Yehuda et al., ‘Phenomenology and Psychobiology of the Intergenerational Response to Trauma,’ in International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma, ed. Yael Danieli (New York: Springer, 1998), 639–55.
67 In 1997 Krell and Sherman published their bibliographic audit of almost 2500 studies of survivors in concentration camps, as partisans and in slave labour camps.61
Krell, a child survivor and psychiatrist, argues survivor experiences and reactions were ignored through the 1960s and 1970s by mainstream psychiatric texts like The
Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry.62 While this book is largely a listing of all the literature that could be identified by 1995, Krell also uses it to criticise German psychiatry for its well documented participation in mass murder and moral failures and also expresses disappointment of the profession of psychiatry globally to the trauma experienced by refugees.63 These observations of German psychiatry are well founded as mentally ill persons were the first to be murdered by the Nazis.64 This was a neglected area of study for decades and recent publications seek to remember these murdered patients and contribute in a small way to overcoming those decades of silence for families and in communities where these crimes occurred.
A Long Silence
This silence of the medical fraternity, as well as the more general silence relating to survivor experiences among therapists, started to be explored in 1975. Yael Danieli, traumatologist, was the co-founder of the first support program in the world for survivors and their children, in 1975 in New York. She argues that survivors and their children complained about avoidance of Holocaust experience by therapists. Her review
61 Robert Krell and Marc I. Sherman, eds., Medical and Psychological Effects of Concentration Camps on Holocaust (Rutgers University: Transaction Publishers, 1997). 62 Ibid., 14. 63 Ibid., 3. 64 Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 77.
68 of psychiatric hospital files shows there was only brief mention that the patient was a survivor, and probably no documentation of the patient’s actual Holocaust experience.
Further, she asserts that therapists became part of a conspiracy of silence that existed between survivors, their children and society after the war.65
In 1984 the first edition of Psychoanalytic Psychology featured an article studying emotional responses and other problems experienced by therapists who worked with survivors. Therapist Moshe Lang treated many survivors and families but remained silent until he attended a conference in 1988. In his writing he shares the belief that his silence had been founded on a fear of trivialising the Holocaust experience. In 1993 he published The Long Shadow66 describing his work with survivors and their families. He argues survivors were actually reluctant to seek therapy because they felt such a display of weakness could be dangerous if not fatal. His work focussed on highlighting a patient's strengths, to assist in creating an atmosphere where distressing symptoms and difficulties can be shared. He argues that silence can also be a sign of respect such as when the dead are honoured and an observation of silence is commonplace. His work includes comments by academics and mental health professionals from Australia and overseas. One of these, Naomi Josh White, anthropologist, concludes The Long Shadow has successfully been able to describe the movement that exists between silence and speech.67 George Halasz, child survivor and Melbourne psychiatrist, explores the Lang
65 Danieli, ‘Psychotherapist's Participation in the Conspiracy of Silence About the Holocaust.’ 66 Moshe Lang, ‘The Long Shadow: Family Therapy With Holocaust Survivors and Their Families,’ Generation 4, no. 1 (1993): 22–32. 67 Lang, ‘Silence Therapy with Holocaust Survivors and their Families.’
69 article through a dialogue he eventually established with his own parents, who had lived with survival over the decades by using a combination of self -reliance and silence.68
Interestingly, each of these works were published by treating clinicians during the
1980s and 1990s when the examination of silence after survival became more common.
They actually had therapeutic relationships with survivors and explored their experiences of silence. The use of testimony to overcome the silence has emerged more recently and has largely been the subject of research and publication in the twenty-first century.
Testimony as Therapy
It was only in 2011 that the first comprehensive summary of the 1946 David Boder interviews was published by Allan Rosen.69 He points out that in recording the experience of survivors Boder attempted to use psychological testing but abandoned this approach and he never used the term trauma, but in 1954 he published The Impact of
Catastrophe contemplating all the themes of extreme trauma as understood today.
Historian Dori Laub began examining the role of Holocaust historians and their relationship with mentally ill survivors in Israel. She points out that in Israel in 1990 about one-fifth of chronically hospitalised psychiatric patients were Holocaust survivors and most had no history of their persecution experience in their medical charts. Except for a brief period after the war she believes survivors kept silent for decades because they were fully occupied in rebuilding lives and also because no-one wanted to listen and described this as a form of inner speechlessness. Laub reopened discussion about the role
68 Ibid. 69 Alan Rosen, The Wonder of Their Voices: The 1946 Holocaust Interviews of David Boder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
70 of survivor testimony to better articulate a historical narrative of the Holocaust which included what they could say, and what they could not say about their trauma.70
In this century, as an understanding of PTSD has evolved significantly literature exploring the use of testimony to alleviate symptoms of PTSD has been published. The therapeutic value of testimony was assessed in the Testimony Project, when Rael Strous interviewed 24 survivors who had spent decades in Israeli psychiatric hospitals. He noted testimony alleviated PTSD symptoms, but not for patients suffering from psychosis. Symptoms for those survivors who suffered from PTSD reduced markedly during a second interview dealing with their Holocaust experiences.71 A video-testimony study was conducted in 2002 and 2003 with twenty-six such patients, in an attempt to elicit their histories. Psychological testing demonstrated marked improvements in their trauma-related symptoms five months after the video testimony was given. During the same year Laub supported these findings also using video testimony. She described the results as ‘a shift from speechlessness to testimony’ for twenty per cent, for whom no documented history of persecution had ever existed in their patient files.72 She argues in her work that without the testimony of survivors, the larger historical narrative would be incomplete or incorrect.73 This has become a reality in the more recent decades as there are many different ways that survivors have shared their stories to create a more complete and harrowing narrative of the Holocaust.
70 Dori Laub, ‘From Speechlessness to Narrative: The Cases of Holocaust Historians and of Psychiatrically Hospitalized Survivors,’ Literature and Medicine 24, no. 2 (2005): 257–58. 71 Rael D. Strous et al., ‘Video Testimony of Long-Term Hospitalized Psychiatrically Ill Holocaust Survivors,’ The American Journal of Psychiatry 162, no. 12 (2005): 2287–94. 72 Laub. ‘From Speechlessness,’ 253–65. 73 Ibid., 265.
71 A review of the literature suggests that post-traumatic growth (PTG) has been increasingly studied in the last twenty years. Psychologists Tedeschi and Calhoun claimed that positive changes can occur in the personalities of individuals who experienced trauma. They developed models of PTG based on interviews with survivors of traumatic experiences. The changes cited include better personal relationships and an enhanced appreciation for life.74 Other researchers are critical of what they term positive psychology, arguing PTG is a flawed measure of personal growth after trauma, shows a disregard for the evidence of psychological science and is wishful thinking.75
Trauma Studies in Australia
Australian research has concentrated on the cultural and economic aspects of migrant life and not trauma or mental illness, which is not surprising given Australian attitudes about mental illness at the time. Jordens said ‘the mentally ill had no place in the imagined community of Australian citizens.’76 She concluded mentally ill post-war migrants were mostly invisible, their needs were marginalised and their rights as citizens ignored.’77
Deborah Staines observes there is a place to offer a historical synthesis on the relationship between an individual’s Holocaust experiences and their subsequent life.78 A similar absence of studies of the role of Australian psychiatrists either during or after the
74 Richard G. Tedeschi, and Lawrence C. Calhoun, ‘Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence,’ Psychological Inquiry 15, no. 1 (2004): 1–18. 75 James C. Coyne and Howard Tennen, ‘Positive Psychology in Cancer Care: Bad Science, Exaggerated Claims, and Unproven Medicine,’ Annals of Behavioral Medicine 39, no. 1 (2010): 16–26. 76 Ann-Mari Jordens, Alien to Citizen: Settling Migrants in Australia, 1945–1975 (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1997), 74. 77 Ibid., 131. 78 Staines, ‘Aftermath,’ 1.
72 war has also been identified as a research gap. Hans Pols, a history of science lecturer, has reviewed a rare example written by John Raftery, whose study of Australian psychiatric writing during both World Wars, Marks of War, reveals that trauma symptoms in veterans were attributed to pre-existing conditions. It was only in the late
1950s that the government accepted mental illness as a diagnosis for the granting of an invalid pension. Raftery criticises Australian military psychiatrists who asserted mental illness occurring during or after war, be viewed as if that breakdown would have occurred anyway.79 His decade spent with 65 Australian Kokoda trail veterans was an opportunity to learn about how their memories were brought home and incorporated into often successful lives. The veterans suffered PTSD and Raftery challenges the narrative that they return from major conflicts adapting to their former life without difficulty.80 No such study of survivors here in Sydney or elsewhere in Australia, has been found.
It has been possible to identify a small yet significant number of key publications in Australia which are relevant to the research statement by adding information about migrants and mental illness and any studies of survivors. Early case studies of the 1950s and 1960s asserted more non -English speaking (NESC) patients were diagnosed with psychosis than Australian-born patients.81 The first studies of mental illness in migrants were undertaken by doctors who were sometimes migrants themselves. They published clinical observations in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) beginning in the mid-
79 Hans Pol, ‘War, Trauma, and Psychiatry,’ Australian Review of Public Affairs, Archive Digest (February 2004), review of John Raftery, Marks of War: War Neurosis and the Legacy of Kokoda (Adelaide: Lythrum Press, 2003). 80 Raftery, Marks of War. 81 Yvonne Stolk, I. H. Minas, and Steven Klimidis, Access to Mental Health Services in Victoria: A Focus on Ethnic Communities (Melbourne: Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit, 2008).
73 1950s with E. Saint,82 A.T. Edwards,83 J.M. Last 84 and two more by doctors who had trained in Europe. The first was Polish born psychiatrist, Dr Ignacy A. Listwan, who reviewed psychiatric outpatients at Sydney Hospital in the early 1950s and found that paranoia was twice as common in migrants, mostly unmarried young men from eastern
Europe.85 Dr Salomon Minc, Perth Jewish cardiologist, who had lived in Russia, Poland and Italy, completed his medical degree in Rome, and concluded that major anxiety in migrants was due to the stress of immigration and assimilation.86 Studies such as these were generally were observations of a clinical load, did not differentiate between Jewish patients and other migrants and though published would not be considered peer reviewed, but they do provide useful observations and an understanding of the challenges faced by refugees.
There has been one article about the state of Holocaust traumatology in Australia, written by Valent. His article is written both as a child survivor and psychiatrist, combining his personal experience with the Holocaust and an objective view of how research into trauma has unfolded. He concludes between 1960 and 1980 most studies and initiatives were undertaken overseas, as in Australia the survivors focused their energy was on setting up new lives. He argues survivors thought suffering was normal after their many losses and seeking help showed a lack of respect to the memory of those who perished. They had been lucky to survive and so should not complain. Survivors felt only physical symptoms were allowable and their attendances at the doctor's surgery
82 Saint, ‘The Medical Problems of Migrants,’ MJA, 335–40. 83 Edwards ‘Paranoid Reactions.’ 84 Last, ‘Culture, Society and the Migrant,’ 420. 85 Listwan, ‘Paranoid States,’ 776. 86 Minc, ‘Of New Australian Patients,’ 681–87.
74 were high. He points out that many died in their fifties after their lives were securely established and had given up their survivor modes.87 He asserts that until 1980, the
Holocaust remained too recent to view from outside and it was only in 1987 that a child survivor group was established in Australia. He concludes that trauma therapy was too immature to deal with the Holocaust during these decades. Dr Valent is a founder and past president of The Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and the only author who identifies that in those years, two Australian doctors, Frederick Hocking and
Herbert Bower were selected to assess survivors for compensation.
Frederick Hocking has been widely published in reputable journals such as the
MJA which included ‘Human Reactions to Extreme Environmental Stress’ in 1969. 88
This work included his study of 300 survivors and his detailed observations. Then his
‘Stress and Psychiatry’ was published in in 197189 and contemplated the issues faced by the profession in facing extreme trauma. Hocking only died in 2016 in Melbourne.
Herbert Bower was appointed as a consultant psychiatrist in Victoria, taught undergraduates and began treating and assessing Holocaust survivors for many years in his own home. He delivered a paper on ‘the death experience and its long-term consequences’ at the World Congress, Jerusalem in the late 1990s, based on his treatment of survivors. He published ‘The Concentration Camp Syndrome’ in 1994 and argued for permanent personality change after a death experience.90
87 Valent, ‘Holocaust Traumatology in Australia,’ 97. 88 Frederick Hocking, ‘Human Reactions to Extreme Environmental Stress,’ MJA 2, no. 12 (1965): 477–83. 89 Frederick Hocking, ‘Stress and Society,’ MJA 2, no. 17 (23 October 1971): 837–40. 90 Bower, ‘The Concentration Camp Syndrome.’
75 In 1973 Jerzy Krupinski et al published the first epidemiological study of East
European refugees, looking at the effect of war experience on mental illness.91 The first group of Poles, Russians and Ukrainians, showed high rates of psychiatric illness compared to their war experiences. They were mostly from a peasant background and remained in unskilled and semi-skilled occupations. The second group were mostly middle-class DPs from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. They experienced a trend of significant downward mobility even though they suffered least in the war, so that the researchers concluded their mental disorders were related to assimilation problems. The study showed that Jewish refugees had suffered the worst persecution but had the lowest rate of schizophrenia, although higher than that of the general Australian population. Researchers concluded that despite the greater level of suffering and symptoms Jewish survivors were achieving in most aspects of life to a level greater than other refugees and pre-war Jewish refugees. The researchers argued Jewish refugees had lower rates of schizophrenia because those who had showed psychotic symptoms after
1933, would have been euthanised. They concluded these survivors had great personal strength and in spite of Holocaust experiences and possible experience of mental illness, they had already become part of the Australian national narrative of successful migrants.
The most important study published in 2003 was the 814-person Sydney
Holocaust Study which compared survivors with other refugees and Australian/English- born (AE).92 This research was discussed in detail in Chapter 1 and was a rigorous comparative study. The researchers sent out over 2,500 survey forms and 200 interviews were undertaken in participants’ homes. The average age was 75.1 years, and symptoms
91 Krupinski, Stoller, and Wallace ‘Psychiatric Disorders in East European Refugees now in Australia,’ 46–47. 92 Joffe et al, ‘The Sydney Holocaust Study,’ 39–47.
76 including headaches, nightmares, anxiety and depression, were assessed using three levels of Holocaust exposure. Mild included some 15 per cent living away from high risk situations with non-Jewish families; Moderate, some 39 per cent usually in ghettos as labour camps; and Severe, with 46 per cent in concentration camps or inhumane conditions hidden for months or years, at constant risk of death. 67 per cent of survivors,
38 per cent of refugees, and 32 per cent of AE experienced anxiety or depression, with no significant differences in the proportion of those who sought treatment. 65 per cent of the survivors rated their emotional health as bad to fair, compared with 36 per cent of refugees and 22 per cent of AE.
Despite many symptoms, survivors managed to function quite well within society. Though only 45 per cent received psychological treatment, the researchers concluded that the effects of massive trauma for all survivors was severe, enduring and exacerbated with age. The Sydney Holocaust Study was probably a one- time opportunity because if participants were still alive today, they would be mainly over ninety years of age.
There has been one key article about the state of Holocaust traumatology in Australia, written by Dr Paul Valent in 2010.93 This work provides a personal perspective by a man who is himself a child survivor from Budapest, Hungary as well as being a psychiatrist. It takes a look at the history of traumatology in Australia and in particular, the contribution of the
Holocaust to traumatology in general. He also overviews the response of mental health professionals to the experience of Holocaust survivors in the early decades after the war. He tackles some of the questions surrounding treatment of survivors, the ways in which survivors sought to deal with their symptoms of trauma, avoidance of dealing with Holocaust
93 Valent, ‘Holocaust Traumatology.’
77 memories and how healing took place. He points out that the Holocaust remains a prime source to study perpetrators and bystanders, important also in terms of dealing with more recent genocides. He concludes that trauma therapy was too immature to deal with the
Holocaust during those early post-war decades due to the fact that it was too close to view and to analyse. This observation is very important because it helps to explain the paucity of information in those years and helps to inform the questions posed by the research statement.94 Dr Valent is the only author who identifies that two Australian doctors, Hocking and Bower were selected to assess survivors for compensation.95
Whilst the studies are few in number it is important to note that the findings about how successful Jewish refugees were at adapting to social and economic life. One important example is Dr Herbert Bower, one of the few Australian psychiatrists to write about survivors in the twentieth century. Bower was a Jewish refugee doctor who had to retrain as did most other refugee doctors in order to become qualified in Australia. In fact, little has been written about Jewish refugee doctors either, although there has been one key work which was published in 1983.
Refugee Doctors
Egon Kunz studied the history of refugee doctors in Australia but did not address the subject of Jewish doctors.96 Rutland's book Take Heart Again is the key story of the challenges they faced in becoming registered. This book was largely based on oral testimony. The Fellowship of Jewish Doctors of New South Wales committee members
94 Ibid., 97. 95 Ibid., 99. 96 Egon F. Kunz, The Intruders: Refugee Doctors in Australia (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1975), 107.
78 assisted Rutland in the production of this story.97 She dedicated the book to Dr Isaac
Friedman who founded the Fellowship and remained involved for three decades. In spite of being a medical graduate for over twenty years, like most other refugee doctors he had to complete full retraining at the University of Sydney in order to qualify. His story which is discussed in detail in the book, reflects the additional challenges of those who had to requalify after surviving the Holocaust. The work points out that because these refugee doctors came as sponsored migrants, they did not need to fulfil the two-year government work contract required of DP migration. They benefitted from the support of doctors like Friedman before and after requalification. Many of those who did requalify then went on to help raise funds for those who had to undergo the same onerous process.98 Rutland observes that European trained doctors were well supported by
Australian patients who, unlike the New South Wales Medical Board, believed their
European training was actually superior to those trained in Australia.99 She cites two who provided consultancy services to the AJWS, including Dr Isaac Friedman and Dr
Max Brenner,100 both of whom assisted other Jewish Polish refugee doctors.101 The
Fellowship expressed their thanks to Rutland for all the work she undertook in creating an accurate account.102 Most refugee doctors discussed by Rutland did not become
97 Fellowship of Jewish Doctors of New South Wales was established in 1955 and still exists today as The Australasian Jewish Medical Federation, the Australian Chapter of the Israeli Medical Association. Australasian Jewish Medical Federation, accessed February 19, 2020, http://ajmf.org.au. 98 Suzanne D. Rutland, Take Heart Again: A Story of a Fellowship of Jewish Doctors (Sydney: Fellowship of Jewish Doctors of New South Wales, 1983), Epilogue. 99 Ibid., 20. 100 Ibid., 25–27. 101 Ibid,, 12–14. 102 Ibid., Foreword.
79 psychiatrists though she provides a detailed summary of Dr Oscar Schmalzbach, a leading psychiatrist who migrated to Australia after the war.103
Menders of the Mind104 by William and Hilary Rubinstein is the official history of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) 1946 -1996.
They claim that in 1964 the membership reflected contemporary Australian society whereby 64 of 67 members who could be traced were Anglo Saxon or Celtic, with three others having either passed away or were New Zealanders.105 According to their study not one psychiatrist had been trained at a European university.106 They did not include
Clara Lazar Geroe who joined their Association in 1949, even though her medical qualifications were not accepted until 1956, when she became a member of the
Australasian Association of Psychiatrists and is described as a foundation fellow of the
RANZCP.107 Geroe was a Hungarian Jew who graduated from University of Pees and brought psychoanalysis to Australia, as acknowledged in Menders.
Dr Oscar Schmalzbach is another psychiatrist who is not mentioned in their book.
Born in Lvov, he completed his training in psychiatry in Warsaw, as noted by his son in the Lancet.108 Schmalzbach arrived in Australia in 1949 and was the first overseas doctor in a decade whose qualifications were accepted by the NSW Medical Board without
103 Ibid., 36–37. 104 William D. Rubinstein and Hilary L. Rubinstein, Menders of the Mind. A History of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, 1946–1996 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996). 105 Ibid., 12. 106 Ibid., 13. 107 Judith Brett, ‘Geroe, Clara Lazar (1900–1980),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed June 2017. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/geroe-clara-lazar-10796. 108 Les Schmalzbach, ‘Everyone Knows Oscar,’ Australian Journal of Forensic Sciences 28, no. 2 (2009): 45–48.
80 requiring further qualification. Whilst learning English he became a psychiatrist at
Callan Park and a valuable clinician for Polish speaking patients. In 1956 he left Callan
Park, setting up a private practice in Macquarie Street.109 He was credited with being an advocate for the establishment of psychiatric units in general hospitals, a great achievement in his distinguished career and he went on to hold a number of honorary appointments at several psychiatric hospitals. Subsequently he became a consultant psychiatrist with the Department of the Attorney-General using his great skills as a forensic clinician and ultimately was awarded an OBE for services to forensic science.110
Menders mentions in a short paragraph that the RANZCP did have extensive discussions about migrant screening given what they described as ‘flooding into
Australia from southern and eastern Europe in record numbers.’ The Rubinsteins note that assertions were made and sometimes refuted, that migrants had a higher incidence of mental illness, though no evidence was provided to support these comments, nor evidence of any research undertaken. In addition, they mention sympathy for victims of concentration camps.111 Overall this history of the College reflects the attitudes of the times and specifically, the absence of a real response by psychiatry to the psychological problems faced by returning veterans or those survivors who sought refuge.
Conclusion
This chapter has reviewed a wide range of works published by historians as well as pertinent clinical studies of survivors. In undertaking this literature review, a broad
109 Michael Kirby, ‘Obituary – Dr Oscar Schmalzbach,’ MJA 40, no. 14 (1997): 1–2. 110 Schmalzbach, ‘Everyone Knows Oscar,’ 46. 111 Rubinstein and Rubinstein, Menders of the Mind, 19.
81 range of primary source materials have also been accessed both internationally and in
Australia. This discussion has confirmed that little has been written directly on the subject of survivors who suffered extreme trauma or mental illness, particularly in the first fifty years after liberation. Early studies in Australia were sporadic and did not generally separate out survivors from other groups of migrants. Nonetheless the four studies mentioned did record valuable information about migration and its effect on health, with three of the studies written by doctors who were migrants themselves. None of these studies was peer reviewed and this, combined with an absence of longitudinal research, was identified as the most significant gap in the Australian literature.
Even with these limitations, a number of occasional but significant publications were published in Australia and these have been discussed in this chapter. In particular, Frederick
Hocking a prominent Melbourne psychiatrist, who was not Jewish, published the article
'Human Reactions to Extreme Environmental Stress' in the MJA as early as 1969. This article contemplated the issues faced by the psychiatric profession in dealing with extreme trauma although subsequently little appears to have been further investigated by the psychiatric profession to support Hocking’s view that additional study and research would have helped to develop an enhanced understanding of extreme trauma.
The first peer reviewed publication which identified survivors as a group compared with other migrants, was the Krupinski study published in the 1970s. Researchers concluded that Holocaust survivors had experienced the greatest level of suffering and existed with many symptoms of trauma. In spite of the trauma endured these Jewish refugees, findings highlighted that they adapted more successfully both in their professional and social lives than other refugees including pre-war Jewish refugees.
The time that an understanding of the impact of trauma took to emerged was also mirrored in terms of the more general study of the Jewish refugee and survivor experiences in
82 Australia. It was only in the mid-1980s that The Australian Journal of Politics and History dedicated a whole issue to refugee Jewish immigration, with contributions from high profile historians like Rutland, Bartrop and Kwiet. The major peer reviewed 814 – person study of the health of Holocaust survivors was only undertaken in 2000. The Sydney Holocaust Study found that only 45 per cent of survivors assessed had received psychological treatment. The researchers concluded that the effect of massive trauma for all survivors was severe, lasting and exacerbated with age.
There has been one key article about the state of Holocaust traumatology in Australia, written Valent in 2010. This sweeping overview offers a unique perspective on the state of
Holocaust traumatology in Australia and provides important contextual conclusions. In particular, he makes the point that as a discipline, traumatology was too immature to provide much of a contribution to an understanding of the plight of survivors until the late twentieth century. Those studies which explore the use of testimony to alleviate symptoms of PTSD have also been discussed in this chapter.
Key publications examining global Jewish migration have been discussed and they revealed that there was an international reluctance to assist survivors to escape the Nazis after
1933. Rutland's booklet on refugee doctors is important because she identified the particular challenges facing this group and how the pre-war refugee doctors assisted post-war Jewish survivor doctors to re-establish themselves as well as survivors with mental health problems.
Rutland's other research found that Jewish refugees did not consider Australia as a temporary refuge with almost all of them becoming permanent citizens.112 Even survivors who initially struggled to adjust to Australian life, generally succeeded.
112 Suzanne Rutland, ‘Post-War Jewish Migration,’ Israel & Judaism Studies: The Education Website of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, 2006, https://www.ijs.org.au/post-war-jewish- migration/.
83 Understanding the identified gap in the literature in relation to survivor trauma, its manifestations and the reactions of the local Jewish community in Sydney requires a more detailed evaluation. In Australia where such a high proportion of the Jewish population was made up of survivors after World War Two, it is important to explore how the formation, development of the AJWS and how the organisation responded to the challenges of mental illness of survivors. This is examined in the following chapter.
84 Chapter 3. THE AUSTRALIAN JEWISH WELFARE SOCIETY
This chapter examines government immigration policies, the creation of the AJWS, the management of the resettlement of refugees and the significant roles undertaken by key
AJWS personnel including presidents, Saul Symonds and Sydney David Einfeld, the doctors and the social workers including Walter Brand. As was noted in Chapter 2, most of these aspects have been comprehensively covered by Bartrop, Andgel and Rutland. It was also noted that the study of survivors with mental illness was rarely undertaken in the decades after liberation, so it is pertinent to explore what the AJWS knew and did to help this group.
The AJWS was a non-government organisation unique in terms of its early establishment in 1936, the wide brief of its endeavours for Jewish refugee resettlement and the financial support it received from American Jewish welfare organisations. The
Australian Refugee Society, which has documented the history of refugees in Australia, confirms that the AJWS introduced the first ever refugee support service in 1937.1
Between 1933 and 1960, around 31,500 European Jews immigrated to Australia.
After the Holocaust, around 60 per cent settled in Melbourne, constituting the largest per-capital Holocaust survivor population outside Israel.2 Suzanne Rutland notes that by
1961 the Australian Jewish community had almost trebled in size, as a result of immigration, with the majority arriving after 1945, so that the proportion of survivors in
1 ‘History of Refugees in Australia,’ National Refugee Council, accessed September 12, 2017, https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/ seeking safety/refugee-humanitarian- program/history-australia’s-refugee-program. 2 Rutland, The Jews in Australia, 51.
85 the Jewish communities of Melbourne and Sydney, was very high. However, Australian
Jewry never exceeded 0.5 per cent of the total population.3
On 17 December 1938 the Sydney Morning Herald reported on the 140 German and Austrian refugees on board the Aorangi, due to land in Sydney:
‘A special lecturer was on board to instruct the Austrian and German Jewish
refugees about their new home, Australia. Dr Wolf Matsdorf, social worker
originally from Berlin was attached to the Society and had joined the vessel in
Auckland. I have lived long enough in Australia to claim to know something about
this country. This is a great step forward by the Society’4
It was asserted that some knew sufficient English to be understood and the remainder benefitted from English classes provided by Dr Matsdorf.5
Australia’s response to the crisis of accepting refugees from Nazism occurred in the mid-twentieth century, a time when Australian citizens still identified as British subjects. Most Australians strongly favoured a white racial population as was enshrined in legislation passed at the time of Federation in 1901 so that the official government policy was that Australia should remain 98 per cent Anglo-Celtic with immigrants from the Continent being classified as aliens. The Jewish population was anglicised with their principal language being English and their fear was that too many foreign immigrants would lead to an increase in antisemitism, a fear reinforced by events in the United
States in the 1920s and 1930s.
3 Rutland, Diaspora, 256. 4 ‘Special Lecturer on Board Aorangi,’ The Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), December 14, 1938, 12. 5 ‘Jewish Refugees,’ Warwick Daily News, October 5, 1939, 4.
86 The acceptance of Australian citizenship by European migrants was evidence of their successful integration and assimilation into Anglo-Celtic society and adoption of these values.6 There was great pressure on the AJWS to ensure survivors learnt English and assimilated within the community as quickly as possible. These challenges were magnified by the unexpected need to support dozens of mentally ill survivors.
Policy towards Jewish Migration before World War II
In 1901 the new Commonwealth of Australia enacted the Immigration Restriction Act.
This legislation implemented the desire to maintain a white racial community by preventing non-European immigration. The policy, colloquially known as The White
Australia policy resulted in the Anglo- Celtic population remaining the majority of
Australia’s population until the second half of the twentieth century. Indigenous
Australians did not achieve the right to vote until 1968. After World War 1 the government tailored migration policy to respond to changing economic conditions and falling birth rates. For example, in 1928 a quota scheme was implemented for immigrants from Eastern Europe and Greece. Rutland notes that this limit included
Jewish migration from Eastern Europe, an approach also preferred by the local Jewish leadership rather than large scale migration.7 Meanwhile, in Europe, Jews were already experiencing hostility and antisemitism, severely exacerbated with the rise of Nazism and the Nazi assumption of power in 1933.
By 1933 representations were being made to the Lyons government to accept
Jewish refugees in an environment of extreme antisemitism. To enter Australia in the
6 Jordens, Alien to Citizen, 172–74. 7 Rutland, Diaspora, 169.
87 early 1930s, the depression years, aliens were required to possess £500 landing money or be dependent relatives, minor children and unmarried sisters of Australian citizens.8 In
March 1936 the conservative Lyons cabinet relaxed the entry requirements for those categories of people whose admission would not affect the jobs of Australians. These immigrants needed to have £50 in landing money and a guarantee from an organisation or family member that the individual would not be a burden on the state.9 Aliens who were not guaranteed but could produce £200 landing money, could also enter if they demonstrated their occupations would not disadvantage Australian workers.10
The government itself advocated the establishment of the AJWS formed in 1937 to co-ordinate and manage the Jewish refugee programme.11 The AJWS was commended in parliament for managing the absorption of refugees into the community with it being described as a body doing good work.12 However, while conditions were eased for
German Jewish refugees this was not the case for Poles. Concern was expressed that from Polish Jews were not desirable.13 Such comments about Poles reflected broader community and national attitudes to Eastern Europeans.14 Nonetheless, like other countries, Australia did not intend to host a significant number of Jewish refugees. This was evident at the Evian Conference July 1938, an international initiative called by
8 Ibid., 175. 9 Malcolm J. Turnbull, Safe Haven: Records of the Jewish Experience in Australia (Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 1999). 10 T.W. White, ‘Memorandum on Australian immigration laws and practices and the present policy of His Majesty's Government regarding the reception of immigrants,’ Appendix C, Report on the Evian Conference A46lll: M34913/5. 11 Rutland, The Jews in Australia, 56–57. 12 CPD, 158, 1850–1851, cited in David Benjamin, Australian Jewish Historical Association 5, no. 5, 222–24, cited in Andgel, Fifty Years, 23. 13 National Archives of Australian, A343/1, 49/3/29456. 14 Blakeney, Australia and the Jewish Refugees, 37.
88 American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, where T.W. White stated rather famously
‘Australia does not have a racial problem and is not desirous of importing one.’15
Though thousands of Jews faced severe persecution in Germany and Austria, the nations did not wish to initiate a refugee programme on anything like the scale required to address the catastrophic situation facing European Jews in mid-1938.16
Australia determined it would admit 15,000 refugees over three years, with the annual quota consisting of 4,000 Jews and 1,000 non-Jews. However, by the outbreak of war in September 1939, only 7,200 refugees had been accepted by Australia.17 During the war, the British government sent a further 2,000 Jewish refugees to Australia as internees on the ship the HMT Dunera, bringing the total to around 9,000. Bartrop’s study of released documents reveals the government was kept informed of the various stages of the Holocaust. He describes the government reaction as a finite, deceptive and limited response founded on indifference, an approach was consistent with other nations in the free world in the 1930s.18
However, when it came to child refugees, Australia was less generous than
Britain. The Kindertransport19 was an organised rescue program which operated during the nine months before the war when nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from
Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were accepted into Britain. In New South Wales it was agreed that the AJWS would be responsible for the transport and care of 250
15 John Rickard, ‘White, Sir Thomas Walter (1888–1957),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed June 12, 2020. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/white-sir-thomas-walter-12013. 16 Paul R. Bartrop, The Evian Conference of 1938 and the Jewish Refugee Crisis (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 17 Rutland, The Jews in Australia, 56. 18 Bartrop, Australia and the Holocaust, 78. 19 German for ‘children's transport.’
89 orphaned German Jewish children. Whether this was due to difficulties in locating such children, or because of the distances posed in transportation, only nineteen were selected and arrived before the war.20 This small number has been condemned by writers like
Palmer.21
Bartrop concluded that during the 1930s the government did not really have a refugee policy and that in fact there was a continuation of an unwritten practice that rejected one in ten applications from Jews, which seems to be more of a racial policy.22 His research revealed that in reality it was an immigration policy designed to meet the needs of the country rather than making the rescue of refugees a priority. This was not surprising as Australia was emerging from the Great Depression and there were concerns that new arrivals might take jobs sought by local citizens.
Government Policy towards Jewish Migration after World War II
After the war, Arthur Calwell became the inaugural Australian Immigration Minister in the Chifley Labor Government, serving in that position until 1949. He was concerned about Australia's small population and low birth rate and introduced a new immigration policy with the aim of doubling Australia's population, thereby supporting the development of natural resources, such as the Snowy Mountain Scheme, and a home building program. Sources of migration were widened to include all the European countries and British migrants provided an incentive to migrate to Australia through the
20 Barry Coldrey, ‘Good British Stock: Child and Youth Migration to Australia, Jewish Child Migration,’ NAA: A461, A349/1/7 1. 21 Glen Palmer, Reluctant Refuge: Unaccompanied Refugee and Evacuee Children, 1933–45 (Sydney: Kangaroo Press, 1997), 199. 22 Paul R. Bartrop, ‘“Almost Indescribable and Unbelievable”: The Garrett Report and the Future of Jewish Refugee Migration to Australia 1939,’ Journal of Ecumenical Studies 46, no. 4 (2011): 551.
90 ten-pound scheme.23 At the same time, he wanted to ensure the successful demobilisation and employment of returning armed forces personnel before embarking on a major immigration scheme. In response to the issue of survivor migration, he implemented the close relatives scheme for those who had a Jewish family member resident in Australia, but with a quota smaller than the pre-war quota, with landing permits only issued to
2000 survivors of concentration camps.24 The scheme defined categories of relatives eligible for permits during October 1945 and included those who had spent years in concentration or labour camps, been deported from their homes or in hiding from the
Nazis. Permits were also issued for close relatives in locations like Shanghai.25
The majority of survivors left in Europe after the war were from Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.26 Ships began arriving from Shanghai in 1946 and in November
1946, the first ship carrying 185 mainly Polish refugees arrived from Europe. Ships were met at the docks by AJWS representatives.27 However, as Rutland points out survivors were limited by discriminatory measures to minimise negative community reactions. In response to the negative reactions in the press and other pressure groups, Calwell imposed a quota of 25 per cent Jewish passengers on any ship in mid-1946. When
American Jewish welfare organisations began to charter planes in 1948, Calwell extended this quota for flights, on the basis that a plane was the same as a ship. When the Jewish leaders strongly objected to the 25 per cent quota, Calwell consented to an
23 Rutland, Diaspora, 225. 24 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 77. 25 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes 22 October 1945, in Ibid., 72. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., 77.
91 increase to 50 per cent, but he introduced an annual limit of 3000 survivors to be permitted into the country.28
In 1947 the government ended immigration on humanitarian grounds and Jewish applicants were selected based on qualifications, job vacancies and family re- unification.29 Rutland points out some Sephardic Jews of India and Jews of Egypt wished to immigrate to Australia, but those coming from India and other parts of Asia based a double barrier—as Jews and as Asian migrants. The government only allowed a few from Egypt especially in 1956, following that country’s expulsion of most of its Jewish population. In the late 1950s, some Hungarian and Polish Jews also emigrated to
Australia.30 Her studies concluded that government discrimination against Jewish migration only eased in 1956 after the Hungarian Revolution. In fact, the evidence shows that by 1964, public attitudes towards Jewish migrants had changed noticeably. An opinion poll held that year revealed that 64 per cent of Australians viewed Jewish migrants as desirable, contrasting with the figure recorded less than two decades earlier in 1948 just after the war, when support was clocked at only 17 per cent.31
28 Rutland, Diaspora, 231–33. 29 Ibid., 236. 30 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ‘Introduction to the Holocaust,’ Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed December 12, 2017, http://encyclopedia.ushmm/org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust. 31 Janis Wilton and Richard Bosworth, Old Worlds and New Australians: The Post-War Migrant Experience (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Australia, 1984), 31.
92
Why Choose Australia?
Australia accepted the second largest number of survivors on a per capita basis, with their war experiences being different from non-Jewish displaced persons.32 It is not very likely that these Yiddish, Polish, Czech and other European survivors would have been familiar with the culture, topography and life in the remote island of Australia. Most survivors applied to several countries and, despite the quota system imposed by government, Australia may have been the first place to provide a visa and offer a permit,
Australia was seen to be a very distant destination for survivors. Historian Sharon
Kangisser Cohen notes the most common reason cited for choosing Australia was sponsorship, in general by a relative. Australia was revealed as a possible destination for the survivors with the establishment of the close relative scheme in 1945. There was also a strong impetus to escape Europe and possibly avoid Palestine at that time because of the violence and economic uncertainty before the establishment of Israel in May 1948 and the subsequent truce agreements of February 1949. Some simply wanted to get as far away from Europe as possible.
32 The Nazis deported up to nine million Europeans mainly from the East to work in forced labour camps, during the war. After the war, the Allies repatriated to their home countries over six million wartime refugees. However up to two million refused repatriation fearing further persecution or retribution in the newly established regimes, or because new borders between countries had been established. By 1952 most had found new homes. The figures show in 1952 Belgium accepted 22,000, United Kingdom 86,000, Canada 157,000, France 38,000, Israel/Palestine 652,000, Venezuela 17,000, Brazil 29,000, Argentina 33,000 and Australia 182,000. The USA accepted 415,000 of whom 137,000 were Jewish. By the end of that year, most of the DP camps had been closed. Mark Wyman, DPs: Europe's Displaced Persons, 1945– 1951, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), Introduction.
93 For the survivors escaping Europe, there were few choices and there were no spiritual or cultural connections in Australia.33 Most became permanent citizens.34 Cohen concluded after interviewing many survivors, that Australia was a place of refuge where it was possible not to be another victim in history. This process was aided by Australia’s growing multicultural identity. It was an opportunity to experience security where antisemitism was not embedded in the national culture.35
The total number of survivors that arrived in Australia has been the subject of some debate. However, demographer Gary Eckstein has recently concluded that the number who arrived both before and after the war is 31,600, most of whom were
Displaced Persons (DPS), sponsored either privately or by the AJWS.36 Their arrival more than doubled the Jewish community compared with its small size of a total of
23,000 Jews as acknowledged in the 1933 census. Regardless of the debate about exact numbers of survivors who arrived, the numbers were substantial compared with the small size of the established Anglo-Jewish community. The task of successfully arranging transportation, reception and integration of these new arrivals was largely undertaken by the AJWS.
The Development of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society
33 Sharon Kangisser Cohen, ‘Why We Chose Australia,’ in Holocaust Survivors: Resettlement, Memories, Identities, ed. Dalia Ofer, Françoise Ouzan, and Judy Tydor Baumel-Schwartz (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), 274–92. 34 Suzanne Rutland, ‘Jewish Immigration after the Second World War, The Transformation of a Community,’ Israel & Judaism Studies: The Education Website of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, 2006, https://www.ijs.org.au/jewish-immigration-after-the-second-world-war/. 35 Cohen, ‘Why We Chose Australia,’ 290. 36 Gary Eckstein, ‘A Demographic Analysis of Jewish holocaust Survivor Migration to Australia,’ AJHSJ 23, no. 4 (2018): 722–38.
94 In 1936 the German Jewish Relief Fund was established to assist German Jewish refugees from Nazism, with a major appeal held throughout Australia. Then, at the request of the British Jewish welfare organisation at Woburn House, London, these funds were retained in Australia to assist in the migration and integration of Jewish refugees to
Australia, leading to the formation of the AJWS in Sydney, officially constituted on 28
November 1938 to assist European migrants whether arriving under the AJWS guarantee or not.37 The government advocated, if not insisted, on the creation of one organisation responsible for the process of migration, transport and integration and that survivors should not become a charge on the state for five years, effectively delegating responsibility to the AJWS.38
When the Anschluss39 took place in March 1938, the AJWS received some 1200 desperate requests for assistance.40 After July 1938, this desperation became even more evident as the Department of the Interior was granting over a 100 permits a week. Once the Nazis executed Kristallnacht in November hundreds of additional applications flooded the AJWS.41 The National Archives reveals that the correspondence held there contain some of the most touching and distressing documents in their holdings.42
At the Evian conference in June 1938, the government announced a quota of
15,000 German and Austrian refugees over three years, of whom 4,000 annually would be Jewish. These numbers have been criticised as an inadequate response by a number of
37 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 21. 38 Rutland, Diaspora, 229. 39 Anschluss, the annexing of Austria by the Nazis. 40 Turnbull, Safe Haven. 41 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 21. 42 NAA, A434, 50/3/4138.
95 historians and commended by others but the management of dozens of refugees a week at its peak, was a major undertaking for the local Australian Jews. Leaders of the Jewish community and the AJWS successfully lobbied the government to increase the quotas for survivors.43 The government confirmed that this was the first time a Jewish organisation could act as a guarantor for migrants.44 The AJWS was also responsible for sponsoring individuals and families where family sponsorship was not available as well as to obtain permits and organise transport to Australia. Further, where the sponsoring families failed to help, the AJWS was required to provide accommodation for the newcomers on arrival, assist in their search for employment and oversee the whole integration process. The refugees arrived in a country where few of the local Jewish community spoke Polish,
German or Yiddish. This exacerbated the difficulty experienced by immigrants, the
AJWS and the Jewish community in terms of the expectations around assimilation. The provision of grants, procurement of accommodation and employment, and funding medical costs were essential elements for five years after arrival for those survivors who were mentally unwell. In any case, in 1938, no social security benefits existed in
Australia to support sick or unemployed residents. It was only in 1945 that the national
Labor government introduced unemployment and sickness benefit schemes as policy initiatives.45 Survivors were not eligible for support until they could become Australian citizens after at least five years.
A Migrant Consultative Council, consisting of European Jewish arrivals from earlier decades, was formed to assist in over-seeing the integration process. The arrival
43 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 34. 44 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 23. 45 Rodney Benjamin, A Serious Influx of Jews: A History of Jewish Welfare in Victoria (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 85.
96 of each ship was carefully planned to minimise problems for the Jewish community and new arrivals. A notice published in the Hebrew Standard in 1938 advised:
Members of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society Reception Committee meet all
new arrivals. Please inform us beforehand when you expect relatives to reach
Sydney. Be sure to meet them on the boat. Studiously avoid forming groups on the
wharf. Only English should be spoken on the boat and on the wharf, in all instances.
It is important to strictly comply with this earnest advice.46
The media was told that all comments would be made by President Saul Symonds. The immigrants may have wondered, after years of hardship and trauma, about their muted welcome, but the AJWS was committed to minimising adverse publicity in the media.
By 1938, 200 volunteers were working for the AJWS by receiving refugees, providing refreshments and transport and assisting with housing and employment. It was recognised that full-time staffing had become required to address these aspects for the refugees. After a brief period as General Secretary of the AJWS in 1939, Frank Silverman was replaced by Walter Levi Brand was appointed as the General Secretary in April 1940.47
During 1938-1939 up to 18 people were working in the Society offices in the Maccabean
Hall located in Darlinghurst. Appeals were launched, accommodation organised and employment created, all of which required significant financial support. There were no expectations identified that funds would need to be diverted to pay for treatment in mental hospitals, nor to financially support clients who were mentally ill and unemployable. The
AJWS was well prepared in a practical organisational manner but had set up no committees
46 ‘Meeting New Arrivals,’ The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, November 17, 1938, 3. 47 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 21.
97 to deal with mentally ill survivors and sought no additional funds to support them though they were a significant unplanned additional cost.
Hence in 1939 funding was sought from the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee (JDC) to support the various business initiatives of the AJWS. These representations were successful 48 and the AJWS created two incorporated bodies:
Mutual Farms Pty. Ltd and Mutual Enterprises Pty. Ltd. The former was designed to foster farming ventures in regional New South Wales and the latter an initiative to support the establishment of small businesses, which tended to be located largely in the
Sydney area.49
The experience gained and results achieved by the AJWS contributed to what was described as a cordial relationship with the government.50 After the war, President Saul
Symonds confirmed that Calwell did not want to receive letters from survivors or their lawyers and all applications were to be referred to the AJWS. As before the war, the government determined the AJWS would become the guarantor for refugees if they did not have a local family to act as guarantors. The close relatives scheme allocated 1250 permits to NSW until the end of 1947 and, with the assistance of American Jewish welfare organisations shipping was booked leaving from Europe and Shanghai.
By 1954 the number of Jews in New South Wales almost doubled to 19,687, due to survivor immigration from a figure of 10,309 in 1933.51 Rutland points out that in addition to supporting the transportation of survivors, the American Jewish organizations
48 Rutland, Diaspora, 82. 49 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 50. 50 Ibid., 32. 51 Charles Price, ‘Jewish Settlers in Australia,’ AJHSJ 5, no. 8 (1964): 357–413.
98 were very involved in funding local reception activities, which included providing hostel accommodation, English classes, advice about employment, and interest-free loans to establish businesses.52 Several hostels were purchased including Chip Chase, later called
Komlos Memorial Hostel located in Greenwich, and after refurbishment, up to 70 refugees could stay there. Additional hostels were acquired and on 1 August 1951 an audit revealed there were 54 residents at Komlos, 14 at Chatswood, 16 at Waverley and
24 at Greenwich Road. Families were accommodated at the hostels from six months up till two years while single men and women were located in private homes or boarding houses. By 1953, some 1100 survivors had been housed at the hostels.53 These purchases ensured that the survivors would be housed from the point of arrival and were not directly competing with Australians for community accommodation.
The first years were challenging as most survivors needed to learn English and find employment in an Australia. Many quickly established successful family businesses in textiles, fur and the fashion industries.54 Community attitudes did improve towards the
Jewish immigrants who learnt English and integrate into their new country. An example of community support was in 1953 when the New South Wales Education Department agreed to arrange special English classes free of charge, and to supply the necessary textbooks at the Maccabean Hall.55
At the AJWS office, the scale of the operation after the war can best be described by the statistics between 1946 and 1953. Over 7,000 applications were lodged with government. Staff met 500 planes and ships carrying over 6,700 people, including 78
52 Rutland and Encel, ‘Three “Rich Uncles in America”,’ 101. 53 Ibid.,109–13. 54 Rutland, Diaspora, 258–62. 55 ‘English Classes,’ The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, September 25, 1953, 6.
99 orphans and spent £20,000 on welfare and rehabilitation.56 Funds were raised to buy four hostels, jobs were found for 2,139 people between 1951-1953 and a day nursery was set up at the Komlos Hostel.57 This outstanding list of achievements occurred under the dedicated leadership of Walter Brand, a long-term employee of the AJWS.
Walter Levi Brand
Walter Brand was the constant officer at the Society through all these challenges in government policy, quotas, refugees arriving with no English and managing the media relationships between 1940 and 1965. Brand had migrated from London to Australia in
1920. In those early years he sold vacuum cleaners and became involved in a wide range of Jewish community services during the 1920s. Rutland identifies key achievements of
Brand over the course of his 24 years of work at the AJWS. During World War II, he helped to persuade the authorities to change the status of refugees from enemy aliens to refugee aliens. He supported programs to bring out orphaned children who had survived the Holocaust and sponsored three himself. He wrote when the first group of Jewish orphans arrived it would be ‘the happiest day of my life.’ He also ensured that the JDC funded migrant hostels were operated in accordance with the approved guidelines. Often, he met the ships carrying refugees in Perth or Darwin or the cities of the eastern states.58
Although Brand did not have formal social work qualifications, this was not unusual at this time as the welfare sector was largely charitable and voluntary. A shift
56 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 96. 57 Ibid. 58 Suzanne D. Rutland, ‘Brand, Walter Levi (1893–1964),’Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed January 3, 2018, http://abd.anu.edu.au/biography/brand-walter-levi-9572/text16865.
100 occurred with the introduction of social work studies from an approach that sometimes existed between those considered deserving poor and those judged undeserving poor.59
The recruitment of Brand as administrator in 1940 reflected the evolution from voluntary to professional management of welfare services and signalled the need for organisational capacity and liaison skills. Brand held the role until1965, serving three presidents including Sir Samuel Cohen, Saul Symonds and Sydney David Einfeld.
Effectively he was employed by the Society from the beginning of the war, through nine years of Labor government and then eighteen years of Liberals. He read thousands of requests to immigrate to Australia and met thousands who made the journey. He was the key figure in those years, dealing with the most challenging issues facing survivors including the presence of trauma and mental illness, and provided key advice to the
Board. He worked closely with both Saul Symonds and Sydney David Einfeld, who served at the helm for most of the period that the was the Society's General Secretary.
Rutland has researched Brand’s story in some detail and found that some of the refugees found his manner to be officious and that he only spoke English, which meant that he had difficulty in providing reassurance to anxious newcomers. She notes that despite his
Anglo-Jewish attitude he was compassionate and caring but nonetheless he expected the new arrivals to learn English and assimilate as quickly as possible.60 Charles Jordan, Director of the JDC, visited Australia in 1947 to review the way in which the funds were being expended. While he had great admiration for Brand describing him as the outstanding welfare
59 Stephen Garton, Out of Luck: Poor Australians and Social Welfare 1788–1988 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990), 142–45. 60 Suzanne D Rutland, ‘Destination Australia: The Roles of Charles Jordan and Walter Brand,’ in JDC at 100: A Century of Humanitarianism, ed. Avinoam Patt, Anita Grossmann, Linda G. Levi, and Maud S. Mandel. (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 2019), 9.
101 administrator in Australia, he also noted that Brand had difficulties in finding staff and does a backbreaking job himself.61
AJWS Lay Leadership: Saul Symonds and Sydney David Einfeld
The Presidents during the decades of the late 1930s, 1940s and 1950s were critically important in advocating to the government on behalf of survivors and in leading the
AJWS through the years of sponsorship, travel and integration. Leadership required a professional approach to securing funding, adopting prudent financial decisions and coordinating a large -scale operation to integrate thousands of European Jewish newcomers successfully.
The inaugural president was Sir Samuel Cohen who served from 1939 till his retirement in 1944. He was followed by Saul Symonds who served till his death in 1952.
Born in 1894 in Sydney, Symonds was admitted to the Bar in 1921 and practised law until 1939. From the 1920s Symonds was active in Jewish organisations and supporting
Zionism. He was president of the Great Synagogue, served as treasurer for the Sydney
Jewish Aid Society and the AJWS for many years and from 1938 as the AJWS Treasurer until becoming president in 1948. He was a strong advocate of Jewish immigration, supportive of the newcomers and a successful advocate with government.62 No evidence was found that he was actively involved in any mental health problems arising with
61 Ibid., 3, 17. 62 M.Z. Forbes, ‘Symonds, Saul (1894–1952),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed December 27, 2017. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/symonds-saul-8735/text15295.
102 survivors. Such details may not have been recorded in the minutes or possibly the many issues emerged after his death.
Sydney David Einfeld was born in Sydney in 1909, three weeks after his parents arrived in Australia, with his father taking up the position as hazan at the Great
Synagogue. Like Symonds he became active in the Jewish community in his teenage years, possibly signalling he would become an unequalled leader of Australian Jewry. In
1948, Einfeld was elected to the AJWS Board, becoming its President in 1952 after
Symonds’ sudden death. He remained in the role for 27 years and for much of this period, he also served on the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and was rotating as vice- president and president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Once he became
President, Einfeld made a number of overseas trips to secure funding for the AJWS, successfully achieving a big increase in loans to migrants through Mutual Enterprises as well as general funding for other activities, such as transporting the migrants within
Australia, organising English classes, purchasing and maintaining the hostels and sourcing funding for the significant costs associated with looking after the mentally ill.
He worked closely with Brand. During the 1950s, in consultation with the Department of
Immigration, Brand would meet the arriving ships and Einfeld would finalise details such as the need for interstate transport and arranging short -term accommodation from the Sydney office.
Einfeld undertook numerous journeys to Canberra with Brand to sort out issues with the Department. During the 1950s he extracted concessions whenever he considered their policy to be overly restrictive and these interventions helped 50 Moroccans, 35
Italians and about 100 Hungarians to make it to Australia.63 Einfeld assisted thousands
63 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 90-93, 54, 65.
103 while leading the AJWS through its most challenging years. The Syd and Billie Einfeld
Forest was planted by the Jewish National Fund in Israel to the service to the Jewish people after their deaths. Einfeld died in 1985, thirty years after most survivors had created their new lives often with some level of support from the AJWS.64
In 1955, as Vice President of the Jewish Board of Deputies, Einfeld advised those present that mental illness was now the Jewish community’s greatest medical challenge with 93 patients in mental hospitals. Efforts were made to visit these patients, but this was not feasible in the longer term given the spread of hospitals in Sydney, Goulburn and Orange.65 He was also concerned about the significant financial burden with so many ineligible patients66 Many of those 93 inpatients would have been lengthy admissions imposing a major financial burden on limited AJWS funds with each admission charged at over one pound a week.
Whilst the AJWS did not fully achieved all its objectives for the mentally ill survivors, it was aware of the problem and sought to assist those people suffering, as illustrated by the case studies discussed in the following chapters. Most survivors who settled in Sydney would have been subjected to extreme protracted trauma and it is surprising that so few suffered from severe mental illness to the extent that direct management by the AJWS was required. However, the cost involved in providing financial support even for that small percentage of survivors in New South Wales was
64 ‘Sydney David Einfeld, Politician and Community Leader (1907–1985),’ Australian Archive of Judaica, The University of Sydney, accessed January 5, 2018. https://judaica.library.sydney.edu.au/histories/SydEinfeld.html. 65 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes 7 February 1955 in Jewish Board of Deputies, ‘Hospital Visitation: Changes in Leadership,’ With One Voice, 82. Accessed 16 March 2016. 66 ‘Ineligible’ is a term meaning does not have full access to Australian healthcare and is therefore responsible for all costs associated with medical health care rendered in Australia.
104 beyond the means of the Australian Jewish community, so Einfeld and others made representations to the American Jewish Welfare organisations, beginning in 1939.
Funding for Survivors
The largest American welfare organisation was the American Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee, (JDC), founded in late 1914 to assist impoverished Jews during World War
I. In later decades the JDC supported Jewish communities internationally, between the wars, during the Holocaust and after.67 A subsidiary of the JDC, the Economic
Corporation (REC), was formed in 1934 to resettle survivors from Nazi Germany and
Europe, providing self-liquidating interest free loans for resettlement projects.
Initial aid from the JDC started in 1939 with the creation of Mutual Farms and
Mutual Enterprises with an initial allocation of £140,000.68 Mutual Farms was set up to settle survivors on the land, with Chelsea Park purchased as a training farm, but it experienced limited success and did not continue its activities in the post-war years.
Mutual Enterprises granted free loans to survivors to help them establish small businesses. This latter was a great success, supporting many survivors to establish new working lives in Sydney both during the war years and in subsequent decades.69
Between 1947–1950 the AJWS provided guarantees for accommodation and maintenance for 7,459 survivors. To help fund this commitment, the AJWS approached three American Jewish welfare societies including the JDC, the REC and the Hebrew
67 For a detailed discussion of American Jewish aid, see Rutland and Encel, ‘Three “Rich Uncles in America”,’ 80. 68 ‘Jewish Welfare Society,’ The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, August 24, 1939, 1. 69 Rutland, ‘Destination Australia,’ 4.
105 Immigration Aid Society (HIAS).70 Thanks to the funding received, as discussed above, the AJWS was able to purchase five properties and maintain them during the 1950s.
These were Chelsea Park Hostel Baulkham Hills, Komlos Hostel Greenwich, Chatswood
Hostel Chatswood, Waverley Hostel Waverley and Greenwich Hostel Greenwich.71
During 1953, Einfeld reported that the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, or Claims Conference, had allocated £16000 to New South Wales to replace the JDC allocation. Einfeld noted the Conference was established to deal with individual restitution claims of victims of Nazi persecution and offices were being set up all over the world.72 Once most survivors had been resettled, the REC was amalgamated with the JDC. The Conference allocated £13,000 to the AJWS to support newcomers, which was separate from individual restitution, and some of this funding was used to employ advisers and doctors to assist survivors with their individual restitution claims.
In 1954, another Conference considered funding for rehabilitation. This did not mean that the AJWS was no longer required to support newly arrived survivors struggling with mental illness, but these funds helped facilitate these activities.
In 1954 on page 2, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on new pensions for victims of Nazism, to be provided by West Germany. The paper said that the German word meaning making good again is Wiedergutmachung. Some of the new Australians had begun to receive their monthly pay cheques. The funding was designed to include restitution for lost property as well as the impact of physical torture and incarceration in concentration camps on the survivor's health and wellbeing. Recipients included former
70 Rutland and Encel, ‘Three “Rich Uncles in America”,’ 80. 71 Rutland, The Jews in Australia, 173. 72 ‘E.CAJ. President’s Half-Yearly Report,’ The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, March 6, 1953, 4.
106 State officials, civil servants of the Reich, pensioners, and ‘many who carry a blue number tattooed on their forearm as a stigma of the concentration camp.’ Whilst the amounts received were relatively modest, for the many who struggled in their new country the funding was very welcome.73
The arrival of thousands of European survivors was destined to reshape the
Jewish community significantly. One group which faced additional hurdles were Jewish professionals, particularly the refugee doctors seeking to become registered practitioners.
Their story is important since some of that group later contributed to assisting with the mentally ill survivors. Those who went through the experience of displacement and the challenges of creating a new life could understand the difficulties. This was another group who in addition to surviving the Holocaust, faced great emotional and financial difficulties in attempting to be able to practice medicine in Australia.
Jewish Refugees Doctors
In Chapter 2, reference was made to the perceived threat of German Jewish refugee doctors in France. This was consistent with some of Australia's antisemitic policies and the professional classes as described in Rutland’s study of Jewish refugee doctors.74
On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor of the Reichstag, the governing body of Germany. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, also known as Civil Service Law, as passed on 7 April 1933, which led to the removal of all
73 ‘Pension for Victims of Nazis, W. Germany Makes New Australians,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, July 23, 1954, 2.
74 Rutland, Take Heart Again.
107 Jewish doctors from government posts in April and June of that year. 75Some fled to the
United Kingdom and the United States, while those who remained in Germany were unable to practice outside the Jewish community and they faced an increasingly challenging future.
Later, this applied to Austria and Czechoslovakia, when these countries came under Nazi control, and also in as Poland, Hungary and other East European countries which came under fascist rule in the late 1930s. Britain saw the advantage of accepting skilled people in medicine and science and set up the Academic Assistance Council (AAC) to help refugees suitable paid posts.76 A few who were unable to migrate to Britain or America, came to
Australia. This included Polish refugee doctors who knew they would have to fully re-qualify in order to practice.
Until after World War II, Australian doctors were required to have completed training at a British institution, whether or not they had medical qualifications from Europe. In New
South Wales, most Jewish overseas trained refugee doctors were required to undertake the final three years of medical training at the University of Sydney, while in other states they had to re-enrol and complete their full studies again.77 Australian doctors did not accept them as equals even after re-qualification and it has been noted they were generally rejected socially, within the Australian Jewish medical community.78 Rutland quotes one German
Jewish refugee who described the Jewish community as unsupportive and unwelcoming.79 At
75 P. Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 76 Jean S. Medawar and David Pyke, Hitler’s Gift: Scientists Who Fled Nazi Germany (London: Richard Cohen Books, 2000). 77 Rutland, Take Heart Again, 5. 78 Ibid., 3. 79 Ibid., 4.
108 that time Australian doctors enjoyed an income and a status even higher than in Britain or
Europe exacerbating hostility towards the newly qualified Jewish doctors.80
Take Heart Again is the only complete study of Jewish refugee doctors. Many of their stories are based on oral history interviews conducted prior to its publication in
1983. One of the key doctors was Dr Isaac Friedman who completed the three-year course of study at the University of Sydney and then assisted other Polish refugee doctors. Friedman and his wife had escaped Romania in 1938. After completing his studies and achieving registration, Friedman set up in general practice and after the war he created a Fellowship of Jewish Doctors to assist foreign doctors through their retraining and re-adjustment of life in Sydney. Among those he supported, some thirteen successfully qualified in the first group to complete the final three years of Medicine at the University of Sydney in 1949. Yet due to a quota of only eight, introduced in 1938 by the Medical Board, and the fact that two doctors had already been accepted due to the specialist knowledge without retraining, only six could be officially registered by the
Board. Friedman was among those who challenged this quota as too restrictive. This position was strongly supported by Abe Landa, a state Labor parliamentarian. The quota was overturned due to the outcry, enabling all doctors who retrained to be registered.
Rutland also deals with the story of Dr Max Brenner who was also supported Polish refugee doctors, establishing a non-profit loan service to assist struggling refugees with the university fees. He also looked for accommodation and furniture for those in need and sought the support of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies in representations to the
AJWS to provide funds from Mutual Enterprises, which agreed to provide loans for the refugee doctors while they undertook their retraining.81
80 Ibid. 81 Ibid., 25–27.
109 During these years, European trained doctors who were refugees experienced great hardship and frustration arising from the Medical Board's policy of only admitting those British-trained doctors. As a result, many refugees could not access medical services where the doctor spoke their language and translators were not readily available in that period. Rutland argues that European trained doctors were well supported by
Australian patients who, perhaps unlike the NSW Medical Board, believed their training to be superior to those trained in Australia.82 However, this provided little comfort for those who did not speak English and of course a certain standard of English was required in order to practice as a doctor in Australia.
As becomes evident later in this thesis, the honorary doctors of the AJWS, like
Brenner and Friedman, referred more seriously mentally unwell patients to Dr Brian
McGeorge, a highly regarded clinician and foundation member of the Australasian
Association of Psychiatrists and its successor the Royal Australian and New Zealand
College of Psychiatry (RANCP).83 In the mid-twentieth century, membership reflected contemporary Australian social characteristics with sixty-four of sixty-seven of Anglo
Saxon or Anglo Celtic backgrounds.84 None was trained at a European university.85
Most of the Sydney Jewish refugee doctors Rutland discusses became general practitioners so there were very few survivor psychiatrists, with Dr Oscar Schmalzbach being the main exception in Sydney. He escaped occupied Poland to England where he joined the British Army. After the war, he worked at the Maudsley Hospital, London and
82 Ibid., 20. 83 Stephen Garton, ‘McGeorge, John Alexander Hughes (1898–1979),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed January 2, 2018, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mcgeorge-john-alexander-hughes-10954/text1946. 84 Rubinstein and Rubinstein, Menders of the Mind. 85 Ibid., 13.
110 migrated to Australia in 1949, to become one of the few specialists to be registered by the NSW Medical Board without the usual required three years of training at the
University of Sydney.86 In 1963, he became a senior medical officer at Callan Park
Hospital for the Insane, one of the biggest mental hospitals in Sydney and also held several honorary posts at other mental hospitals before specialising in forensic psychiatry. His distinguished career was widely applauded including helping to create the Australian Academy of Forensic Medicine.87
The majority of Jewish psychiatrists identified who came to Australia, and only a few have been identified given the ban on European qualifications, settled in Melbourne.
One was Herbert Bower, an only child whose parents later perished in Theresienstadt.
He was training as a doctor in Vienna in 1938, but after the Nazi takeover, he fled to
Switzerland completing his studies at the University of Basel, escaped to London and boarded the last ship to Australia, as war broke out in September 1939. Although he was accepted as a Swiss neutral rather than an enemy alien, Australia refused to recognise his qualifications, so he had to repeat his full medical training at Melbourne University, and then undertook further studies to become a psychiatrist.
Both Schmalzbach and Bower played important roles in treating survivors with mental illness, but the tiny number of Jewish psychiatrists in practice meant that the
AJWS in Sydney relied on non-Jewish psychiatrists for specialist advice.
Conclusion
86 Rutland, Take Heart Again, 6. 87 Kirby, ‘Obituary – Dr Oscar Schmalzbach’.
111 Sydney received around 7000 survivors between 1946–1952. As in America, many individual sponsors in Australia did not fulfil their obligations, so the AJWS became responsible for managing many new arrivals. Cohen appointed out that Jewish welfare societies internationally did not understand Holocaust trauma and were unable to meet the mental health needs of survivors. An example she gives is of an American pre-war Jewish refugee and social worker, Gabi Schiff, who said that the refugee organizations meant so well and knew so little.88 AJWS was not an exception to this observation and while their work measured in statistics is impressive, the evidence is they did not understand Holocaust trauma nor was it the subject of minuted discussions. As well, in America the receiving organisation only assumed responsibility for the refugees for the first year; in comparison the AJWS was responsible for the refugees for five years after their arrival.
As the first ever refugee support service established in 1937 the capacity of this organisation to quickly respond to the various waves of refugees reflects very positively on the Jewish community. The statistics show that before the war the AJWS had a significant volunteer base working in their offices. After the war some 500 planes and ships carrying over 6,700 people were met by the AJWS. The scale of this operation and its efficient management was largely the result of the work of Brand, General Secretary.
The government delegated full responsibility for Jewish refugees to the AJWS. This included the process of migration, transport and accommodation on the basis that survivors should not become a charge on the state for five years. Bartrop described this attitude and response as a continuing indifference reflected in an undocumented practice of rejecting applications from Jews as a part of what was really a racial policy.89 Nonetheless it is
88 Cohen, Case Closed, 149. 89 Bartrop, ‘Almost Indescribable and Unbelievable,’ 551.
112 important to note that by 1964, public attitudes towards Jewish migrants had changed noticeably with a good majority supporting these new Australians.
Those who had behavioural problems and mental illness required long term support including procurement of accommodation and employment and funding of hospital costs. This became an expensive undertaking given the numbers and the additional costs were not anticipated and did not feature in funding requests to the
American Jewish Refugee organisations. Another group who suffered greatly and were supported by the AJWS and several Jewish doctors were those refugee doctors who usually had to complete their full course of medical studies again.90 Support for both these groups became a vitally important role for the AJWS often for a period of up to five years.
The next chapter focuses on the lives of survivors seriously affected by trauma who were unable to function normally within society. Most of the case studies are quite brief as the information provided is limited to documentation by the AJWS. However, some of the narratives have been augmented by contemporaneous news stories. This is the case particularly with the story of Jacob Bresler. The final chapter focuses on Dr
Hans Kimmel and his ongoing struggle with mental illness, beginning with his teenage years. These examples provide some life narratives that go some way towards responding to the challenge set by Peter Burke to write history based on the use of narrative style accounts and where possible, first person records.
90 Rutland, Take Heart Again, 5.
113 Chapter 4. SURVIVORS, TRAUMA AND MENTAL ILLNESS
Dr Maurice Goldman, former lecturer in languages at the University of Berlin, arrived on the Orford after escaping to London to settle in Australia. This former President of the
Union of Jewish students in Germany, said ‘The mental sufferings of Jews in Germany and Austria have taken a greater toll than physical suffering. The mental suffering to a sensitive people is acute.’1 These words stated in 1938 even before the war began, would prove prophetic from this distinguished European described as a linguistic giant.2
It has been confirmed through the literature review and the study of the AJWS chapters, that those survivors identified in the research statement have, indeed, been the subject of little research. This chapter now sharpens the focus on those few about whom information is available. The state of mental hospitals as they were then known, is examined to highlight the conditions and treatments that prevailed in the 1950s and to identify some of the particular disadvantages for migrants and refugees in such institutions. When the effects of Holocaust trauma are added to this mix the special mental health care needs of survivors would have been significant and challenging. The contributions of key leaders, doctors and social workers are then explored as a means to address the question of who helped this group of survivors. To showcase the significance of this group Sydney Einfeld, the AJWS President, identified mental illness among survivors as being the number one problem facing the Sydney Jewish community by
1955.3
1 ‘Mental Torture of Jews,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, December 15, 1938, 17. 2 Raymond Apple, ‘Maurice David Goldman: Extraordinary Linguist,’ Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society 20, no. 4 (June 2012): 604–12. 3 Rutland and Caplan, With One Voice, 82.
114 The most disturbed survivors were admitted to mental hospitals, possibly after a suicide attempt, or after efforts by the AJWS to case manage these individuals in the community. Once admitted, patients had limited treatment options until much later in the twentieth century when improved medications became available. As a consequence, the length of admission was often extended and therefore the cost was significant.
Mental Distress Treatment
During the twentieth century lunatic asylums became known as mental hospitals and treatments were evolving but experimental. Isolating the patient was still the preferred treatment and meant that patients could be removed from their family and community.
Lengthy admissions of months or years were common, and this exacerbated the overcrowding and resulted at times in the use of restraints and ice water baths. Insulin coma therapy was first used in 1927 and continued until the 1960s. Patients were deliberately placed in a low blood sugar coma as it was believed that insulin levels could affect the brain.
There was a risk of prolonged coma and a mortality rate of up to ten per cent.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was later introduced as a safer alternative to insulin coma therapy.
Lobotomy involved surgically cutting the connections to the frontal lobe of the brain.
This treatment won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1949 and was designed to disrupt the circuits of the brain. The surgery was used during the 1940s and 1950s, but always came with serious risks. It was largely discontinued in the mid 1950s as oral medications became available.
115 ECT was first developed in 1938. Electric currents are passed through the brain intentionally triggering a brief seizure while the patient is under general anaesthetic.4 In those early days of experimentation, high doses of electricity were delivered without anaesthetic. Patients suffered broken bones due to the convulsions and many experienced memory loss and other serious side effects. In the early 1940s, ECT was introduced in
Australia. At Parramatta Hospital 543 patients received ECT between 1941 and 1943 and
1945 and 1949 and no muscle relaxants were used. 15 of the patients died within days of treatment, ten had coronary arrests during the procedure and 37 incurred spinal or bone injury. After 10 years of experimentation, sedation was eventually introduced during the
1950s.5 Today ECT is described as a safe and effective treatment for the most severe forms of depression when medications cannot help. Because it can cause memory problems ECT is only used when absolutely necessary.6
After the Second World War, lithium was introduced to treat psychosis. It was subsequently used to treat conditions such as bipolar disorder. A few years later, another class of drugs, called chlorpromazine or thorazine, was developed to treat schizophrenia as understanding of brain chemistry evolved. Despite these developments, in the 1940s the state of mental hospitals increasingly became a subject of concern in New South
Wales. Throughout that decade as a result of adverse media coverage, pressures increased on the government to respond.
4 ‘Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT),’ Mayo Clinic, Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER), accessed October 12, 2018. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests- procedures/electroconvulsive-therapy/about/pac-20393894. 5 Stephen Garton, Medicine and Madness: A Social History of Madness in New South Wales 1880-1940 (Kensington: University of New South Wales Press, 1988), 169. 6 ‘Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT),’ Beyond Blue, accessed December 14, 2019. https://www.beyondblue.org.au/the-facts/depression/treatments-for-depression/medical-treatments- for-depression/electroconvulsive-therapy-ect.
116
New South Wales Mental Hospitals
In 1949, radical changes were recommended to bring the mental hospitals up to date with those in Britain, Europe and America. Particular criticism was made about the adequacy of the medical and administrative staff and the failure to achieve fully the status of curative hospitals.7 By 1951 it was reported that wards built to accommodate 30 patients now held up to 61 resulting in severe overcrowding. The State Minister for Health
Maurice O’Sullivan stated that the Health Department's most difficult problem was the state of the mental hospitals with 13,000 people who needed to be accommodated but only 9,000 beds.8 The Inspector General of Mental Hospitals confirmed in his Annual
Report that one in every eighteen patients admitted to mental hospitals during 1950/1951 were New Australians. 2,227 patients in all were admitted, the highest number recorded.
The number of migrants admitted rose from 52 in 1949/50 to 124 in 1950/51. In an early example of blame shifting from the state to the federal government, a 129 per cent increase in a year was attributed to the immigration policy of the Commonwealth government.9
In 1953, the Minister reported to the New South Wales Parliament that 80 migrants who had been passed as being sane and fit by the countries of emigration were in mental hospitals. After arrival they were deemed to be of unsound mind and required hospital care.10
Similarly the Victorian Minister for Health said 20 per cent of migrants who had arrived had
7 ‘Radical Changes Recommended in Mental Hospitals,’ The Canberra Times, May 26, 1949, 4. 8 ‘Overcrowded Hospitals,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, August 30, 1951, 3 9 ‘Migrants in Crowded Mental Hospitals,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, September 10, 1952, 3. 10 ‘New Australians in Mental Hospitals,’ The Newcastle Sun, October 15, 1953, 14.
117 been admitted to mental hospitals, a percentage based on figures provided to the State Health
Ministers’ Conference. He did suggest this high number could be explained due to the mental strain and suffering they experienced in Europe.11
In 1961 the Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council released its inaugural report, ‘The Incidence of Mental Illness Among Migrants’. This study surveyed all arrivals between 1946 and 1957 who were admitted to mental hospitals during those years and highlighted the extent of the problem of mental illness. 2,316 persons were identified who had been admitted to hospital within five years of arrival between 1948 and 1952.12 To place these figures in context it is important to note that the United
Nations General Assembly had established the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) to deal with displaced persons (DPs) in Europe. Between 1947 and 1951, some 168,200
DPs were admitted into Australia under the IRO.13 However, while Rutland notes that this was the fourth largest intake by any nation Jews were excluded initially and of the approximately 500 who were finally admitted, they had to be young, single and willing to sign a special work contract. She identifies the bureaucratic and antisemitic measures designed to ensure so few Jewish DPs were accepted.14
If DPs were removed from the figures of The Incidence of Mental Illness Among
Migrants, it was noted that the migrant rate of admission was below that of a typical Western community. It concluded higher rates of mental illness found among migrants who arrived between 1949 and 1957 was due to the large number of DPs arriving in those years. The IRO
11 ‘Many Migrants in Mental Hospitals,’ Goulburn Evening Post, January 15, 1954, 3. 12 ‘The Incidence of Mental Illness Among Migrants:’ report by a committee of the Commonwealth Immigration Advisory Council, (1961), 1–37. State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library – Onsite Storage, 613.8/1A1. 13 Rutland, Diaspora, 238. 14 Rutland, ‘Subtle Exclusions,’ 50.
118 hosted a rapid increase in numbers with some 168,200 arriving between 1947 and 1951 and a further 95,800 non-British migrants who were not assisted by the IRO also landed in those years.15 The report expressed the euphemistic view an unhappy background of war experience would typically explain higher rates of admission. Within the admitted patients those aged 20 to 49 years had the highest rate and there were more males than females.
Almost half those aged between 20 and 29 years were admitted by the end of their second year in Australia. The findings supported the view that refugees or displaced persons were more likely to suffer from mental illness requiring inpatient treatment.16 Whilst these figures were well reported there is no evidence of particularly negative publicity.17 Unfortunately, the report does not separately identify those migrants who were Jewish but does contribute to the overall knowledge about how refugees experienced mental illness during their first years in the country and provides an insight into the extent of mental illness during these years. For those non-British refugees who did not speak English there would have been significant additional stresses. Firstly, their Holocaust or war experience would not have been recorded and secondly it would have been a challenge for the doctors to elicit the correct diagnosis and discuss with the patient any symptoms he might be experiencing.
Mental Hospitals and Migrants
As early as 1939, The Hebrew Standard of Australasia published an article designed to reassure the local Jewish and broader Australian community that all Jewish refugees arriving in Australia would be healthy and would not become a charge on the state.
15 Ibid., 54.
16 ‘The Incidence of Mental Illness Among Migrants.’ 17 ‘Migrants in Mental Hospitals,’ The Muswellbrook Chronicle, January 15, 1954, 1, 11.
119 These safeguards to ensure only healthy refugees migrated to Australia were outlined, including a rigid medical examination, a guarantee by an established Australian resident for the maintenance of a refugee for a period of five years and a substantial sum as landing money. It was noted that the immigrant could not have been in a mental hospital or prison. Even then it was necessary for applicants to prove the soundness of their mental and physical health. Finally, it was deemed important that they could prove that they would willingly become assimilated and uphold the Australian constitution.18
Whilst these requirements are quite usual for immigrants generally, the Jewish community argued that the survivors would not become a charge on the state.
Interestingly Hans Kimmel who is the subject of the next chapter, did have a history of mental illness so severe it delayed his ability to travel. And yet he was able to get a
British doctor to attest that he was of sound mind.
Despite the guarantees of the AJWS inevitably there were survivors in mental hospitals who would suffer from isolation, language problems, lack of spiritual support, strange meals and many frightening experiences. All this would be after probably suffering extreme persecution by the Nazis in addition to other extreme forms of antisemitism and bearing witness to terrible atrocities. Those survivors who experienced mental illness here in Sydney were most likely to have been initially referred by the
AJWS to its Honorary Medical Officers, usually general practitioners, who may have made a referral to a psychiatrist. Information provided by psychiatrists and other doctors including those who were later engaged to undertake assessments for restitution, contribute to an enhanced understanding of the lives of traumatised survivors.
18 John Morris Dushak, ‘How are Jews Settling in Australia,’ The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, June 15, 1939, 3.
120 Valent notes that survivors arriving in Australia put all their energy into creating new lives, careers and sometimes new families. In more recent decades it is straightforward to look back and affirm the nightmares, panic attacks and uncontrolled emotions were of a post- traumatic nature. However, he argues in those early years, survivors were adamant that they were not mentally ill as this might have been seen as disrespectful to those who perished.
They saw suffering as only to be expected and only physical symptoms should be treated, a fact reflected in high levels of presentations to doctors.19
As noted in the literature review there were rare articles published in the MJA by doctors with an interest in migrant health in the 1950s a time as the AJWS was faced with trying to manage these clients. In order to achieve the best possible support, AJWS officials worked in close consultation with its Honorary Medical Officers (HMOs).20
Einfeld endorsed the recommendation of Brand to contact doctors with a view to getting them to act as Honorary Medical Officers. The HMOs who were acknowledged in the minutes included Drs O. Schmalzbach, Z. Wexler, E. Schiller, Max Brenner, N.
Wheatley, G. Shelby and E. Fischer. 21As well as requiring access to medical advice, the
AJWS benefitted from the expertise of a number of social workers. The most significant of these who assisted those survivors was Dr Wolf Matsdorf, who was employed at the
AJWS for six years in the 1950s, the critical period when survivors arrived and were supported for up to five years.
19 Valent, ‘Holocaust Traumatology in Australia,’ 97. 20 ‘Honorary medical officer’ medical practitioner appointed under an honorary contract to provide services as a visiting practitioner for or on behalf of the organisation concerned, Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th ed., accessed January 9, 2018. https://medicaldictionary.thefreedictionary.com/honorary. 21 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, February 1953.
121 Wolfgang Matsdorf
Wolfgang Wolf Siegbert Matsdorf was born in Berlin Germany into a conservative orthodox family. He had almost completed his training in the law in 1933 when the Nazi
Civil Service Law was passed, excluding all Jews from civil service. He then became part of a small delegation seeking some funds which had been confiscated from Jewish businesses. This initiative was successful and subsequently he assisted Jews who had lost their jobs to prepare for immigration. Between 1933 and 1938 he lived in Frankfurt undertaking the same responsibilities for the large Jewish population there.22 He recounts in detail his experiences during these years in an Oral History interview conducted in
Israel in 1981, now available on YouTube.23
While this background sets the early chapters of his life in context, it is his remarkable decades in Australia that are of relevance for this thesis. Much of the information about his early years in Australia could only be obtained from the National
Archives. He arrived in Sydney on the Niagara on 4 June 1938.24 Initially, he worked as an AJWS migration officer during the latter part of 1938. He decided to become a poultry farmer at Greystanes, with support from the AJWS's Mutual Farms project, but was interned as an enemy alien in February 1942 as he was German, although in reality a stateless person.25 The National Archives indicates an appeal was lodged and he was released two months later,26 subsequently enlisting in the Australian Army at Mascot in
22 It was here that he met his wife Hilda who was running a parent’s home for the many older Jews who had arrived in Frankfurt from various regional areas. ,Hebrew University of Jerusalem ’,( ףלוו , דסטמ ו ףר ) Interview No. (175)21A2 – Matsdorf, Wolf‘ 23 Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Oral History Division, accessed September 15, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59LBt8KUEDU. 24 NAA, SP11/5. 25 NAA, MP1103/2, N1610. 26 NAA, MP1103/1, N1610.
122 April of that same year.27 By 1943 he was living in Wollstonecraft from where he applied for naturalisation under the Nationality Act in the same year.28 It was not possible to find out if Matsdorf continued poultry farming until 1952 or another occupation, but in November 1952 he was hired by the AJWS as employment officer.29
In 1954, Matsdorf re-joined the AJWS, so he may have trained to become a professional social worker in the intervening year. He was a great advocate of the
Sheltered Workshop as a way of providing older immigrants with employment and companionship and to foster their sense of dignity and self-worth.30 Hostels were also important in terms of guaranteeing accommodation and were a vital element of the refugee programme. Rutland explored the history of solution critical to the successful support of survivors for five years after their arrival, during which period they could not become a charge on the state.31
Over the years, Dr Matsdorf became a spokesman on the mental health of migrants. In 1963 he edited conference proceedings entitled ‘Migrant youth: Australian citizens of tomorrow’ held at the University of New South Wales.32 He argued that refugee services should be supplemented by voluntary agencies on a denominational basis as well as support from the Red Cross and Family Welfare Services. He observed that the Jewish citizen could use any service but might feel more at ease in discussing
27 NAA, B883, NX179475. 28 NAA, A7154/1520. 29 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, Wednesday November 12, 1952. 30 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 139. 31 Rutland and Encel, ‘Three “Rich Uncles in America”,’ 99–110. 32 Wolf Simon Matsdorf, ed., Migrant Youth: Australian Citizens of Tomorrow: Proceedings of a Seminar Organised by the Standing Committee for the Mental Health of Migrants, University of New South Wales (Syney: N.S.W. Association for Mental health, 1963).
123 problems in a Jewish social service agency tailored to meet personal and spiritual needs.
He emphasized that this was especially important in the mental health field where the influence of environmental factors was apparent and that there was also room for a
Jewish approach to mental health problems.33
He observed that Jewish patients often had specific additional symptoms like high anxiety and a heightened sense of persecution, less apparent in other groups, and he ascribed these symptoms to centuries of persecution, antisemitic attacks, migration and disruption of families. He claimed there were more cases of schizophrenia amongst Jews than in the general population. He argued it was important to consider the Jewish cultural and religious background of the patient, which was advanced thinking for a mental health worker in the 1950s. It was only several decades later, that a policy requirement was introduced for health services be culturally appropriate. Matsdorf also argued for specific Jewish nursing and aftercare services, provided by the Jewish community, to assist in providing rehabilitation without bias. Another of his important points was the need for prevention of social and emotional problems, as a vital aspect in working with the Jewish community after immigration. In fact, he was critical of Jewish
Sydney for the lack of adequate youth club activities and a lack of interest by Jewish students in becoming professional social workers. He especially referred to the absence of community organisers and case workers and was disappointed that only one full time and one part time professional social worker were employed in Jewish organisations
Australia wide. This was an unfavourable profile compared to the West European countries, England, the United States and Israel.34 This prophetic vision for a
33 Ibid. 34 Matsdorf, ‘The Australian Jewish Student Faces the Community,’ in Dr. Wolf Matsdorf Papers, Archive of Australian Judaica, Rare Books Section, University of Sydney, Wolf
124 comprehensive set of specially tailored services presented by Matsdorf would one day become a reality enshrined in the service that has become known as Jewish Care.
However, by the middle of the last century whilst knowledge had improved, there was still relatively little known about the causes of mental illness. The psychiatric community was attempting to treat patients in a variety of ways, but it is helpful in understanding the mental hospital environment in the 1950s in terms of the case studies discussed later in this chapter.
The archivist and historiographer Avraham Margaliot interviewed Matsdorf for the Oral History Archive after he had migrated to Israel. At this time, from after 1970 till his death, he wrote a regular column for the Australian Jewish News and will always be remembered for this chapter of his career. The B’nai B’rith World Centre, Jerusalem created an award for Journalism in the Diaspora in 1992. This award was named for
Matsdorf and his wife, Hilda who edited the Center’s Journal, Leadership Briefing, and he is remembered through the award as a journalist in Israel and Australia while Hilda is described as a pioneer in social work.
Public Attitudes to Mental Illness in the 1950s
During the 1950s, the AJWS’s most challenging clients were generally admitted to mental hospitals. In fact, Einfeld reported in February 1953, that he personally had taken in hand these cases with the assistance of Brand.35 In dealing with these most challenging of survivors who were badly affected by their traumatic Holocaust
Matsdorf Series Title: Correspondence – Container listing: WM SL23. https://judaica.library.sydney.edu.au 35 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, February 1953.
125 experiences and were unable to function normally in society, the AJWS would also have been challenged by the stigma and fear of mental illness at the time. In attempting to understand the context in which the AJWS was attending to these mentally ill Jewish survivors, it is important to understand how mental illness was viewed in the 1950s.
Shirley Star's study in the mid-1950s, which was based on 3,500 interviews each lasting five and half hours with a representative cross-section of Americans is of particular relevance in this regard. It was as far as is known the first such national study to take place. Star researched many different issues relating to mental illness, but the ones that are relevant for this thesis relate to the characteristics ascribed to those with mental illness by the general public. These include unpredictability, impulsiveness, loss of control, irrationality, violent behaviour and delusions. The other finding of interest was that interviewees tried to find reasons other than mental illness to explain the behaviours such people exhibited, as if seeking to find answers so that a person would not be classified as mentally ill. This latter finding suggested people who needed treatment might seek to avoid it due to a realistic fear of rejection and stereotyping.36
It is not unreasonable to extrapolate her findings and presume similar attitudes prevailed in Sydney in 1955. Reactions to mental illness were often fear, rejection and negative stereotypes. Inevitably, the associated stigma and rejection also contributed to increased social distance and isolation.37 It can possibly be presumed that the Sydney Jewish community held very similar attitudes and anxieties about people with mental illness, in addition to their concern that the large number of foreign Jews would increase antisemitism, so that some Anglo-Jews were not very welcoming the newcomers. It is in this environment
36 Shirley A. Star, ‘The Public’s Ideas of Mental Illness,’ paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American National Association for Mental Health, Indianapolis, IN, November 5, 1955. 37 Phelan et al., ‘Public Conceptions of Mental Illness in 1950 and 1996.’
126 that Einfeld, Brand and Matsdorf took on the responsibility of survivors with mental illness.
The very use of the title Problem Cases suggests the priority was to get them into work and lodging and reduce the financial burden they placed on the organisation. There is nothing in the minutes to suggest there were any documentation of the Holocaust experiences of these survivors. This was not a time of encouraging survivors to share their Holocaust narratives or to understand how those experiences had become internalised into the life narratives. Certain vulnerabilities and behaviours exhibited as a response to loss, isolation and illness were common to many survivors as is evident from their stories. Each story is considered through the lens of trauma using the PTSD symptom sets of avoidance, including detachment and partial amnesia, nightmares and intrusive persistent thoughts, and arousal, which includes angry outbursts, irritability and poor concentration.
Problem Cases38
The AJWS minutes and correspondence provided information about clients suffering from mental illness and behavioural problems. Some of the clients had quite detailed information included and in some cases additional information was sourced through the historical website Trove. Other cases are only briefly mentioned in the minutes. For example, there is a brief update about HC39 on his condition from Gladesville Mental
Hospital or a note that SO was still costing £1.10 a week for his stay in a mental hospital. Such details and information about clients would be the subject of privacy legislation today but during the 1950s the minutes described this group as ‘Problem
Cases’ and included their names. This unique archive is an important source of survivor stories and sheds light on the challenges they experienced in Sydney. It also illustrates
38 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, January, March and September 1955. 39 The full names are not used in this thesis, to preserve the privacy of the subjects.
127 how much these survivors relied upon the practical assistance, contacts and financial support provided by the AJWS to a level probably not achieved by any other organisation in Sydney then, or for decades after. It also shows that Einfeld in particular was very concerned about the significant financial burden this group was placing on the organisation and partly for this reason he decided to undertake personal responsibility for management of the issue.
The Board and staff did their best to help these clients find work and move into independent accommodation, rather than having protracted stays in the hostels. The officials worked in close consultation with its Honorary Medical Officers (HMOs).
There is no evidence in the cases discussed below as to whether they had pre-existing conditions or not. However, if they were incarcerated in mental hospitals, they would have been ineligible patients for five years after arrival. The AJWS would have been required to cover the costs of over a £1 a week per patient. It is very difficult to ascertain what particular mental health issues were experienced by the survivors as detailed in the minutes. It appears some were depressed, others suicidal and a further group struggled to adapt to the life in Sydney for a variety of behavioural reasons probably associated with the trauma they had experienced in Europe. These stories offer a transient glimpse into these lives when their behaviour became a concern and testament to social isolation, desperation, grief and loss endured.
The risk of self-harm or the potential to hurt others was and still is today, a key factor in deciding if a patient needs to be admitted to an inpatient facility. Some people experience an acute mental illness with significant distressing symptoms requiring immediate treatment following a sudden swift onset. This may be the person's first experience of mental illness, a new episode or the exacerbation of continuing mental illness. Those patients with continuing mental illness have a chronic condition for which
128 there were limited therapeutic treatment options. The more acute cases are discussed first to provide a sense of the suffering and disruption for those experiencing trauma after the
Holocaust and the ways in which the AJWS supported these people. These cases are perhaps best described as a reactive response to the circumstances of their lives.
Crisis Management
FF
F and her husband had arrived in 1938 before the war.40 The records indicate her husband had been sent to Allied Works Council (AWC) in Alice Springs. 41 FF became aware that her husband was experiencing unpleasant treatment at the AWC and she had attempted to commit suicide by gassing herself in 1943 Relatively little is documented in the minutes about this case. The AJWS reported that she had been detained at the mental hospital then called the Reception House at St. Vincent’s Darlinghurst42 where she was recovering quite well. The file at AJWS is really limited to this information.
However, her husband had successfully sought an injunction against the AWC.
The Equity Court determined that the alien refugee could successfully restrain the AWC from employing him and he secured his return to Sydney where he was working as a first
-class fitter in a protected undertaking. Declaring that the case of HF was urgent and
40 ‘Certificates of Naturalisation,’ Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, November 2, 1944, 2457. 41 This Council was created in 1942 to undertake responsibility for carrying out war purpose works by the Allied Forces in Australia.
42 The Lunacy Amendment Act provided for capacity to remand prisoners of temporary or doubtful mental aberration to the Reception House instead of Darlinghurst Goal, and gave discretion for the Colonial Secretary to dispose of such prisoners to a Hospital for the Insane. See ‘A History of Medical Administration in NSW,’ Public Health Administration: Chief Medical Officer – Director General of Public Health, NSW Government, 110, accessed June 12, 2020. https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/about/history/Publications/h-mental.pdf.
129 involved his liberty, the Judge actually ruled that refugee aliens subject to protected undertakings were also protected from call up.43 An affidavit from his wife indicated they had fled Germany in 1938 to escape racial persecution. One of the lawyers who represented F was Abram Landa, a prominent New South Wales Jewish MP.44 It seems that the separation from her husband and his poor treatment in Alice Springs when combined with their flight from Germany, was a succession of stressors resulting in a desperate attempt to escape the life she was now living. Nothing more was reported about this family in subsequent papers suggesting this was an acute response to a distressing experience endured after fleeing Nazism. A woman isolated from her husband in Sydney after escaping Europe, experienced once again the feelings of anxiety and fear and must have been quite desperate. It is possible that she was subsequently charged with attempting to commit suicide as this offence was only removed from the
Australian legal statutes in 1967.
The other cases discussed here occurred in the mid-1950s when survivors had arrived in their thousands and a few struggled with mental illness and behavioural issues which affected their adjustment to life in Sydney or definitely did not wish to stay.
SS
Passenger arrivals confirm S arrived on the SS Oceania on 2 March 1953. This young lady was noted to be an Austrian refugee who attempted suicide by throwing herself off the Gap at Watsons Bay. The AJWS instructed a Mr Rosenblum to look after the client who was also detained at the Reception House, Darlinghurst. Dr Friedlander examined her as requested by the AJWS and recommended that she be transferred to Gladesville
43 ‘Alien Granted Injunction,’ Barrier Daily Truth, March 9, 1943, 4. 44 ‘Alien Seeks Injunction,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, March 4, 1943, 8.
130 Hospital to receive shock treatment which was generally recommended in cases of depression. It was noted that the hospital carried out this recommendation. It is possible that she received this treatment with the benefit of sedation as this episode occurred in
1955. It is likely that this survivor was also charged with attempting to commit suicide.
However, there was no follow-up in the minutes in terms of what happened to her after hospitalisation. Her case again shows how the extreme experiences of survivors contributed to a sense of hopelessness, alienation and social isolation.
CR
This lady arrived alone on the Orion on 2nd July 1953.45 She was identified as a problem case and the AJWS made the decision to accede to her wishes and booked her passage to
Israel at a cost of £229 which would have been a significant sum of money to commit.
CR is one of that small minority who chose to leave Australia, her trip funded by the
AJWS, testament to the fact that they financially supported even those who wished to leave. She appears to have had no family member to travel with to Sydney and would have travelled to Israel alone. This case about which so little is known highlights the great personal isolation experienced by many survivors. Nonetheless she knew her future was to be in Israel.
AA
Dr Matsdorf reported that this client had received weekend leave on three occasions from Callan Park Hospital and had been accommodated at Waverley Hospital during the periods of leave. It was advised that the Medical Superintendent of Callan Park was prepared to offer an indefinite leave, provided employment could be found for him.
45 NAA, Contents 1952–1953. Series Number K269. Polish Alien 8/53.
131 Matsdorf discussed the client with a Mr S. who was willing to employ him after Easter, provided accommodation could be offered at Waverley Hospital, which apparently provided this service to some of the new arrivals. The story of A confirms that after a time of incarceration and treatment, followed by leave in the community, the AJWS plan was to provide accommodation and employment and support towards achieving integration into the community. AA was supported by the AJWS, principally in terms of providing practical assistance and using contacts to identify employment. There is nothing in the files that suggests what symptoms AA had experienced to merit further hospitalisation and no information which suggests his mental illness recurred. The impression is that he was here in this country alone and completely reliant on the AJWS contacts and referral system in order to adjust to life in an alien land.
Long Term Cases
This next group of cases reflect ongoing concerns over longer periods of time, especially those who were causing problems but were not sufficiently mentally unwell to merit admission for treatment at the time their issues were raised in the minutes. The financial impact of these clients on the AJWS was considerable as they may have required extended periods in hospital and when in the community, would have needed to be accommodated and financially supported as their work records were either intermittent or non-existent, possibly due to some of the PTSD symptoms like arousal, anger, poor concentration and detachment.
Jacob Bresler
This case has quite a lot of information because of the publicity associated with his story which is quite remarkable. Indications of his difficulties were first reported on page 3 of
132 the Sydney Morning Herald in July 1956 with an article headlined the ‘Silent Stowaway
Now Free.’ The Sun said that the silent stowaway on the migrant ship Surriento, had been detained on board the ship since April 1956. It was stated in the newspaper that even under interrogation, Bresler was described as refusing to speak despite being encouraged.46 Whilst it is not stated in these articles, the mutism or silence he displayed may well have been due to the extreme trauma he had endured over many years.
Apparently, when the Surriento reached Sydney after sailing from Genoa, Bresler could not tell immigration officers who he was, and no country would allow him to land.
However, just before the ship sailed from Sydney to Brisbane a Polish immigrant, David
Solomon, identified him as a childhood friend. Solomon said Bresler spent many years in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany. The ship sailed to Brisbane where immigration officers confirmed his identity and allowed him to leave the ship. It was revealed that he was 26-year old Polish migrant, Jacob Bresler, and he had arrived in
Australia in 1951, working in Melbourne until April 1956. Somehow, he boarded the
Surriento in 1956, was discovered and locked up in a small, barred cabin while the ship sailed to Genoa and back to Sydney.
It transpired that five years earlier in 1951, the AJWS had sponsored him to come to Sydney from Europe. Somehow, he arrived in Melbourne where he lived for five years. He was flown back to Sydney and met by Matsdorf at Mascot, to become the subject of considerable publicity.47 Bresler was a concern to the AJWS from the outset.
It appears from the records he had previously been in a mental hospital and released.
Extensive discussions with various doctors ensued. Dr Brenner noted that Bresler was an
46 ‘Stowaway Pole Identified by Migrants,’ Canberra Times, July 7, 1956, 3.
47 ‘Silent stowaway free now,’ The Argus, July 9, 1956, 6.
133 enormous responsibility for the AJWS and a real risk in terms of his mental illness with a high probability of further recurrences. The AJWS sought the advice of a psychiatrist of standing in the community, one Dr John McGeorge.48 The decision was made not to commit him at that point as he showed some improvement following his discharge from hospital and he was to stay in the home of Rabbi Osher Abramson and expected to find a job at a knitting mill. President Einfeld noted the AJWS had already incurred great expense to provide treatment, but that little improvement had been noted. He hoped now that he was living with people he had known in Poland, there was a prospect of recovery.
In 1956 the Walkley Award, introduced in that year for excellence in print journalism, went to Eva Sommer a young cadet journalist from the Sydney Sun for one of the five categories of the award. These awards represent the pinnacle of achievement for any Australian journalist.49 Sommers investigated a boat person with no identification and no functional memory, that is Jacob Bresler. She wrote, ‘If nothing is done to treat the man he may be doomed to sail between Italy and Australia for the rest of his life.’
The Walkley website states that Bresler eventually recovered his memory and lived the rest of his life in his adopted home.50 Bresler died in July 1985 at the age of 60 years at his home address 41 Bennett Street Bondi. His surname is recorded as Breslau. His cause of death was myocardial infarction, his parents were unknown, he was born in Poland and he lived in Australia for 35 years working as a process worker. He never married and was buried at the Jewish section of Rookwood Cemetery.
48 Garton, ‘McGeorge, John Alexander Hughes (1898–1979).’ 49 The Walkleys were initiated by Sir William Gaston Walkley in 1956 with five categories recognising excellence in print journalism. See ‘The Walkey Awards for Excellence in Journalism,’ The Walkley Foundation, accessed June 12, 2016, https://www.walkeys.com/awards/walkeys. 50 Eva Sommer, ‘The Mystery Stowaway,’ The Sun Sydney. The Walkley Award for best piece of newspaper reporting, 1956.
134 Bresler arrived in this country as a disturbed and traumatised survivor with no family after years in Buchenwald concentration camp. He suffered mutism and based on the medical assessments, was a real risk of self-harm or some other form of aggression.
In spite of this most extreme experience, with the support of the AJWS it is possible to conclude that he somehow fashioned a life in Sydney and contributed to his new country.
It is a story lost over the decades. Again, the AJWS was a central support for this client and Matsdorf figured prominently during the early period of his arrival.
SF
S arrived as a stateless twenty three-year old in Australia in 1953. During June 1953, Dr
Brennan noted that he had requested repatriation and recommended that his request should be refused.51 He had been in a mental hospital, unnamed, but was discharged in
August 1953 and arrived at the AJWS offices with a suitcase and said if they did not find him a job, he would wreck the premises. He was persuaded to leave but left the suitcase and came back the next morning. A referral letter was typed for him to take to Brennan, but he tore it up and started shouting and abusing staff and upturned a desk. Police were called and he quietened down. Brennan agreed to take him on as a patient.
The doctor felt he could undertake light work, but S said his only desire was to return to France. He believed that he could receive a visa to settle back in Paris. S had not worked for months since his mental hospital discharge in August 1953. The notes indicate he always threatened that next time he would do something that would result in ending up in prison. Hence, the AJWS considered whether it would be cheaper to return him to France than to continue supporting him. He was assessed as mentally unbalanced but not certifiable. He was not unwell enough to be readmitted to hospital and continued
51 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, June 1953.
135 demanding to be returned to Paris. The AJWS continued to pay him £5 a week and during this period, he was being treated as an outpatient at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Ultimately the AJWS paid for his return to France by boat in 1957 and resolved to give him £30 to £40 so that he would not immediately become a burden on the
American Joint.52 They resolved to provide the Joint with a full case history. By the meeting in October 1957, after all arrangements were finalised, S told the AJWS he wanted nothing to do with them and his steamer berth was cancelled.53 The records do not record any further issues relating to this client. He appears to have been very unhappy to remain in Sydney. It is not possible to understand his diagnosis given the level of information. He was supported by a range of services including medical, social and financial. He became an ongoing financial burden subsequent to his hospital discharge and was struggling to adjust to his new country and the pressures of integration. His hostility, aggression and inability to adjust are all signs of his traumatic past.
SL
A survivor from Romania, S arrived on the Ex-Children's Scheme without family on the
SS Derna on 23 October 1948.54 From March 1952, he had been mentally ill, attempted suicide and was eventually placed in the mental hospital Broughton Hall Rozelle by Dr
Wexler. Subsequent to his release several weeks later he was placed at the Komlos
Hostel. Light work was organised, but he was unable to complete his duties. It was noted
52 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, August 1957. 53 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, October 1957. 54 NAA, SP908/1.
136 that he remained on relief totalling some £57 to date during 1955.55 Nothing more is known about him, but it would seem he was alone in Sydney, a young person with problems of adjustment and difficulty in completing even simple tasks.
MG (#1)
This Polish refugee arrived in Australia in April 1952, aged forty-four and exhibiting a range of challenging behavioural problems. Dr Brennan reported in early 1953 that he was one of the few serious cases who was unemployable and would be an ongoing responsibility.56 The AJWS had been able to get him several cleaning jobs but the various employers refused to take him back. At the time of the committee meeting he had cost the AJWS £98 and appeared to be unemployable. He had begun ‘associating’ with SF and together it was reported they started using the same threats in their dealings with the AJWS.57 In all like likelihood these two men developed a friendship as both appear to have arrived alone in Australia and would have been socially isolated and rejected in their new country. Nothing more is known of his fate.
MG (#2)
M was born in Romania and was sponsored by the Children’s Scheme. He arrived on the
Continental on the 27 February 1949.58 Brand reported the young man was calling regularly for funds, and his condition has continued to worsen. Einfeld expressed concern as to whether such a young man should be receiving an ongoing weekly allowance. Dr Brenner stated that currently wonderful results were being achieved in
55 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, August 1955. 56 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, February 1953. 57 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, September 1953. 58 NAA, SP1121/1.
137 government institutions for such cases. Whilst the treatment is not mentioned it was likely electric shock therapy used for depression. M was described as unemployable and would not even attend the sheltered workshop.59 By 1958, M was an inpatient at
Gladesville Hospital. As he had no-one to care for him the AJWS agreed to support him for release on licence and the President found him employment.60 During 1960 Dr
Brenner was suggesting he be referred to two specialists to consider a leukotomy, a brain surgery procedure used at the time to treat mental illness. Later in that same year M had started work in the sheltered workshop and was noted to be the best he had been for years, presumably without the leukotomy.61 The key themes with this story is that he was a vulnerable young man alone in Australia and suffering from depression for several years. It appears that after having been incapable of working he was finally able to overcome some of his symptoms and make an adjustment, which would have been good news for the AJWS due to the costs he incurred.
It should be re-emphasised that these short paragraphs merely offer glimpses into the lives of these survivors. By using their HMOs, the Jewish community and their various connections, the AJWS did their best to manage survivors in a time when trauma and mental illness were barely understood and it would seem, not documented. The
AJWS kept detailed costings for each client and became greatly concerned when clients could not earn a living and reduce the financial burden on the organisation. Each of these clients who was admitted to a mental hospital would have a file which is not publicly accessible. It is also quite unclear when nothing further is known about several of the
59 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, July 1957. 60 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, June 1958. 61 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, April 1960.
138 cases where the interaction with AJWS was relatively brief or truncated, whether they committed suicide, left the country or recovered to a level of independence.
Conclusion
Matsdorf resigned as the Society's social worker in September 1959 to pursue a new role and62 by February the following year, so few clients were calling at the office that the
AJWS decided it no longer needed a social worker. This was a reflection of its successful management of those cases that had presented the greatest challenge. In April
1960, it was decided that when the Medical Superintendents of the mental hospitals agreed a patient had improved sufficiently, the AJWS would accept them back into the community on licence.
For some, after years of experiencing Nazism, an additional stressful event here in Australia precipitated an acute response. For others, their mental illness was so severe that it required lengthy hospital admissions and long-term management. As this chapter reveals, a story of survivors arriving in Australia with extreme trauma is also the story of mental illness in the 1950s. As is the case with other periods in history, the community found mental illness to be difficult to accept as a diagnosis and it created a sense of fear and an atmosphere of rejection. This chapter shows that the media were agitating for changes to mental hospitals from the 1940s. By 1960 the Commonwealth government had commissioned a report into migrants in mental hospitals and this showed that a significant number were admitted within two years of arrival in Australia. The focus on mental hospitals contributed to a view by the media that Australian mental health
62 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, September 1959.
139 services were in crisis. In reality only a very small percentage of Jewish migrants required hospitalisation but often the period of admission might be lengthy and costly due to the limited treatment options available and the severity of each case. While only a very small group appear to have required specialist support for mental illness for up to five years after arrival this did mean significant reliance on the AJWS. Support and funding were provided to each of them in the years when government provided none and before the allocation of individual restitution by Germany for Holocaust survivors.
Matsdorf observed that Jewish patients had usually endured persecution, the
Holocaust and forced migration. Australian psychiatrists Hocking and Bower saw distressed, angry, paranoid and hostile behaviour in the survivors they treated. These behaviours, when combined with social isolation and adjustment difficulties in Australia, created substantial problems for some of the new arrivals. The case studies described in this chapter illustrate some of these observations and offer an insight into the mental health challenges and symptoms of PTSD faced by these survivors.
Perhaps it is remarkable that of so many thousands of arrivals, so few needed the help of the AJWS and its HMOs. Those who experienced serious impairment due to mental illness eventually received some compensation from Germany in 1988. Thus, those suffering from mental illness who survived more than three decades after
Liberation finally received some funding to acknowledge the severe impairment they experienced due to Holocaust trauma.63 The next chapter is the more detailed case study of Dr Hans Kimmel, for whom a range of excellent archival information is available, including his own narration of his life as detailed in his memoir. His story, just like the
63 Fishman, ‘Compensation for Mental Illness Resulting from Holocaust Trauma,’ 718.
140 ones detailed in this chapter, narrates experience of antisemitism, social isolation and severe depression with multiple admissions to mental care facilities.
141 Chapter 5. DR HANS KIMMEL: THE CASE STUDY
The story of Dr Hans Kimmel is a graphic illustration of a survivor who suffered from mental illness, either caused or exacerbated by antisemitism, Nazism, displacement and emigration. Whilst it is not possible to write openly about most of the cases of mental illness because of privacy issues, the situation with Kimmel was different because his diary is publicly available and other archival sources are accessible. His story shines a light on antisemitism in Europe at the end of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth century, the rise of Nazism and the challenges for those with mental illness and their families. It is also important because of Kimmel's contributions to the development of
Sydney Jewry, revealing that despite mental illness, he was able to contribute to the community.
This chapter includes a detailed background section of Kimmel's early life. This establishes the contextual setting for his mental illness and shaping narrative response or microhistory to the thesis statement. A number of his quotes are used to share an appreciation of the times and his astute observations. The chapter then continues with the impact of the Anschluss of Austria, his migration to and experiences in Sydney and his eventual departure to join his daughter in London.
Monasterzyska the Early Years
Kimmel was born in Monasterzyska, Galicia around 1890. The town was under Austrian rule from 1772 until 1918 and was known to have had a Jewish population since 1625.1
1 Omer Bartov, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 142.
142 Today Monasterzyska has a population of less than 7,000 and prior to the war some
1,306 Jews lived there. Kimmel says that in 1890 the Jewish community constituted some 2,450 members, or 56 per cent of the town’s population.2 There were four synagogues and a primary school funded by the Baron de Hirsch Fund. Moritz von
Hirsch or Maurice de Hirsch was a German Jewish financier and philanthropist who set up charitable foundations to promote Jewish education and he gave £500,000 for the establishment of primary and technical schools in Galicia and Bukowina.3 His parents were named Hermann and Sarah née Gruberg.4 He was one of seven children and attended the cheder5 and primary schools of the Baron Hirsch Foundation. The main employment in town was a tobacco factory and a toy factory.6
Bartov notes that by 1914, some 2,000 or 50 per cent of Monasterzyska was
Jewish. The town was invaded twice by the Russians during World War I and the Jewish population was attacked, raped and murdered by Ukrainian nationalists. By the 1920s the population of the town had halved. The Germans occupied Monasterzyska in July 1941, murdering Jews or removing them to locations such as a mass killing site in Buchach or the Belzec camp.7 The town was declared Judenrein by November 1942 and only 20
Jewish residents survived mostly by escaping to the Soviet Union.8 Little is available on record about the struggles of families like the Kimmels and a monument in Hebrew is all
2 Hans Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen: Reminiscences 1895–1948,’ unpublished memoir, Leo Baeck Institute (1998), ME 1063. MM II28, 4. 3 Cyrus Adler and Milton Reizenstein, ‘Hirsch Fund Baron de,’ JewishEncyclopedia.com: The Unedited Full-Text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed October 14, 2018, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7731-hirsch-fund-baron-de. 4 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, ‘Dr Hans Kimmel – admission,’ 32. 5 School for Jewish children in which Hebrew and religious knowledge are taught. 6 Bartov, Erased, 143. 7 Ibid., xvi. 8 Ibid., 142–45.
143 that remains in their town of Monasterzyska. Historian Bartov observes that in the
Ukraine ‘this was no distant, neatly organised, bloodless bureaucratic undertaking, but a vast wave of brutal, intimate and endlessly bloody massacres.’ Further, he observes that the history of Jewish residents and these events are not remembered or commemorated.
His research indicates that in the Ukraine history has been discarded and reshaped to support the Ukrainian national identity and those who stole the land of Jewish citizens.9
In 1899, when free meals ceased at the Monasterzyska cheder school, Kimmel's parents both aged 43 years, decided to move to Vienna with their three adult daughters and three children under eleven years in search of a better life for the family. The cost of the third-class rail journey was funded by the eldest son, Benjamin aged twenty-one years old, who was working at an egg import firm in Dortmund, Westphalia.10 The impending emigration to Vienna assumed high expectations.11
Life in Vienna
A large-scale immigration of Jewish families into Vienna occurred in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Most of those arriving from Hungary, Bohemia and Moravia took advantage of becoming part of a large city. However, Galicians like the Kimmels, as well as Russians and Polish Jews, were fleeing persecution and deprivation.12
9 Ibid., xvii. 10 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 1-2. 11 Ibid., 3. 12 George E. Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success 1880s–1980s (Cambridge: Abt Books, 1988), 47.
144 The family settled in the second district called Leopoldstadt, centre of Jewish activity, socialisation and business.13 Kimmel was enrolled at the Jewish Talmud Torah14 day school in the fifth grade. The Kimmels struggled to make a living in Vienna by running a business selling butter, cheese and live fowls. However, the two older sisters were able to obtain jobs which at least paid the rent on the Kimmel’s house at 2 Kleine
Pfarrgasse. Kimmel found it difficult to make friends, and enjoy time with classmates, due in his opinion to the fact that he could not speak the Viennese-German dialect. He noted that his sisters felt uncomfortable in the company of their co-workers who were mostly non-Jews. His parents were in a business in which they had no experience and were uncompetitive and relied upon the earnings of his older sisters until summer.15
Summer in Vienna proved to be a positive period for Kimmel who was receiving good marks and proving to be a good student. He did envy the other students who had better clothes and food, were taken out by their parents and he also enjoyed no real contact with non- Jewish students. For the first time in his life he became aware of the different social classes in a city such as Vienna.16 In July 1899 his father took Kimmel to undertake an examination for admission to the Sophien Gymnasium, the oldest secondary school in Vienna founded in 1553. He was accepted to this highly regarded secondary grammar school despite his limited German.17 Kimmel noted that this success should have lifted his spirits, but summer brought even more sadness for the family.
13 Ibid., 43. 14 Jewish school for boys of modest backgrounds, offering an elementary education in Hebrew, Scriptures and Talmud. 15 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 6. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid.
145 The second district where the Kimmels lived was overcrowded and the risk of transmission of infection was high. His youngest ‘nice and clever one-year old sister developed whooping cough’ which was raging in the community. The Health Inspector ordered an admission to the Children’s Hospital where she died a few days later. Kimmel was always pleased he had the chance to kiss his much-loved sister at home in her cot before her death in hospital. Then his beautiful third oldest sister aged twenty, developed tuberculosis and died in hospital. Yet another sister, who was four years old, developed diphtheria but was treated in time and survived. He always recalled how deeply stricken his mother was after the double tragedy of losing two of her children.18
Much discussion ensued in the Kimmel household about whether they should return to Galicia. His sisters wished to stay in Vienna, but his mother wanted to go home. Given the two deaths and an inability to make a living the family decided to return to Galicia. However, Kimmel’s father recognised that his son was talented and wanted him to continue his studies in Vienna, so he was placed into the care of the academic painter David Kohn. Kohn had been appointed as the Kaiserlich und
Königlicher Hofmaler, Imperial and Royal Artist to the Hapsburg Court. Like other successful Jewish Viennese residents, Kohn was a generous benefactor, founding a home for children orphaned by pogroms in Eastern Europe and financially supporting the city’s Talmud Torah School. He organised for Kimmel to attend this school and to board with an elderly widow in the Taborstrasse.19
At the age of eleven years, living without his family and after the loss of two much loved sisters, Kimmel described himself as ‘beginning a very sad period where I
18 Ibid., 6–7. 19 Ibid., 7–8.
146 took refuge in my studies.’ He focussed his energy on learning German and pursuing his studies at the Talmud Torah. Kimmel achieved such good marks that he earned a scholarship to continue attending the Sophien Gymnasium and though he tried to make friends among his Jewish colleagues, he was unsuccessful. Hence Kimmel was not only isolated from his family but also isolated among his peer group in Vienna. As an excellent student he was able to earn money by tutoring other students. In the evenings he enrolled in the Talmud school conducted by Lector M. Friedman.20
Kimmel wrote if he had been asked, what was his guiding star during the years at the Viennese Gymnasium, he would have said assimilation into the world of educated and enlightened Germans while remaining committed to be an Eastern-Jew with a special interest in all Yiddish public affairs.21 This included following the sensational
Dreyfus process. Such events generated greater Jewish solidarity and introduced Kimmel to concepts of Zionism and the pursuit of truth by the writer Emile Zola who challenged the enemies of Dreyfus.22 Kimmel described the spread of Zionism into Jewish households and schools. Within his school a ‘cell was established and supervised by serious and well-educated young men.’ Ideals of Zionism were reinforced by the painter
Kohn who ensured young Kimmel did not become estranged from his Jewish heritage and religion.23 This was important as the early twentieth century was marked by the antipathy of the Catholic population towards the Jewish residents of Vienna.24
20 Ibid., 8–9. 21 Ibid..10. 22 Zola was a highly regarded French writer nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, and author of J’Accuse! which defended the falsely accused and convicted Alfred Dreyfus. 23 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 8–11. 24 Ibid., 13.
147 At this time a Lueger brand of violent antisemitism 25 emerged in public places, highlighting the antipathy of the Christians towards the Jews. The school Kimmel attended was located in Taborstrasse, often the centre of antisemitic demonstrations.
They could not understand the hostility as Jews were worse off than most other residents in the city of Vienna. Karl Lueger himself was a moderate Christian Socialist, but there existed an explicitly racial antisemitic wing of his Christian Socialist Party founded on the German Nationalist movement. The party’s antisemitic platform was regarded as a key element of its electoral success. Lueger was an opportunistic sophisticated Viennese politician who dealt effectively with the Jewish elite and businessmen of the city but also condoned antisemitic slander. He was an expert at manipulating professional envy and fear of Jewish competition.26 His promotion of antisemitic and anti-intellectual rhetoric against the poorer Jewish citizens of Vienna was reflected in the violent demonstrations in the streets.27 Kimmel’s description of the scenes he witnessed on the Taborstrasse raised fundamental questions about being a Jewish citizen in Vienna.
Probably in response to the anti-Jewish rhetoric and demonstrations erupting in
Vienna and across Europe and the reactions of other Viennese Jews, Kimmel developed an interest in politics and the ideals of social democracy. He joined the Social Democrats
Party founded by Dr Victor Adler, for whom he developed a great admiration. Adler had studied medicine at the University of Vienna, becoming a moderate charismatic social democrat, who successfully united the Austrian labour movement and contributed to
Viennese cultural life. Kimmel attended meetings at which Adler spoke in a ‘quiet
25 Ibid. 26 Robert S. Wistrich, The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 235–36. 27 Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867–1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 195–96.
148 dignified academic manner, presenting himself to the audience as a scholar and a sage.’28
As a member of the Imperial Council parliament from 1905, his policies were founded on the values of reason, justice and nonviolent opposition to capitalism. Adler dedicated himself to humanistic goals, while Lueger utilised demagoguery and opportunism. This stark contrast was visible to all on the streets and in the cafes of Vienna.29
At this stage in his life Kimmel became committed to the principles of social democracy, inclusion and justice. At school he benefited greatly from a number of outstanding teachers, gaining an appreciation for German literature and a growing interest in classical humanism. He completed exams for the leaving certificate and performed very well, matriculating to the University of Vienna. Although he could have selected any course of study including medicine, religion or philosophy, he chose the faculty of law. He rejected the possibility of studying medicine due to what he described as having ‘an allergy to the pains of other people.’30 This was understandable given that the experience of separation from family and tragic losses experienced as a child could create long-term issues for Kimmel. Little research has been undertaken on this subject, but one study showed that social support was a key link between attachment and well- being. The findings showed the experience of separation from family can be associated with long-term psychological vulnerability as a result of insecure attachment.31 Whilst direct conclusions cannot be drawn from such limited study it is reasonable to suggest
28 Ibid., 37. 29 Allan Janik and Stephen Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1973), 52–53. 30 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 17. 31 D. Foster, S. Davies & H. Steele, ‘The Evacuation of British Children During World War II: A Preliminary Investigation into the Long-Term Psychological Effects,’ Ageing & Mental Health 7, no. 5 (2003): 398–408.
149 that being isolated from his family at a young age made Kimmel vulnerable to psychological damage appearing as depression in adolescence.
The Kimmel Family Returns to Galicia
Life in Galicia continued to be very difficult for many Jewish residents including the
Kimmels. Kimmel himself noted that during 1904, a major fire destroyed almost half of the town of Monasterzyska, including most of the Jewish quarters leaving families without homes. He sent to his family a few spare guilders earned from tutoring in Vienna to help alleviate their terrible circumstances. At the same time, the marriage of his eldest sister was dissolved, and a condition was the return of her dowry of several hundred guilders, enabling the family to purchase a home.32
Kimmel visited his hometown and family during his mid-teens but described himself as suffering from depression throughout this period. This was the first occasion in which he recorded evidence of suffering from a mental illness. During the visit he noticed that many of the people he knew had emigrated out of Galicia. Every family had at least one member who had emigrated and every farthing was saved to fund the journeys due to the desolate situation in Galicia. Chosen destinations were Vienna,
Germany and the United States.33 In time it became known that letters arriving on
Saturdays often contained dollar notes from America. The postman, a Mr Strzelbicki became aware of this, opened letters and stole the dollars belonging to addressees. This was discovered, the thief was charged, imprisoned and lost his job as town postman.34
32 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 21. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., 20–22.
150 On this visit Kimmel estimated that more than half the population of the town was Jewish and the remaining inhabitants were Poles and Ruthenians.35 He noted relationships between the groups were very poor, a situation which had worsened in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when a monetary economy replaced the long standing feudal system. Jews had developed roles as moneylenders, tavern keepers and estate owners in the Ruthenian villages. Ruthenian-Ukrainian newspapers began portraying the Jews as exploiters of the peasantry, trying to undermine Ruthenian culture and tricking them into tobacco and alcohol addiction. The starkest symbol of these allegations from both Polish and Ukrainian nationalists, was apparent in the role of Jews as tavern keepers.36 However, the facts did not support these allegations in the Ruthenian media as it is estimated in 1902, only 15,000 out of close to a million Jews owned property in Galicia.37 Kimmel saw Poles engaged in actions designed to exclude Jews merchants from economic life effectively creating poverty, suffering and compulsory migration for the Jewish community.38 In writing about his hometown, Kimmel cites two texts which are Rabbi J. S. Bloch’s memoirs published by R. Loewit in 1922 and
Professor Ismer Elbogen’s A Century of Jewish Life.
More broadly throughout Eastern Europe, migration had begun about 1880 as
Jews travelled to America seeking a better life where their descendants would be protected from discrimination. Between 1881 and 1914 more than 350,000 Jews emigrated from Austrian Galicia mostly to the United States.39
35 Ancestors of modern East Slavic people. 36 Omer Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 20–21. 37 Ibid., 22. 38 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 46. 39 Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper & Rowe, 1987), 356.
151
The University of Vienna
The next phase of Kimmel’s life was studying at the University of Vienna where many of his professors were Jewish, and his days were occupied with lectures in the history of
German law and Austrian empire. In the evenings he met with fellow Jewish students from Vienna, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia in cafés like Café Boerse in Boersegasse, described as a meeting place for the Jewish-nations Association. Cafes and salons had become the venues for the liberal cultural life of Vienna and the customers were often
Jewish. Cafe Griensteidl was the popular choice for young literary Viennese. Based on descriptions by contemporaries, the most significant contributors to Viennese cultural life in the early twentieth century, were Jewish and Kimmel was attracted to the cultural social life of the cafe.40 He tried to connect with students from Galicia including newspaper editors and journalists and the Association Bar Kochba41 Here his interest in journalism began by actively reading the two Jewish weeklies, the Jewish Journal and the Dr Bloch’s Austrian Weekly. He also attended performances at the Hofburgtheater where he heard stars such as Enrico Caruso.42 This was an enjoyable time in his life as he studied criminal law and court processes, engaged in politics and experienced cultural activities.
40 Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 40–41. 41 Bar Kochba Association was an organization of Jewish university students in Prague. It was founded in 1893 by students of the Prague German University and subsequently became a focal point of Zionist intellectual activities in other parts of Europe. Jehuda Reinharz, ‘Three Generations of German Zionism,’ The Jerusalem Quarterly 9 (1978): 95–110. 42 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 21–26.
152 However, during 1909 documented he returned to Monasterzyska and described himself as being in a bad psychological state. His doctor advised he take a break from his studies for a four-week period, spending those weeks with his mother supporting him at Dorna Watra Bukowina.43 He was given a cold-water treatment under medical care for an acute depressive illness in his late teens. He duly returned to Vienna, finished his degree, graduated and completed the requirements towards a degree as a court practitioner and court recorder in the Civil and High Courts of Vienna. At this time, he lived in Josefstadt, the eighth district of Vienna. The name Josefstadt inspired his use of a pen name "Dr Joseph Staedter" as a columnist of the Sydney Jewish News after World
War Two.44 His first job was a concipient45 in commerce in Westbahnin,
Mariahilferstrasse and then undertook a role in criminal law for several months.
The Impact of World War I
The outbreak of World War I meant his family had to leave their home in Galician
Monasterzyska. They escaped the Russian invasion, which severely damaged the town and returned to Vienna. Little is known about their lives after arriving in Vienna.
43 Before the outbreak of World War One, the spa experienced its greatest success with Jewish doctors using the mineral baths as a restorative treatment. In 1941, out of 8217 inhabitants, 2029 were Jewish. In 1942, after the deportation of the Jewish population to Transnistria ordered by Germany and carried out by Antonescu, there were only 21 Jews left. Today the city is a spa and ski resort, one of the oldest resorts in Romania. Hermann Sternberg, Ed. Dr Hugo Gold, ‘Dorna- Watra,’ in Geschichte der Juden in der Bukowina [History of the Jews in the Bukovina], vol. 2, ed. Hugo Gold (Tel Aviv: Olamenu, 1962), 84. 44 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 27. 45 One who possesses an idea or concept.
153 Kimmel reported that one sister did relocate to Berlin. No record of the Kimmels can be found in the Yizkor Memorial Book.46
Over 300,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Austro-Hungarian army and of those,
25,000 were reserve officers. It has been noted that they were less exposed to antisemitism when compared with other armies. Nonetheless they were not permitted to rise to the highest ranks of the army, although they served in the officer corps and the reserve.47 Kimmel was required to present for military duties in 1915 and 1916 but was declared unfit for active duty. He did not expand in his memoirs as to the health reason for this assessment. In 1917 his examination was postponed indefinitely and then the war ended. He became ill during
May of that year, suffering from ‘a state of exhaustion’ with symptoms which made him
‘incapacitated for professional duty with debility in body and mind.’ His older brother provided funding in order for him to be taken initially to the nerve clinic or asylum of the
Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna. He then spent several months at the Sanatorium of Dr
Weiss in Frohnleiten Germany with no improvement noted. After a second admission to this clinic he was judged sufficiently improved to resume his duties in the legal profession.48
However, instead of returning to the law he started publishing a weekly Jewish newspaper, mostly written by him and only published on six occasions. He did improve to the extent that he decided to return to the law by completing the solicitors’ examination in July 1919 after the war. He began assisting some Jewish refugees as a part of his legal practice by advocating for their petitions to remain in Vienna. Life in
46 Yizkor Book Project. ‘Monasterzyska: A Memorial Book,’ JewishGen: The Global Home for Jewish Genealogy. Updated May 29, 2014. https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Monastyriska/Monastyriska.html. 47 Judith Fritz, ‘Jewish Soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army,’ trans. David Wright, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, World of the Habsburgs, Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H., accessed August 2, 2020. https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/jewish- soldiers-austro-hungarian-army. 48 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 36.
154 Austria was very difficult for many, but especially for the refugees. Kimmel noted that initially there were attempts to move them on but with the onset of winter some pity for refugees did emerge from the police and officials.49
During that winter of 1919 Kimmel renewed his acquaintance with Emmy Berger, a middle-class girl he had met at a solicitor’s ball years earlier. The couple became engaged and married in 1921 by the Rabbi of Waehring, Dr David Feuchtwang in the presence of fifty family members and friends. After a honeymoon in Germany, the couple moved into a new home furnished by the father of the bride.50
Kimmel’s memoirs are divided into three parts and it is at this point after marriage, that the first section concludes. His last chapter heading in this first section is
Marriage and Move to a New Home, where he concludes on a positive note in celebration of his new life. This first section narrates the events up until 1921. The seminal events are emigration from Galicia with his family, separation from family at a young age, social isolation as a child and teenager, witnessing hatred and antisemitism and discovering the intellectual ideas and values that would inform his life. He documented his episodes of depression are quite specifically and he must have felt great social isolation in Vienna, choosing to return to his family in Galicia for support.
Interestingly the only member of his family he ever mentions again is his older brother
Benjamin.
The Anschluss
49 Ibid., 38. 50 Ibid., 53–55.
155 While the discussion of the early part of his life has been drawn from his memoirs, the story of the impact of the Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, the Anschluss of Austria in
1938 and his decision to emigrate can be charted from a wider primary source base. In particular, the National Archives of Australia provides information about the family desire to emigrate to Australia and documents relating to his mental illness.
By 1938 the Jewish population of Vienna had decreased to about 175,000.
However, there were a significant and growing number of Jewish organisations in the city. In total there were about 450, of which 90 were synagogues and temples and the
Zionists had about thirty organisations.51 The Jews of Vienna experienced a roller coaster of emotions as Hitler made various promises about the ongoing autonomy of
Austria, but the Austrian government was progressively aligning with Nazi policies.
Ultimately, the fate of Austria was irreversible and described by Kimmel as ‘the rape of
Austria by mighty Germany.’ On Tuesday 14 February 1938 Austria learned of Hitler’s postulate to hand over the Departments of Foreign Affairs and the Police to Nazis. On the 16th leaders of trade unions, communists, fascists and socialists declared in a resolution to fight for Austria’s independence with the calling of partial strikes.52
On March 12 the fate of Austria and its Jews was sealed. After years of economic stagnation and Nazi propaganda, German troops entered Austria which was incorporated into Germany the next day. Nazis occupied the Chancellery and shortly after began marching through Leopoldstadt shouting ‘destruction to the Jews.’53 The persecution of
Jews commenced immediately with the annexation of Austria into Nazi German on that
51 Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews, 238. 52 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 79. 53 Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews, 253.
156 date being known as the Anschluss.54 Jewish refugees in Vienna were in despair and following the Anschluss, lost their citizenship and were classified stateless. They began searching for countries that might offer refuge, but information about landing permits was difficult to obtain. Palestine was a possibility if family was already living there.
Most South American countries proved difficult. England was a possible destination for women seeking domestic roles, but male refugees could not enter a trade or a profession.55
Meanwhile, Jews were being eliminated from economic life and evicted from their businesses. Progressively and inexorably life was made more difficult and many were sent to the Dachau concentration camp.56 Kimmel observed that ‘every Nazi vested himself with the authority of a privileged executive organ over the rhythm of life of a
Jewish inhabitant. Many sensitive individuals became melancholic and suicided.’
Emigration became urgent and preferred countries were Palestine, the United States and in South America.57 Kimmel was severely depressed again so the plan to migrate was postponed until July 1939. Hans and Emmy had hoped to emigrate to the U.S.A. but did not have sufficient funds to gain a visa, but they had enough money for an exit visa to
Amsterdam and boat fares to Australia. While Australia was not the first choice of the
Kimmel family it seemed as though it may have been their last choice to escape Austria.
In August 1938, the AJWS forwarded to the Commonwealth a form 47 for the admission of the Kimmel family. Hans Kimmel was described as a Doctor of Laws and advised that the family intended to establish a factory of machine knitted dresses. The
54 Ibid., 259–60. 55 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen, 91–92. 56 Berkley, Vienna and Its Jews, 262. 57 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 93–94.
157 AJWS furnished their guarantee that Kimmel would be found employment in Adelaide without any disadvantage to local workers.58 Approval was subject to furnishing £200 landing money and Landing Permit 26975 was issued. Kimmel was too unwell to travel, experiencing ‘a nervous breakdown.’ Emmy sought to travel with their two children without her husband, but twice the Passport Control Officer counselled against bringing the Kimmels to Australia because Kimmel was an invalid.
However, the AJWS advised that Emmy was the business head of the family in order to assist the immigration process.59 In desperation Emmy sent a telegram to
Australia saying ‘husband recovered may we use permit all together. Let us not starve here with children.’60 Kimmel had been able to obtain a medical certificate from Dr
Albert Schwarz, medical adviser to the British Consulate. It stated he did not suffer physical disease, was not mentally defective and had never been in a mental hospital.61
Emigration
The family travelled to Amsterdam, where they had a break before boarding the last boat, the SS Strathallan, to arrive in Sydney before the outbreak of war. The boat was loaded with those fortunate enough to leave Europe, but it was a pleasant journey free of worries, arriving in Sydney on 19 July 1939. Kimmel was 51, his wife 43, Elisabeth
Charlotte, 5 years and brother, Friedrich Georg, 13 years. He recorded on his landing
58 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 59 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission.’ 59 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 46 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission’. 60 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 44 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission’. 61 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 69 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission’.
158 permit form that both his parents were deceased. An unnamed family arranged for their permit and greeted them on arrival with other members of the Jewish community.
As they had not been sponsored by the AJWS they had to find work and a home.
This was in fact a very common occurrence in 1939. In the first six months of that year of the 2,500 refugees who arrived in New South Wales, only 135 were sponsored by the
AJWS. Sponsorship by the AJWS involved an undertaking that those refugees who were sponsored would not become a financial burden on government for five years. However, the AJWS was directly responsible for obtaining 1,000 permits for up to 3,000 individuals and the Kimmels were amongst these numbers.62 The Kimmels did not settle in Adelaide and they did not open a factory to make knitted dresses. They remained in
Sydney and began their new lives in the winter of 1939.
Life in Sydney
Not surprisingly they experienced some difficulties settling into life in Sydney. Friends assisted in finding them a home in the southern beach suburb of Maroubra and they then relocated to 343 Pennant Hills Road Pennant Hills where they lived for many years.
Kimmel felt that he was too unwell to work but was anxious for his wife Emmy, to find an occupation. She was a graduate of the Wiener Conservatorium of Music and sought to establish herself as a teacher of singing. Friedrich had to leave the Technical College in which he enrolled to gain an apprenticeship as a toolmaker to supplement the family income. Kimmel was hoping to seek employment as an office clerk or secretarial role in a Jewish organisation. However, the level of his English knowledge, as he described it,
62 Andgel, Fifty Years of Caring, 32
159 was equivalent to that of primary school student and for this same reason he could not even consider seeking to prequalify for the profession of law.63 This would have required a further three years of study, as European law degrees were not recognised in New
South Wales. The legal profession, like the medical profession worked to prevent any potential competition. There were a large number of lawyer refugees from Germany and
Austria who found it difficult to gain employment in their profession.64
In a Mental Hospital, 1939
Within three months of arrival in Sydney, Kimmel was admitted to Broughton Hall mental hospital Rozelle with acute melancholia. It was noted in his records that the patient had a history of the disease prior to arriving in Australia although he provided the authorities a medical certificate of fitness prior to departure. As an ineligible patient and given that he did not have Australian citizenship, he was required to pay fees, though letters show that neither the family nor the AJWS contributed to the costs. Although deportation was contemplated at this time and subsequently, it was not considered practicable.65 It was noted that while the AJWS did not furnish a guarantee for the
Kimmels to emigrate to Australia they may help fund treatment.66 No reply was received.
The Sydney Jewish Community
63 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 95. 64 Suzanne D. Rutland, ‘An Example of “Intellectual Barbarism”: The Story of “Alien” Jewish Medical Practitioners in Australia 1939–1956,’ Yad Vashem Studies 18 (1987): 233–57. 65 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461. ‘Kimmel – admission.’ 66 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 32 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission.’
160 After his discharge Kimmel took on a part time role working for Dr Itzchak Nachman
Steinberg on the monthly paper The Australian Jewish Forum.67 Steinberg had been a
Russian leading social revolutionary before the 1917 Revolution and served as Justice
Minister in Lenin’s first cabinet. When Steinberg arrived in Sydney in 1939, he noted the lack of Yiddish social and cultural activity so other like-minded refugees he established the Jewish Folk Centre in 1941. Steinberg and others then became important voices of the Centre in seeking to reform the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies to create a more representative democratically elected organisation.68 The Forum was established in 1941, under the editorship of Steinberg and continued to be published until 1949.69
During this period Kimmel also worked for the United Jewish Overseas Relief
Fund (UJORF), which sent care parcels of food and clothing to alleviate suffering in
Europe. By 1941 his English had improved, and he began writing for the Sydney Jewish
News, initially earning £1.1 per week. The Sydney Jewish News discussed issues of interest including debates about Zionism.70 Whilst this was a time for Kimmel to use his journalistic skills and earn a salary, these were times of sadness as they discovered many of Emmy’s family had died in Theresienstadt, the concentration camp outside Prague.71
Back in Hospital
67 Rutland, Diaspora, 183. 68 Nate Zusman, ‘Fifty Years of the Jewish Folk Centre in Sydney,’ AJHSJ 11, no. 4 (1992): 675–76. 69 Rutland, Diaspora, 212. 70 Ibid. 71 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 99–102.
161 In August 1941, Kimmel had another episode of severe depression and was admitted to
Gladesville mental hospital, remaining there until May 1942. He was eventually granted a leave of absence and discharged six months later. His treating doctor diagnosed manic depressive psychosis from which he was likely to recover but was also likely to suffer a relapse.72 No financial contribution was made again for this protracted admission and under Section 8 of the Immigration Act he was liable to deportation though this was not enforced.73 It was deemed impractical to deport him although this was a potential course of action as he was an ineligible patient. During these years the Deputy Master in
Lunacy made representations to the Collector of Customs concerning the collection of funds but to no avail. As such these costs had to be absorbed by the hospital.74 As the available public records do not include any correspondence about Kimmel’s mental health between 1942 and 1945, it is not possible to ascertain what occurred during those intervening years. However, given the frequency of his episodes in adolescence and after emigration, it seems likely he required admission to a mental hospital every second year.
Tragedy Strikes the Kimmel Family
In September 1945 Friedrich was killed. His obituary noted that he had studied at the
Cleveland St. Technical School in Redfern and showed great ability in electrical and optical science and musical studies. It went on to state that on completion of his high school studies, he chose to serve his adopted country and joined the Royal Australian
Airforce (RAAF). In short time he was promoted to the rank of corporal while at the
72 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 16 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission.’ 73 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, 2 of 75, ‘Kimmel – admission.’ 74 NAA, A434, 1946/3/11461, ‘Kimmel – admission.’
162 same time continuing his musical studies having been awarded a scholarship in pianoforte at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Whilst on leave from the RAAF he was killed while riding a bicycle on Pennant Hills Road on 29 September 1945.75
Kimmel placed an advertisement in newspapers seeking witnesses to the accident.76
Further tragedy followed in 1947 when the family became aware that Emmy’s mother had died in 1942. They posted a notice in the newspaper remembering Emmy’s tender and devoted mother, Jeannette who died in a concentration camp on 13 October 1942.77
1947 was a significant year because the Kimmels received their Australian certificates of naturalisation after seven years in the country trying to rebuild their lives.78
Sydney Life in the 1950s
During the year of 1953 both Emmy and Hans Kimmel had books published. Firstly,
Emmy Kimmel wrote The Art of Perfect Voice Production. She travelled by herself on the Port Napier in August of that year to Vienna, where she was planning to supervise the publication of her book. The article published about her departure noted she thanked patrons and friends for their confidence and kindness, especially the Mayor, who took great interest in her plans.79 Meanwhile Hans Kimmel released Sydney Jewish
Community under his name and his pen name Dr Joseph Staedter.80 The book is a record
75 The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, October 11, (1945): 3. 76 ‘Who Saw This Accident?’ The Daily Telegraph, October 21, 1945, 6. 77 ‘Family Notices: In Memorium: Berger,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, October 13, 1947, 16. 78 ‘Certificates of Naturalisation,’ Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, June 12, 1947, 1562. 79 ‘Farewell To Well-known Teacher,’ The Cumberland Argus, July 1, 1953, 5. 80 Joseph Staedter and Hans Kimmel, Sydney’s Jewish Community: Materials for a Post-War (II) History, (Sydney: Self-published, 1953). A second volume was published in 1955, covering the years 1951-1953, with both volumes sponsored by members of the Sydney Jewish community. He clearly
163 of the activities in Jewish life between 1948 and 1952 and consists of his various articles published during those years in the local Jewish press.81
Kimmel enjoyed describing the cultural life of the emigres in Australia, such as
Das Kleiner Wiener Theater or Viennese theatre and Yiddish theatre groups. He also wrote about the various Jewish philanthropic organisations, cultural institutions and religious life in Sydney. However, involvement in the Jewish Board of Deputies was a real feature of his life and a passionate commitment during the early 1950s.82
The Jewish Board of Deputies
The Jewish Board of Deputies was established in 1945 as the peak group representing
Jewish interests for the community and to speak out against racism and discrimination.83
As originally constituted it did not achieve the aspirations for democratic representation whereby most of the deputies would be selected by a general franchise vote. For the first seven years, 75 per cent of deputies were selected by member groups or indirect appointment and 25 per cent of deputies were elected by general franchise.84 Kimmel began making representations and consistently expressed his opposition to the original
1945 constitution, describing the campaign for democratisation as ‘considerable and formidable’ and no chance was lost to remind the Board of its illegal composition.85
intended to publish more volumes, since he called the publications ‘Australian Jewish Community Series,’ but only the two volumes appeared. 81 ‘Book News,’ The Sydney Morning Herald, November 28, 1953, 10. 82 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 118–50. 83 Rutland and Caplan, With One Voice, 29. 84 Ibid. 85 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 140.
164 At the January 1953 meeting he moved a motion to set up a standard for candidates a motion that apparently caused heated debate.86 He noted that of 6,000 potential voters, only 500 participated and argued the lack of financial support forthcoming from the Jewish community for the activities of the Board was a reflection of the lack of democratic participation.87 Subsequently the Jewish Weekly reported that it was ‘one of the stormiest Board meetings ever.’ The Board President Horace Newman was critical of Kimmel at this time, declaring ‘Dr Kimmel has appointed himself communal witch-doctor, a sort of Jewish Senator McCarthy. I have given a fair ruling and Dr Kimmel is splitting hairs.’88
A second area of the constitution which concerned Kimmel was the process by which a Deputy could be suspended or terminated. A constitutional amendment for the removal from office of a deputy was agreed at a special meeting in November 1954.
However, Newman also used this meeting as an opportunity to speak out about the conduct of Kimmel. ‘Kimmel deliberately defies the Chair's rulings and creates disorder and confusion whenever he is not pleased.’ He went on to note that the debates of the
Board had descended into ‘contempt and disrepute’ due to Kimmel. Referring to the
October meeting, he said the ‘Board witnessed scenes unparalleled in history’89 whenever Kimmel disagreed with the rulings. Patience ran out for this conduct and at the
January meeting in 1955, Sydney Einfeld, member of the Executive moved a motion that
86 Rutland and Caplan, With One Voice, 65–66. 87 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 140–43. 88 Rutland and Caplan, With One Voice, 67. 89 Ibid., 67–68.
165 Kimmel be suspended, and this motion was carried unanimously. It was concluded this action proved effective as when Kimmel returned, he was no longer disruptive.90
As described by Rutland and Caplan in their history of the Board, With One
Voice, Kimmel disrupted many Board meetings, but it also seems that he was able to accelerate the process of democratic reform. It took some time for the Board to introduce reforms to create a more democratic election process. Finally, a proposal was adopted to allow for 50 per cent of the 120 deputies to be selected by general franchise every two years. Kimmel sought to amend these reforms by arguing for 80 Deputies with only 35 per cent representing member organisations and for the adoption of a three-year term. In fact, the latter reform was approved in 1955. A further reform was also adopted to endorse the use of suspension rather than expulsion of a deputy.
The new Board elected in 1955, chose Kimmel as chairman of the Constitutional
Committee, a decision that surprised many. He served in that capacity until he suffered another episode of depression in 1956 when he sought a leave of absence and ultimately submitted his resignation in June 1956. Rutland described Kimmel as ‘stormy petrel’ who demanded direct and universal franchise.91 He was a strong advocate for democratic reform and a key figure during the debates around the constitution of the board. This is not surprising given his legal background and his adoption of social democratic principles as a teenager in Vienna. In his own discussion of those years, Kimmel judged this an important battle fought over several years, despite his health problems. This fight for constitutional reform was his legacy to the development of Sydney Jewry. Whether his behaviour at meetings was in part due to his mental health problems is perhaps
90 Ibid., 68. 91 Rutland, Diaspora, 324.
166 difficult to judge his commitment to effecting change was a hallmark of his participation in Sydney’s Jewish communal life. This period in Kimmel’s life was a unique opportunity to utilise his legal qualifications as a means to critically review the constitution of the Board and to use his reporting skills as a journalist to publicly express his views in the Sydney Jewish News.
The Later Years
In 1956, Kimmel was assessed as too old and too unwell at the age of 67 to be employed and was therefore recommended for an invalid pension which was approved.92 During that year his daughter, Elisabeth, married Dr Jeffrey J. Segall. She moved to London and they resided at 308 Cricklewood Lane London.93
In 1957, Kimmel had a number of admissions to various private hospitals and was provided with a total of over £250 for medical assistance, hospital care and relief by the
AJWS.94 This was a challenging period for the Kimmels who decided to join Charlotte, their married daughter in London in 1958. His poor mental health continued in London but little more is recorded about his life after leaving Australia. It is known he began writing more articles, this time about the British Board of Deputies arguing for more democracy in representative organisations of British Jews. He published an article titled
92 AJWS letter from Dr Zachary Wechsler dated September 18, 1956. 93 A family GP 1954 to 1989, who also undertook significant research in respiratory medicine as well. He combined his concerns for medicine and peace as an executive committee member of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) from 1976 to 1991, and editor of its journal (1980–1984). In 1985, Jeffrey founded the quarterly Journal Medicine and War and edited it until 1991. See Alison Williams, ‘Jeffrey J Segall, 6 February 1924–22 May 2010,’ Peace News: For Nonviolent Revolution, July 3, 2010, https://peacenews.info.node/5861. 94 AJWS Executive Committee Minutes, October 1956.
167 ‘The Board of Deputies of British Jews; 1945-1968.95 He also wrote his memoirs in
London. The first section focussed on his family in Europe, and the last two sections dealt with general observations about Jewish community life in Australia. These latter chapters commented on Yiddish culture at the Jewish Folk Centre, various Jewish educational organisations, the National Council of Jewish Women and prominent members of the community. Hans Kimmel died in October 1970 aged 81 years. This was four years before compensation for a diagnosis of mental illness was awarded to eligible survivors.
Conclusion
This case study has been written to help illuminate an understanding of life for a mentally ill and traumatised survivor and his family. Hans Kimmel as a case study is positioned to answer those questions posed in the Introduction and to contribute a significant response to the research statement. This chapter reveals what happened to him and his family, how he fared as a forced migrant and who helped him throughout his life.
The Kimmels left Galicia to seek a better life free of antisemitism. In Vienna they lived in an overcrowded district where contagious disease flourished, two of their children died and a third also almost lost her life. Kimmel's father's decision to leave his eleven-year old son back in Vienna, may have advanced his educational opportunities
95 Dr Hans Kimmel, ‘The Board of Deputies of British Jews; 1945-1968.’ Core, UK. This article is not available in digital form and is also referred to by the Leo Baeck Institute in its annotated folders in the Hans Kimmel Collection, accessed August 3, 2020, http://search.cjh.org/primo- explore/fulldisplay?docid=CJH_ALEPH000199157&context=L&vid=lbi&lang=en_US&search_scop e=LBI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,%22Hans%20K immel%22&sortby=rank&offset=0.
168 but to be coping with the grief of losing siblings and his family leaving him behind, must have been a deeply distressing time. He proved to be a dutiful child who successfully completed secondary and tertiary studies alone without the support of his family.
However, by the age of eighteen he began to experience bouts of depression. His story illustrates the struggle with the burden of chronic mental illness, although he still married, had a family and with them, escaped Nazism. Australia was the country that showed the Kimmel family compassion, despite wanting to deport him, and he created a life as a writer and advocate for democratic representation in Jewish Sydney.
Kimmel became acquainted with Vienna’s educated and sophisticated Jewish citizens and enjoyed the support of renowned painter David Kohn. He witnessed growing antisemitism and hostility especially of Catholics towards Eastern Jews and develops an early commitment to Zionism. The first seventeen years of his life showcase these key thesis themes. Ultimately he experienced Nazism, forced emigration and expulsion from his European life. This was the beginning of an exploration of the meaning of survival for one of many educated Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis.
Multiple sources of information enabled this specific case study of mental illness, an aspect which is normally difficult to explore because of privacy issues. His memoir showcases some of the key themes explored in this thesis, such as exposure to hatred and antisemitism, poor health outcomes, separation, forced migration and exploration of survival for an educated Jewish refugee in a new homeland. He created a much more complete picture of his life especially in Galicia and Vienna, and subsequently in
Sydney. The contemporaneous newspaper articles and notices add to our understanding of the shape and dimension of the achievements and tragedies of the Kimmel family, as does the archival documentation.
169 An analysis of Kimmel's story and his struggle with mental illness has not previously been undertaken so that this chapter sheds light on this small group of Jewish refugees who experienced psychiatric problems. As such, provides an insight into a number of gaps identified in Chapter 2 about the experience of survivors with mental illness or trauma. This study does not seek generalise from what has been learned about
Kimmel, but it does succeed in showing what happened to one survivor with mental illness, how the AJWS supported him during the 1950s and how he was still able to learn excellent English in late middle age and to contribute to the community's development.
He left an important legacy for the functioning of the Jewish Board of Deputies as the representative body of the community in New South Wales.
Kimmel concluded in his memoirs, that while initially the refugees were viewed as very foreign by Sydney Jews, in time they became accepted in accordance with the principles of equality and camaraderie. Kimmel’s reflections on his adopted country are summarised by his words, ‘refugees adjusted themselves to the Australian way of life dominated by principles of equality, freedom and humanitarianism.’96 These are the same principles which were embraced by Kimmel during his early life in Vienna.
Despite the difficulties Kimmel faced due to his mental illness, his newspaper columns and two published books in the 1950s provide an important source for historians of the Sydney Jewish community. The late historian, Sophie Caplan, decided to name a roots essay she sponsored at the largest Jewish school in Sydney, Moriah
College, in his honour. As a result, his name is well known in the Sydney Jewish community to this day, yet his narrative and struggles with mental illness have not yet been examined. This study adds to our knowledge of mid-twentieth century Jewish
96 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 118.
170 Sydney and the ways in which one survivor, despite multiple periods of incarceration in mental hospitals, contributed to the transformation of the community from an isolated, assimilated Anglo-Celtic enclave to the vibrant Jewish centre that it is today.
171 CONCLUSION
The thesis statement asserted in the Introduction that little is known about those survivors who came to Sydney suffering from extreme trauma and mental illness in the 1950s. A wide range of research has been shared about the history of trauma, the role of the AJWS and individual doctors, the challenges faced by forced emigration and the various clinical studies.
This was important background in order to site the research statement within its spatial context, to shape the responses to the questions raised and to contribute to Jewish historiography.
Cohen concluded that mental health professionals did not understand the extreme trauma to which survivors had been exposed. Further she notes that these professionals actually sought to minimise discussion of the Holocaust and did not ask raised questions about the Holocaust experience of survivors.1 These conclusions are damning but not entirely surprising. An understanding of trauma was decades away, there was a fear of mental illness and little real discussion about the Holocaust ensued in the early years.
Additionally, as Valent points out, at this stage in history trauma therapy was too immature to deal with the Holocaust. It was too close to view the Holocaust objectively and nor was it obvious how sufferers could be treated. Valent agrees with Cohen that psychiatrists ignored Holocaust trauma or found it too difficult to treat. He also notes that survivors themselves did not wish to be regarded as mentally ill and instead sought treatment for physical complaints, a situation which willing therapists found frustrating.2
This thesis has demonstrated that some Holocaust refugees who arrived both before and after the war experienced the symptoms of what eventually became known as
1 Cohen, Case Closed, 133. 2 Valent, ‘Holocaust Traumatology,’ 97.
172 PTSD or a variety of other diagnoses. As has been shown the AJWS was required to deal with new survivors arriving by the shipload and providing support to all those in need.
While an understanding Holocaust trauma was not on their agenda nor anticipated in the
AJWS budget, they were the service required to support and coordinate the care of those who suffered trauma and mental illness.
A number of key doctors who assisted in this effort have been identified and their key roles and important level of support has been discussed. These include those who were Jewish refugees themselves and who had requalified such as Friedman, Wechsler and Brenner. Half a dozen of these doctors then became Honorary Medical Officers of the AJWS providing voluntary support and also then provided support to other foreign doctors. Valent was also able to identify two Australian psychiatrists who assessed survivors for compensation from Germany. In fact, documents relating to assessment of survivors for compensation are located in boxes retained by the Australian Judaica
Archive. This information would be very interesting to explore as further archival material pertaining to the research statement of this thesis.
Hocking treated survivors and also completed a 1970 study of 300 of them, whom he described as having been subjected to physical brutality and torture that was unique in experience and worse than that experienced by a prisoner of war.3 Hocking also prophetically observed that the very concept of disaster had not been established in psychiatry.4 Despite this, the majority of survivors seemed to be able to put the past behind them and rebuild their lives in Australia. Indeed, the Krupinski 1973 comparative
3 Hocking, ‘Psychiatric Aspects of Extreme Environmental Stress.’ 542–25. His findings were consistent with those of traumatologist, Judith Herman, but made more than two decades earlier and about Australian survivors. 4 Ibid., 545.
173 study of migrants concluded that the Jewish survivors' trauma did not prevent them from being successful both socially and economically, to a greater extent than any other groups of migrants they reviewed.5 However, there was a very small group of survivors whose mental health problems, resulting from the trauma they had experienced, were so severe that they were unable to establish a normal lifestyle either in the short or long- term basis. The AJWS assumed responsibility for those with mental illness for the first five years, a significant challenge and the response to this challenge has been thoroughly explored.
It has been acknowledged that Jewish forced emigration to Australia before and after World War II has been thoroughly researched, but little has been written directly on the subject of survivors who suffered from mental illness after arriving in Australia. A few examples have been identified in the Medical Journal of Australia in the early decades after the war, but these did not deal specifically with Jewish survivors. It was only in the 1970s that the studies by Hocking and Krupinski identified Jewish Holocaust survivors separately from other migrants. This gap in the historiography of survival and
Jewish life in Australia inspired further exploration. In seeking to bridge this gap, access to the AJWS files proved essential, and helped to facilitate the development of the stories in the various case studies discussed in the latter chapters. These sources assisted in creating a clearer picture of the story of those who escaped antisemitism and the Nazis through forced emigration, survived the Holocaust, learnt a new language, adapted to a new country, found work and a home and often dealt with PTSD support, decades before anyone knew such a condition existed.6
5 Krupinski, Stoller, and Wallace, ‘Psychiatric Disorders in East European Refugees now in Australia.’ 6 PTSD combines symptoms of avoidance, unwelcome intrusive thoughts, angry outbursts, nightmares and insomnia. It is now accepted many survivors experienced severe mental and
174 The identification of trauma symptoms has been explored in war histories and other extreme experiences but this research revealed that Holocaust experiences were rarely documented in medical files resulting in very significant gaps in knowledge about the patient’s history. As a result, important findings that were identified were not translated into improved practices and treatment for decades. One example of this was the attribution of PTSD symptoms to the victims’ pre-trauma personality, rather than taking into full account their experiences in the Holocaust. Another, identified as early as 1905 and relevant to the case of Holocaust victims, was the failure to take a full patient history in order to understand the pre-trauma personality. Most survivors did not seek help for their mental health problems for a range of different reasons including a belief that post war trauma was to be expected; the value placed on self- reliance and the need to create a new life; their view that seeking help might be disrespectful to those who perished; and their ongoing belief that their symptoms would eventually diminish.
The effects of the Holocaust and other genocides are different from a one-off traumatic event, characterised by constant fear and protracted victimisation in concentration camps and slave labour camps.7 Family, friends and community may have all perished and yet in spite of this grim impact of the Holocaust, by the 1990s assessments of survivors showed that such experiences did not always result in a diagnosis of PTSD. Various studies show that many survivors did not suffer from PTSD.
A quoted figure showed half the survivors had PTSD, one quarter once had such
physical trauma, and their accumulated burden of extreme and protracted trauma, would now be diagnosed as PTSD. 7 Herman, ‘Complex PTSD,’ 377.
175 symptoms, but they diminished over time and the final quarter seem never to have suffered from PTSD.8
The Sydney Jewish community sponsored around 7000 survivors between 1946–
1952 a massive responsibility.9 The thesis has shown these years were a time of crisis for mental hospitals, for those with mental illness and for the community.10 While trauma left an indelible print, most survivors created social and personal lives that were successful, as demonstrated statistically by various studies dealing with the Holocaust, survival and life beyond.11 Most survivors were never subjects of clinical trials and the real effects of the Holocaust were not studied in detail for decades after the war. They transitioned back into normal life usually without the assistance of mental health professionals.12 It was only in the late 1970s, some thirty years after liberation, that
Holocaust memory became an integrate part of Sydney Jewry, after which survivor support groups began to emerge. By examining primary sources documents and specific case studies, this thesis has sought to shed light on those who did not make the transition successfully and the ways in which the AJWS dealt with those cases. As well, it has sought to elucidate the role of those doctors who dealt with these cases, often in a voluntary, altruistic basis, despite the fact that some of these doctors were refugees from
Nazism themselves.
In Chapter 1, the Sydney Holocaust study was reviewed in some detail as the most important piece of research undertaken in Australia on survivors.13 This study revealed
8 Yehuda et al., ‘Depressive Features in Holocaust Survivors.’ 9 Cohen, Case Closed, 32. 10 Phelan et al., ‘Public Conceptions of Mental Illness,’ 199. 11 Kimmel, ‘Twice a New Citizen,’ 36. 12 Schwartz Lee, ‘Holocaust Survivors,’ 71–72. 13 Joffe et al., ‘The Sydney Holocaust Study.’
176 that less than half those reviewed had undergone treatment for symptoms, but the researchers also noted that the effects of massive trauma for all was severe and enduring, with symptoms interfering with survivors’ lives despite their best efforts. After surviving the Nazis, survivors began new lives after an extraordinary chapter in the history of trauma. The capacity to continue after surviving the end point of genocide14 was identified as apparent in their personal inner strength, their appreciation of life and their determined will to start life again.
The extent of cultural diversity created by post war migration, including that of survivors, was unprecedented in Australian history, yet it was to be implemented by underfunded and unprepared government services and welfare providers.15 It was in this unique environment that the AJWS was created as the first ever Australian refugee support service in 1937.16 In addition to meeting the ships, assisting survivors to find accommodation, learn English and find employment, the AJWS also supported those with behavioural problems and mental illness. There was immediate pressure for all survivors to put the past behind and become part of the national narrative of successful migration, yet some few were not able to meet that goal.
This thesis has explored the narrative of those few survivors who experienced extreme trauma following the Holocaust and were unable to function in society.17 An insight into the lives of survivors who suffered mental illness in Sydney has been revealed through the more detailed stories of Bresler and Kimmel and other vignettes.
Those narratives outlined in Chapter 4 reveal a variety of tragic stories of those people
14 Colin Tatz, Genocide in Australia (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1999), 5. 15 Markus and Taft, ‘Post-War Immigration and Assimilation,’ 240. 16 ‘History of Refugees in Australia.’ 17 Staines, ‘Aftermath,’ 1
177 who were so desperate that they attempted suicide or so unwell that their mental illness prevented their attempts to settle into a new life. The first detailed case study was that of
Jacob Bresler, a silent stowaway who had endured years in Buchenwald and lost his whole family in the Holocaust. He presented as mute and had several admissions to mental hospitals, and yet his is an amazing story of survival despite the many extraordinary obstacles he faced. His mental illness seems to have been very serious creating great concern, and the AJWS was required to supervise him for several years, arranging mental hospital admissions when necessary and connecting him with members of the Polish Jewish community in Sydney. It appears that, despite his difficult early years in Sydney, he eventually managed to make a life in Bondi. Whilst the sources only offer patchy insights into his narrative, they reveal a man who survived protracted extreme trauma, episodes of admission to mental hospitals and personal isolation; an almost forgotten life that became the subject of the first Walkley Award.
The second detailed study is that of Dr Hans Kimmel who suffered from a mental illness that affected his life for sixty years. A highly talented child separated from his family at the age of eleven, he completed schooling and a law degree at the University of
Vienna. His dream to become an urbane citizen of Vienna was swept away by the rise of
Nazism and his escape to Sydney with his family did not prevent further relapses into depression. His memoirs provide some insight into his role in reforming the Board of
Deputies, Sydney. His erratic behaviour at these meetings provides an insight into his mental illness, probably not understood by those in attendance. Throughout the three decades of his life in Australia, he spent nearly as much time in hospital as he did at home with his family at Pennant Hills, with his first admission occurring within six months of their arrival. During the early years the AJWS played no role and the detailed history of his multiple admissions is located in the National Archives. After the war the
178 AJWS became involved with his care by funding several lengthy treatments in private mental hospitals without understanding what would probably be diagnosed today as bipolar disorder. In the 1940s and 1950s, his periods in hospital would have been challenging, but he was a man of great ability, learning English in his fifties and writing his memoirs in that language. This case study reveals much about a man whose name is remembered in Sydney to this day through a school roots project named in his honour.
During the 1950s, several dozen Jewish Holocaust survivors were hospitalised due to suffering from such severe mental illness that they were unable to function in normal society. Remarkably, given the trauma of the Holocaust and the many thousands of Jewish survivors who berthed in Sydney after the war, this number constitutes a tiny proportion. For five years after arrival, those suffering from mental illness relied on the
AJWS for financial support and finding housing and work. Their mental illness was managed by admission to various mental hospitals and after five years, the government assumed more responsibility for their care.
Survivors are a rapidly diminishing population and by the time of the twenty-first century an understanding of the damage done by protracted extreme trauma has become very evident. The reality was that in the early post-war decades little could be done for extremely traumatized survivors as so little was understood. The AJWS did everything possible to support this surprisingly small group through practical assistance such as financial support, locating accommodation and finding employment. Krell has written it took ‘the biblical forty years, like most Jewish events to witness a shift’ so that by 1986, the persistently negative view of the survivor underwent a reassessment, changing their status from victims to heroes.18
18 Krell, ‘The Resiliency of the Survivor.’
179 The reality was that in the early post-war decades little could be done for extremely traumatized survivors as so little was understood. Kimmel described Australia as a place of equality, freedom and humanitarianism. This view highlights the opportunity afforded those survivors who arrived here by a man who suffered greatly throughout his life and really symbolizes a response to the research statement. Here is a man who did survive the Holocaust and largely due to his own documentation, it has been possible to recreate his narrative and to discover what happened to him, who helped him and how he adapted to a new country while suffering from a serious mental illness.
Those questions posed in the Introduction have partly been answered through his narrative and those of a number of other survivors. The Conclusion chapter has attempted to draw out those responses to some of the key questions raised. It has been possible to learn quite a bit more about what happened to this rather small group and to undertake research in each decade since Liberation to validate this statement. The subject matter itself has been researched only in a limited way prior to this thesis and some of it is both unique and new. The methodology was clearly outlined in the introduction and used in the latter chapters to help shape a number of narratives. Most importantly of all, the resilience and courage of those survivors with the most extreme traumatic behaviours has been identified as has the role of the AJWS and those doctors who assisted the Society in this effort. As such, this thesis has sought to develop a better understanding of the history of the responses of the Jewish community in dealing with those survivors suffering from trauma who were unable to re-establish a normal life after the war in Sydney.
180 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Graduate Research Projects/Dissertations
Barda, Rachel M. ‘The Migration Experience of the Jews of Egypt to Australia, 1948–1967: A Model of Acculturation.’ PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2006.
Green, Michael A. ‘South African Jewish Responses to the Holocaust, 1941–1948.’ MA diss., University of South Africa, 1987.
Lurie-Beck, Janine. ‘The Differential Impact of Holocaust Trauma Across Three Generations.’ PhD diss., Queensland University of Technology, 2007.
Rutland, Suzanne D. ‘The Jewish Community in NSW 1914–1939.’ MA diss., University of Sydney, 1978.
200 Wickramasinghe, Tilaka. ‘Out of Mind, Out of Sight: Government Policy on Migrants’ Mental Health, Australia 1960–2000.’ PhD diss., University of Wollongong, 2005.
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