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Friday 24 August 2012

Oh the places You'll Go!

"Who would have thought the ‘seminal event’ in my Jewish life would take place over a plate of papaya salad and sticky rice on a stinky street in South East Asia?
I’d grown up on Sydney’s northern beaches and felt completely disconnected from my European heritage. I remember watching my first episode of Seinfeld and telling my best friend that I thought I might be Jewish … she laughed and told me that unless I went to the synagogue, I wasn’t Jewish. But years later, when I was working as a foreign correspondent in Bangkok, I was introduced to an Israeli by the name of Guy Sharett. I can honestly say that the minute he spoke I felt as if I’d met my long-lost brother. He was hilarious and honest and understood me better than many of my friends back home. I felt like I’d found one of my ‘tribe’."

Read Ange's story on what it means to be Jewish: http://angetakats.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/jutta-and-me.html

Ange Takats - http://www.encounters.edu.au/SJWF/Presenters/Ange-Takats

"This weekend I’ll be participating at the Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival. One of the sessions I’ll be taking part in is called ‘Stranger in a new land’. It has caused me to reflect on my Jewish heritage … and think about my grandmother who died eight years ago. I wouldn’t be taking part in the festival if it weren’t for Jutta and her brave journey to a far away land ... and her passion for travel which inspired me to leave my homeland for Thailand ... where I met an Israeli called Guy Sharett who declared one humid Bangkok day ... “Darling, you are Jewish!”
 
Ange will also be sharing her adventures during Oh the places you'll go
along with Tony Kevin. They travelled through Spain, Portugal and Thailand and will be talking about the astonishing people and places they encountered.
 
This session will include a tribute to Carolyn Shine, author of Single White Female in Hanoi, who was supposed to be part of the SJWF program but tragically passed away earlier this year.


Opening Night / Saturday 25 August takes place at the Law Theatre in the Law Building at the University of NSW. 

The program on Sunday 26th, Monday 27th and Tuesday 28th August takes place at the Eric Caspary Learning Centre, Shalom College, at the University of NSW.

For more information, see Venue.

Click for a downloadable version of the program.

N.B. Program is subject to change.

Friday 17 August 2012

CHUTZPAH QUESTIONS FOR DANNY KATZ

Danny Katz made us laugh at loud when he answered our 3 Chutzpah Questions:

Image: http://www.booktopia.com.au/sydney-jewish-writers-festival/promo76.html

1. How does your writing reflect your Jewish identity?

I don't think it does. I try not to make my writing too Jewishy, I just want to be a regular writer, but then I thought, does it? Hmmm, it kind of does but it also doesn't, and the more I write this answer I¹m realising that, maybe it does. Do you think it does? Look, if it does, it does, if it doesn't it doesn't, does that answer your question?

2. Has there been a seminal event in your Jewish life that has shaped the
person you are today?


First day of Sunday school. Eight years old. Bible quiz. I didn't know a thing about anything but every other kid knew about everything.  I said one of the ten plagues of Egypt was sheep. They laughed at me, THEY LAUGHED. It was traumatic and from then on, I pretended I was violently sick every Sunday morning so I didn't have to go. I am still uncomfortable around eight year old Jewish kids, they are very intimidating.  I am also still violently sick on Sunday mornings.

3. Ma nishtanah? (aka why is your book different from any other book?)

My book is different from any other book because it is for teenagers and it's
about high school life and it is called SCUM. I don't think there are any other books for teenagers about high school life called SCUM, not written by me anyway. 
Also, this book is so funny and honest and entertaining, it
will make the most reluctant teenage reader suddenly want to start reading, and then they will not be able to stop reading, and they will forget about Facebook and texting and just spend all their spare moments reading for the
rest of their lives. 
This is my money-back guarantee.


Danny Katz's book for teens is available on the Booktopia website and he'll be at the festival discussing books for kids and how to encourage a lifetime of reading along with Anna Feinberg and Suzy Zail at What are your kids Reading? -  http://www.encounters.edu.au/SJWF/Program/Sunday-1-15-2-15pm

He will also be discussing Jewish humour and the art of telling jokes at Have you heard the One About? ... -  http://www.encounters.edu.au/SJWF/Program/Sunday-5-00-6-00pm

Danny Katz is a Canadian-born, Jewish Australian columnist and author who writes for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. His columnn is also syndicated in The West Australian. He is the Modern Guru in the Good Weekend magazine.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/by/danny-katz

Monday 6 August 2012

Biography as a means of survival


HALINA ROBINSON, our guest blogger, became a writer at the tender young age of 80. Three books later, it has been a remarkable journey.


I never had any ambition to write a book. I learned to read before going to school from the subtitles of the films I attended. They were mostly American, but sometimes French. No one in those pre-World War II years was making films for children in my native tongue, Polish.


Once I was able to read, I did so voraciously. When I was in the first grades of primary school my doctor father used to lock my books up during the week. I could read for pleasure only during weekends, he told me. On other days I should concentrate on homework and reading that was part of the school curriculum.

I turned to the books Dad had stacked on his bedside table. The most popular books for adults of this era were so-called ‘novel rivers’ totally unsuitable for someone my age. Some sophisticated expressions borrowed from these must have crept into my school compositions, but since they were spelled correctly no teacher ever commented.
Other than school assignments I was made to write monthly letters to my grandmother who lived a long way from our home. If initially I rebelled against yet another writing chore, I gradually came to enjoy reporting on my everyday life to this lady, the person I loved best in the world. I often added fancy phrases so that she would find my letters more interesting to read.

The outbreak of War turned my peaceful comfortable life upside down. I was swept from place to place like a cork on turbulent waters. I didn’t know what would happen to me from day to day, let alone in the future. I write about these years in my first book, 
A Cork on the Waves. When the War ended, I was alone, the sole survivor in Europe of the Holocaust of my large multi-generational family. All my school friends and my teachers had also vanished. Everything that had been familiar to me, a whole world with its structures, customs and institutions had gone as if it had never existed. There was not a trace of the community into which I had been born and where I lived for my first 14 years, nothing for me to cling to for support.

My survival was due to many interconnected miracles. I was lucky that I didn’t actually have to witness the cruel deaths of any of my loved ones.

I had to rebuild my life on my own. No one could do it for me. There was no point trying to search for another survivor who might recognise my pre-War self. During the War I had been given a false name to disguise who I really was. I had to become this make-believe person and believe that it was the real me. A few months after it ended, I was asked to become the governess to three daughters of a doctor in a small town not far from our destroyed capital, Warsaw. I had to make sure the girls used French at meal-times and that each of them practised the piano every day. In this happy home it was fairly easy for me to block out my painful Wartime experiences.

Within months I became a member of the family. ‘Daddy Doctor’ would introduce me to strangers as the orphaned daughter of a colleague, a surgeon like my real father killed during the War. ‘Mama Anna’ taught me to cook dinner and help her in the running of the household. We moved to Wroclaw, a big town in the ‘recovered territories’. ‘Daddy Doctor’ became a professor at the medical school and I enrolled as a student. These happy days were cut short by the sudden death of ‘Daddy Doctor’ and my own illness which made it impossible to finish my studies.

During the following 10 years I was washed from place to place, working, taking courses, and meeting my husband, Edek. We had two children together. The Communist rulers of Poland, initially announcing themselves as liberators bringing peace and normality, gradually became more and more oppressive. My husband found himself in serious trouble due to rumours about his sister who was allegedly living in Australia. During the War he had been involved with the leftist resistance movement and hence he was now approached to join the oppressors. To resolve a difficult situation we made the decision to leave the country. The new state of Israel was thriving, and I remembered attending Jewish school as a child and dreaming of going to Palestine to help build a Jewish state.

In 1957, my favourite cousin, Janek, one of two overseas survivors of our family, was living in Israel. We went to join him. But migration is never easy. We arrived unprepared for conditions very different from those imagined by the schoolgirl, daughter of a committed Zionist who was no longer by my side to guide me. Our years in Israel, which I write about in Treading Water in the Promised Land, were difficult, but with hindsight I consider we were lucky to have had this experience.
We moved on to Australia which, in 1961, was a very different country from the one we know today. Our first days here, described in my book Upstream, were not easy. It was, however, our family’s second migration and even when we felt like packing up and going ‘home’, we knew that this was now our home, and that there was no other to which we could return.

Even with my qualifications and experience in different jobs in two countries, knowing only a couple of words of English meant that my Australian employment prospects were not very bright. I started out as a nursing aide. After many challenges I made a real effort to prepare for the tests gaining me initial library qualifications. Later my children went on to tertiary education. We have now fully integrated into the life of this strange but wonderful country. Along the way, Australians often offered a helping hand without being asked. The Polish community here also provided social contacts. Acquaintances in Israel suggested we look up their friends, but I was cautious. Australian Jews might have felt that we had ‘deserted the cause’ by leaving Israel after such a short time.

In 1976 my beloved husband Edek died of cancer. I was devastated. I didn’t want to continue living without him, my strength and support. My children’s love and their insistence that I continue to live a full life, saved me. I could now do things I hadn’t been courageous enough to try during my first 15 years in Australia. I left my safe job in TAFE library services and embarked on a Masters degree in Library Science. This opened up new worlds for me. I could attend professional conferences and do research. I also became involved in one of the most exciting developments in my new country: multiculturalism.

My son Vitek and daughter Joanna both married and provided me with much-loved grandchildren. I began to look for an Anglo-Australian soulmate for a grandpa. When I found Leslie Robinson, he helped me truly understand how to be Australian. I belonged at last.
In 2003 he died and I became a widow for the second time. But this time I knew I had to do something completely different if I wanted to keep myself on an even keel. Four days after Leslie passed away I started to write my first autobiographical book. It was splendid therapy. I was writing about times, people and places that Leslie never knew. Since he couldn’t have been there, his absence wasn’t so painful. At last I was telling anyone who was interested about the heroism of those who risked their lives and the safety of their own families during the War by saving a complete stranger: me.

A Cork on the Waves was received with an enthusiasm I could never have imagined. It was published by the Sydney Jewish Museum in their excellent Community Stories series, nearly 50 survivors’ stories. It has been called ‘an invaluable archive of the social history of the community for future generations’ by author Diane Armstrong. Then my book was taken up by a commercial publisher. Copies were taken to a book fair in Taiwan; seminars and talks were held about it; and it was presented at a  function organised by the Polish and Israeli embassies in Canberra, their first joint event.

Readers asked me what had happened in later years to many of Cork’s characters, including me and my family. I began writing Treading Water in the Promised Land. It was followed by Upstream: belonging at last. This is how in my 80th year I became a writer.


Thursday 2 August 2012

CHUTZPAH QUESTIONS FOR DIANE ARMSTRONG



DIANE ARMSTRONG



How does your writing affect your Jewish identity?

Each one of my books, whether fiction or non-fiction, explores some aspect of Jewish history and Jewish experience. With my memoir Mosaic,  a sprawling family saga, I described Jewish life in an orthodox family in Krakow before the Second World War. I then traced the survivors’ experiences during and after the Holocaust. Although I set out to document the experiences of my remarkable relatives, Mosaic ended up being my story as well, because in the course of my research, I unexpectedly and miraculously encountered the priest who protected my parents and me in a small Polish village.

The Voyage of their Life, the true account of the voyage of the ship on which my parents and I sailed to Australia in 1948, tells the inspiring survival stories of many of the Holocaust orphans who were our fellow passengers. I didn’t set out to preach or educate, but one of the greatest rewards of writing it has been receiving feedback from non-Jewish readers, many of whom have written that this book has opened their eyes to what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust. One even wrote to say that for the first time she now understands why Israel is necessary.

Nocturne, A Second World War saga set in Poland and England, is partly based in the Warsaw Ghetto. Determined to find a different angle to tell this story led me to create a young heroine who is brought up to believe she is Catholic, but discovers, in shocking circumstances, that she and her family are Jewish. Although she is a fictional character, I did base some of her experiences on those of a woman I interviewed while researching the novel.

My recent novel, Empire Day, tells the story of some European refugees, mostly Jews,  who move into a suburban street in Sydney in 1948, to the indignation of their Australian neighbours. This was the year I arrived in Australia, and in describing some of the characters and the conflict with their neighbours, I have drawn partly on my own recollections  of that time when, like today, immigration was a burning issue.

Has there been a seminal even in your Jewish life that has shaped the person you are today?


Surviving the Holocaust has been the defining event of my life. As an author, I feel compelled to explore the unfathomable complexity of human behaviour, and the Holocaust has provided me with inexhaustible material to try and comprehend, and hopefully also to illuminate, the power of the human spirit, with its capacity to endure and survive.

Ma nishtanah? (aka Why is your book different from any other book?)


I’m primarily a storyteller, so the books I write, whether fiction or fact,  engage readers through the characters and the narrative. Even with my family memoir Mosaic, I made sure it read like a novel rather than just a succession of facts. Also, because history is one of my passions,  the books I write are all based on historical fact.   Research is one of my strengths. My background in journalism trained me to research thoroughly, so even when I writing novels, the research often tales as long as the writing.  When I decided to write Winter Journey, a novel based on an atrocity which took place in a Polish village in 1941, and was covered up for 60 years,  I made my heroine a forensic dentist.  The research this involved  amounted to a virtual crash course in forensic dentistry! I must add that research is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the entire writing process. It enables me to discover fascinating facts and meet interesting people, and it delays the terrifying moment when I have to sit down and start writing!

Diane Armstrong will be presenting at Sydney Jewish Writers' Festival in three separate sessions.
Seeking refuge, finding home: Sunday 26 August, 2.30-3.30pm
Stolen childhoods: Monday 27 August, 5.00-6.00pm
Behind the pages - remarkable journeys: Tuesday 28 August, 9.00-10.00pm