I survived Auschwitz

Zeev (Tibi) Ram, a survivor of Auschwitz will be talking about his story in schools, university and the Jewish community. He is in New Zealand from April 19 to May 3, 2012. His visit is organised by the ZFNZ and the Israeli Embassy. He will be in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. 

For more information contact schlicha@zfnz.or.nz
 
JUSTICE and ACCOUNTABILITY AFTER THE HOLOCAUST

The keynote address by Peter McKenzie QC at the Parliamentary reception for the 2012 UN International Holocaust Memorial Day

In the final stages of the Second World War the allied armies sweeping through eastern Germany and Europe came across sites of such horror and carnage that they found it hard to believe that even the Nazi regime in its worst excesses could have been responsible. Near the town of Gotha they found a death camp where thousands of Jewish prisoners were starved to death and this was reported to General Eisenhower the Allied Supreme Commander. The bodies of naked emaciated men were piled in the rooms and the stench was overpowering. General Patton would not enter fearing he would be physically sick.  Eisenhower however strode in and forced himself to inspect every nook and cranny. He called for photographers and ordered that Germans from the neighbouring villages be brought in and required to bury the dead.  In this way they would have to confront the reality of what the Nazi regime had been doing.  He stated:
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Four People behind the Numbers
The German Unger Story - the fate of a family

Four People behind the Numbers

In February 2011 The Listener published an article about Diana Wichtel’s journey to the death camps her father survived. In that article a reference was made to the International Tracing Service, whom I contacted. 6 months later they provided another tiny piece of evidence of the fate of my family. At a time when the world is tuning in to the trials of the 2nd worst European murders of all time, it is timely to remember the worst genocide, and the faces of some who did not survive.
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The Violinist

The book by Sarah Gaitanos about Clare Galambos Winter, past member of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Hungarian survivor of Auschwitz, is now available from the Wellington Holocaust Research and Education Centre

$40 plus $4.50 postage, $44.50 (NZ)

 
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Are your origins in Austria?

Inge Woolf  is collecting material  for a Symposium in Vienna on Austrian Jewish migration to New Zealand and the work of the Holocaust Centre. If you would like to contribute your story please fill in this survey
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Holocaust survivors
Holocaust survivors Freda Narev (hidden by a Catholic family in Poland) and Bob Narev (survivor of the Concentration Camp of Theresienstadt) are prepared, by arrangement, to speak of their experiences to secondary schools in the Greater Auckland area. They can be contacted  by email fabnarev@clear.net.nz
 
March of the living

THE MARCH OF THE LIVING is an international, educational programme that brings Jewish teens (16 year olds) from around the world to Poland on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, to march from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex built during World War II, and then to Israel to observe Yom Hazikaron, Israel Memorial Day, and Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day.
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Anne Frank

The Anne Frank travelling exhibition tells the story of Anne Frank and the Holocaust to people who are not able to visit the Anne Frank Museum in The Netherlands. The exhibition  will tour throughout New Zealand for three years, visiting museums and community centres to teach people the story of Anne Frank and the Holocaust.

Click here for more information.
 
Holocaust research

RABBI HILLEL KUSTANOWICZ 1900 - 1996

Article Index
RABBI HILLEL KUSTANOWICZ 1900 - 1996
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY RABBI HILLEL KUSTANOWICZ
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All Pages
Page 1 of 3

Hillel Kustanowicz, lived in Wellington from 1948 to 1965, and was assistant minister to the Wellington Hebrew Congragation. From 1965 to 1972 he served as Rabbi of the Brisbane Hebrew Congregation.

 He was born in 1900 in Luban, Belarus, and died at the age of 96 in Bat Yam, Israel. His "The Story of My Life" describes his student days at a Yeshiva, the trials and tribulations of an Orthodox Jew being exiled in 1941  from the family home in Lechowicz, Poland, to a Soviet state farm in Siberia. He survived the war, came to Wellington, New Zealand, and then moved to Brisbane Australia, where he served as a much loved and respected rabbi.

This is his life that spanned virtually the century and reflected the experiences of many Jews of Eastern Europe.

 

My father, Hillel Kustanowicz, was born in 1900 in Luban, Belarus, and died at the age of 96 in Bat Yam, Israel. "The Story of My Life" presented here describes in his own words his student days at Yeshiva, the trials and tribulations of an Orthodox Jew being exiled in 1941 by the Russian authorities from the family home in Lechowicz, Poland, to a Soviet state farm in Siberia. The years of hard work there in freezing conditions are delineated graphically until in 1946 when our family returned to Poland as refugees. The "Story" tells of my father's involvement in attempts to renew Jewish life in Szczecin, until in 1948 we set out for New Zealand to join my mother Sonia's family (Chait) there. The "Story" ends there rather abruptly in 1952, probably due to my father's ailing health, and does not tell of his position as Chief Rabbi of Brisbane, Australia, from 1965 to 1972 and his final settling in Israel in 1972.

            Neither my sister Luba Zemel nor I were aware that our father was writing this memoir and it was only by chance that when rummaging through his desk in the Bat Yam apartment that I found an old dusty plastic bag with seven exercise books written in Hebrew containing my father's "Life Story".  Luba set about transcribing the pages of these booklets,  a most difficult undertaking as our father's eyesight deteriorated before he began to fill the notebooks and it was not always easy to decipher his words. When the Hebrew manuscript was completed, a friend of our family, Shlomo Ketko, faithfully translated it into English and it now appears here as "The Story of My Life".

Shlomo Kustanowicz (Keston)

Bat Yam, 1st October 2009


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Links
Holocaust images
Button Collection
See the short video on YouTube in which children of Moriah College talk about their project and present the memorial design they propose for Wellington City

Click here for YouTube Video

 
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