Feudalism establishes a master–servant ethos that lingers for generations after its official demise. A police state damages the social fibre by instilling mistrust, fear and insecurity. The national psyche is damaged by the experience of violated sovereignty. Language carries embedded shadows of such times—special words and images—and history books are a reminder. These factors are not conducive to easygoingness.
White Australians were very lucky to escape these legacies, so common in Europe. But the First Australians were not. I became aware of the plight of the Aborigines long before I met one of them. Discrimination against a racial minority was something I knew a lot about, and the experience of being persecuted connects me to other persecuted minorities. The brotherhood of ‘I know how it feels’.
The cycle of work, study and weekend jobs was demanding, and it took some years before I was able to participate in activities to foster human rights and social justice for the First Australians.
WARRAMONG
A lady who had volunteered to teach English to refugees befriended our ‘family by acceptance’. She mentioned us to her friends, the Reads, who lived on a farm in the Riverina, in New South Wales, and these kind and brave people invited us, sight unseen, to spend Christmas and other holidays on their farm. Two or three of us went at a time, as work commitments allowed.
I remember my first visit, in December 1949. A city slicker, I had always found the Polish countryside exhilarating. On the train journey to Wagga Wagga, the town nearest the Reads’ farm, I imagined a little wooden cottage with a farmer guiding the plough pulled by the horse, and other charms of country life. The property, Warramong, was not like this: it had a large, well-appointed homestead with a wide verandah. There were sheds for tractors and other motorised farm implements.
Our hosts, the Read family, completed the contrast with a Polish farm. Margery and Don Read were well spoken, well read and most knowledgeable. Margery was a graduate in medicine and Don was admired locally for his agricultural knowledge and success. They kept a small library of books and classical records. Their three children, Michael, Anthony and Elizabeth, were at the time eleven, nine and five. Don’s father and two older sisters lived in Wagga Wagga, and the three generations of Reads were a close family in frequent contact with each other. Margery and Don made every effort to make us feel welcome and at home, and soon succeeded. For a while the children were alarmed at our lack of Anglo-Saxon reserve.
Warramong was a beautiful place. A creek ran through one section; a forest abutted another. In the green paddocks there were several solitary eucalypts, large, magnificently asymmetrical and silhouetted against the sky. The farm ran a large flock of sheep, had several milking cows, several horses, some chooks and piglets.
Elizabeth milked the cows swiftly into the bucket with an unerring aim. My attempt produced a wide spray of milk all over the cow, myself and my very surprised teacher. Clearly, Elizabeth had never seen anyone quite so clumsy. The boys too had allotted tasks, such as feeding the chooks and pigs, and sweeping the verandah. But mostly they did school homework, read or sketched animals or scenery. Both were very accomplished at drawing.
Margery and I used to go for long walks along the creek. It was the way she asked about and responded to our wartime events that made it possible for me to talk about them. It was not so with Don, who kept shaking his head in disbelief. Much of what I said was incomprehensible, I could see; and yet I was protecting them from the worst. I still don’t like to shock the people I like.
* * *
People’s questions often showed that the extermination process was beyond their comprehension—and no wonder. So there was, and still is, the difficulty in explaining the incomprehensible. But I tried and they struggled to understand.
There are difficulties of talking about the war even now. There is still some small emotional difficulty on my part; there is the awareness that what I am saying causes discomfort, if not horror. Then there is the feeling that I am not getting enough across, even in response to specific questions, because the whole setting is unimaginable to those who were not there. And there are the limitations of my descriptive talent. But there is also another problem for me: there usually follows sympathy and attentiveness when people find I was in concentration camps. That embarrasses me; the last thing I would want is to get mileage out of Auschwitz, to reduce it to a sob story, to trivialise it. I don’t know how other survivors deal with that.
* * *
The fresh country air must have gone to my head one day, because I asked Don to let me help in herding the sheep into another paddock. He asked if I had ridden a horse before. I said yes, recalling a pony ride when I was eight years old. Don gave me an old mare, slow and broad as a table. The riding was a pleasant experience, and I went for several hours, ignoring the advice to take it easy on the first day. That evening every muscle in my body went into painful spasm, and I was hardly able to move for a couple of days. Hot baths and painkillers helped a bit. Later, shorter trips that gradually increased in length of time fixed the problem. Horseback riding at the farm was my idea of a good time.
Warramong was regarded as a model farm, and neighbouring farmers used to pop in often for some shoptalk and Don’s advice on methods of preventing soil erosion or salination, types of fodders and fertilisers, the pH of the soil or the latest research in agriculture.
The tricks of the trade fascinated me too. Lambing seasons inevitably produced cases of stillborn lambs, and twin births with one of the twins often rejected by its mother. The trick was to dress a rejected twin in the skin of a stillborn lamb and present it to the bereaved mother. It was usually accepted because of its familiar smell.
Sometimes a sheep would refuse to suckle its single newborn. The trick here was to put the mother into a tiny enclosure where, virtually immobilised, she could not get away from her hungry baby. After suckling started, the bond was established. It puzzled me why some sheep stood and bleated pitifully over their dead babies, while others rejected their live ones.
One day I was helping Don to get a rejecting sheep into the bonding enclosure. The creature was huge and looked like a bale of wool on four legs. I asked Don why the mother refused to suckle her baby, and he said it was because she didn’t want to lose her figure. I love the dry Aussie humour.
And there was the matter of the curdled milk. We could not bear to see so much milk discarded when not needed, so we asked to keep it. When it curdled we made cottage cheese and yoghurt out of it. (This was years before these products appeared on the market and became popular.) The Reads struggled to conceal their revulsion. Don asked if there was anything we could make out of bad eggs or rotten potatoes. I promised I would think of something.
(At the 2007 Christmas gathering of the Reads—children and grandchildren of the late Margery and Don—Michael Read told his fifteen-year-old granddaughter that many years ago at Warramong they had always kept a bucket of curdled milk when I was due to arrive. We were eating yoghurt with mixed berries at the time!)
We marvelled at the long-term planning of matters such as the children’s university education, at the generational continuum, the predictability of the future. To me, Warramong was peace, permanence and beauty. Since then, at stressful times, I have imagined myself walking or horseback riding along the creek, and it has been a respite.
Our visits continued over several years, and a warm and durable friendship developed, now into the fourth generation. I marvel at this friendship, a solid bridge built across a gulf of profound differences: the Reads were deeply religious—we were infidels; they were conservatives—we were lefties. Their Anglo-Saxon reserve was in sharp contrast to our East European outspokenness, our ebullience and lack of social niceties. We ate unacceptable, revolting food and mangled their elegant King’s English.
I think that the common ground of humanity is so solid that it can support bridges spanning wide across deep gulfs of personal, cultural and ethnic difference. And I can’t help thinking that, were
present-day asylum seekers not isolated and demonised, many would bond with the locals in this way too.
HENTY HOUSE, LITTLE COLLINS STREET
This was where I had my first job in Melbourne, and it was a place of much learning for me between 1949 and 1950. I was one of six charladies who cleaned this six-storey building each working day from 4 am to 8.15 am. The building was occupied by the Department of Civil Aviation. The various offices were on floors one to five, while the top floor, with the best access to daylight, was used by the draftsmen.
This floor was my domain and mine only. While other floors had several rooms each, with desks, chairs, filing cabinets and carpet-covered floors, the draftsmen all worked in this one large room. All along the window-lined wall were slanted desktops holding large blueprints of aeroplanes and their parts. There were high stools for seating, and the floor was covered by linoleum that had to be waxed and polished each day. In one corner there was a small hand basin. Outside this room there was a tearoom and toilets. In my locked cleaner’s cupboard I had the tools of the trade: broom, mop, dusters, bucket, soap, hand towels, toilet paper, brushes, canisters of beeswax and a large electric floor polisher.
Doris was the cleaner-in-charge. She was a short, cubical lady whose words and body language inspired fear. With arms akimbo and head out, as if aiming to butt, she ran a tight ship of chars. She opened the front door at 4 am every day, and we went to the cleaners’ room on the ground floor, picked up our cupboard keys and took the lift to our allotted floor. At 6 am we returned to this room for a ten-minute break, then known as ‘smoko’. A hot-water urn on the wall allowed a ‘cuppa’ to be made. There were benches along the walls, a kitchen sink, a board with hooks on which to hang keys, and shelves for supplies of soap, towels, toilet paper and so on. This windowless room had barely enough space for six people to sit. After the tea break we filed into the lift and pressed all the buttons to deliver the designated lady at each stop. We returned to our room to hang up the keys at 8.15 am. The department’s offices opened at 8.30 am.
This routine changed whenever someone was absent due to illness. At such times all present sped through their work and descended on the absentee’s floor to clean it in a quarter of an hour of combined effort.
Ruby frequently had a ‘sickie’. She was a chronic alcoholic and struggled with life. Her face and broad, unsteady gait betrayed her condition. At work she wore her dustcoat inside out so the large pocket could keep a bottle of ‘grog’ out of sight. She had a top-up frequently, because without a steady level of alcohol in her blood she could not function. The team did Ruby’s work frequently, and gave her some good-natured ribbing. Mavis seemed to act as her counsellor, listening to her problems with her husband, children and the world at large.
I was impressed by the women’s solidarity, and also their ability to swear at length without repeating themselves. My vocabulary was greatly enlarged at Henty House, even though I did not then grasp the strength of some of these words. I gradually learned it by the discomfort they caused when I used them in ‘polite society’.
But most impressive was my colleagues’ political knowledge and astuteness. While I read the newspapers at face value, they read between the lines—sceptically and critically. ‘Pig Iron Bob’ Menzies was in power then, and his policies and statements underwent sharp and brutal analysis by the Henty House charladies during smoko. Their comments were supported by historical facts and past events. I was an avid listener.
This admiration, however, was not mutual. They did not think much of me. I was one of a large influx of postwar European refugees who flooded an insular, Anglo-Saxon Australia. Many Australians were at first suspicious and resentful of the foreigners. My mates did not hide their feelings, and were often hostile. They called me ‘funny kid’ or ‘silly kid’ (I was nineteen; they were in their mid or late fifties). When they found out I was studying science at Melbourne University, they said, ‘La-di-bloody-da students we don’t need here; we need real workers!’ adding that the bloody ‘reffos’ always took the best jobs around. (Jobs were plentiful at that time, with many shop windows displaying ads for workers.)
I decided to skip smokos, to avoid their resentment and to gain time to tackle my difficult linoleum floor. A lot of loose pipe tobacco was embedded in the floor wax, often mixed with spittle. I had to scrape it out before doing a new wax and polish. (Oh, for the ease of carpeted and vacuumed floors!) But it was not to be. Doris arrived and yelled, ‘You bloody well get down there or else. It’s union rules, and you’re not gonna lick it. Now!’ She then noticed my tobacco problems, commented colourfully on the draftsmen and gave me a large can of wax solvent, which made the job much easier.
One morning there was in incident that saw a turning point in their attitudes towards me. Ruby arrived with a black eye and a badly swollen nose. She looked a frightful mess, and said that her husband had thrown a potato at her. Someone said that they hoped she had thrown it back at him. Ruby drew herself up to her full, shaky dignity and slurred, ‘I didn’t, ’cos I’m a lady!’ Although it was hilarious, I was too intimidated to laugh. The others roared with laughter and jeered.
Ruby turned to me and shrieked, ‘How dare you laugh at me! You bloody reffos come to this country with no respect, can’t speak King’s English, can’t cook decent grub …’ She continued for what seemed a long time. No one said a word, and I just sat there. Then Doris yelled, ‘Enough! Everybody, out!’
We filed into the lift, but Ruby stayed in the room. Quite shaken, I got to my floor, sat down and decided to get another job, perhaps washing dishes in a restaurant or cleaning some other place. I tidied the tearoom cupboard and toilets, then found that I had forgotten to take my keys. Downstairs, under the keyboard, I found Ruby sobbing and Mavis urging her to go home to bed.
This meant another ‘sickie’ so, following the rules, I did my job quickly and went to help on Ruby’s floor. The others seemed surprised to see me, but said nothing. Doris directed me to do the ashtrays and wastepaper baskets, a change from the usual toilets job. Later I told Doris I wanted to leave, and asked how long it would take her to find another cleaner. She said a month, maybe three.
The next morning Ruby got into the lift but did not step out at her floor. She and I were alone in the lift on the top floor when she grabbed me by the lapels of my coat and said, ‘Now look ’ere, love, you don’t want to take no notice of a bugger like me, see? I didn’t mean it, I’m bloody sorry!’
After this incident there was a gradual but marked change in their attitude to me. I was given tips on where to find bargains, how to avoid rip-offs and asked what I needed, because their husbands worked in a factory or storeroom and could get it for nothing. I was given various items—satchels, socks, a blouse, stockings—that must have ‘fallen off the back of a truck’.
Thus encouraged, when they mentioned reffos later I said, ‘Oi there! I’m one of them, remember?’
They replied, ‘Agh, shut up. You’re different!’
I was probably the only reffo they got to know well. And I got to know these ladies well, and I liked, admired and respected them. They were salt of the earth, rough diamonds with well-hidden hearts of gold. (Such mixed, mineral metaphors!)
I have forgotten to mention Joy, a picture of misery who mothered me most of all. One morning she whispered that the union official who had just arrived meant trouble. And she was right. He told me that, as I had not joined the cleaners’ union, I couldn’t work there. I told him that when I applied for membership it was refused because I was a member of the students’ union, and you couldn’t be in two unions.
He said that was not his problem and without joining I couldn’t work there. Joy ran to get Doris to help. When she arrived I began, ‘Could you explain to this gentleman—’ but before I could get any further Doris stepped in, assumed the charging-bull posture and growled, ‘That ain’t a gentleman. That’s Jack from the union. Why don’t you git off the kid’s back and piss off, Jack? She come here with nothi
ng, needs this job and can do a good one. So how about pissing off, Jack?’ She mentioned a big union boss, a friend, who had apparently said it was okay. Jack stood undecided for a moment, and then ‘pissed off’, never to be seen again. I worked there for another year.
My memory of the sixth charlady is blurred: she was a very quiet and self-effacing woman, and even her name escapes me. But all six of us took part in my most memorable incident at Henty House.
I arrived one morning to find the whole of the floor in the draftsmen’s room flooded by about an inch of water. It was trickling into the corridor, tearoom and toilets. Someone had left the plug in the hand basin and a tap was slowly running. I waded to the basin, turned off the tap and went to ask Doris what to do.
She surveyed the scene with strange glee, and told me to mop up only in the corridor, nowhere else. At smoko she outlined her battle plan. We were all to take our mops and squeeze-buckets (the latest in mop-up technology) to the top floor at 8:20 am, say nothing and leave the rest to her. Five of us waded into the flooded area, lined up next to our buckets, leaned on our mops and waited. Doris was organising the arriving draftsmen into a group in the corridor outside, and when she had gathered six or seven she ushered them into the flooded room.
It was the first time that I had seen the draftsmen, and they were a sight to behold. Each had a crew cut, a moustache and a downward-curved pipe in the mouth. Each wore a tweed jacket fashioned like a military uniform, with shoulder flaps in place of epaulettes. (I was later told this fashion derived from the US Air Force stationed here at the end of the war.) They looked almost identical, like a vaudeville cast about to break into a song-and-dance routine. Did they really not know how ridiculous they looked in a group? They must have had similar thoughts about us: six women in grey dustcoats, leaning on mops in the middle of a puddle, grim and reproachful.
The Testimony Page 9