The Testimony

by Halina Wagowska

  There are exceptions. Occasionally, physical or mental illness causes a home to disintegrate. Among homeless teenagers there are many who have had to leave home because of clashes with, or rejection by, a new step-parent. Several of our students came from such situations. They had a history of many a brief stay with various relatives and in emergency accommodation—all short-term arrangements. The school became the only stable and constant element in their lives.

  We organised birthday and Christmas parties to enhance a sense of belonging, and most of the kids seemed to enjoy these. However, a few had a very jaundiced view of the world and there was no way of pleasing them.

  Mary (not her real name) was a remarkable person. Wise and mature beyond her years, she wanted to study social sciences and become a social worker. Even back then she had the makings for it: she noticed other people’s needs and problems, and offered help. Others confided in her and sought her friendship, and she was a great and stabilising influence in an otherwise somewhat brittle setting.

  One day Mary told me about herself and her childhood from hell. Her alcoholic father became violent when drunk, and her battered mother lived on tranquillisers and cried most of the time. Her brother, who was some years older, had left home after a fight with his father and, although he was reported missing as a fifteen-year-old, was never seen again.

  The family living next door encouraged Mary to play with their children and to stay at their place whenever it was not safe for her to be at home. That family was in complete contrast to her own. They were sober, dependable, caring and never violent. They gave Mary a surprise party for her tenth birthday, and she told me that it was just after that party when she decided to live her life the way they did next door, not like they did at her house. ‘Wasn’t I lucky to have that next door?’ she said.

  Her father went to jail, the next-door family moved interstate and Mary’s mother was put into supervised care after another suicide attempt. For some years Mary lived with her grandmother, a loving but ailing lady. When she died the school referred Mary to Homeplus.

  ‘Mum gets very upset when I visit her, and begs my forgiveness,’ Mary told me, ‘so the nurse said it would be better for her if I did not visit. I don’t want to see my father, and the police are still advertising for my brother, though now he would look very different from the photo we gave them eight years ago.’ I said to her, ‘Mary, I salute you for the way you cope with life. It is very good to know you.’

  We then talked about current problems in the house. Kate (not her real name), who had arrived recently, was aggressive, disruptive and out to annoy everyone. We wondered if she would ever settle down in Homeplus. I asked Mary if she had any ideas about how we could help Kate. Mary, who was then seventeen years old and could have been my granddaughter, said, ‘Halina, you can only help those who want to help themselves. If they don’t want to do that, then there is nothing you can do.’

  Kate soon announced she was sick of this stupid place and the school as well, and was going to live with her boyfriend. A gangly youth arrived on a motorbike and, with Kate’s suitcase wedged between them, they drove off. The school’s welfare officer was not surprised.

  The project ran for six years and housed twenty-five students for varying lengths of time. At the very least they were kept off the streets, but they must also have gained some benefit from being treated with dignity, respect and care. To some of them this was obviously a new experience, and perhaps it lifted their expectations of life.

  Twelve of those students finished their secondary education, which opened doors to further studies, apprenticeships and employment. Several left Homeplus to return to their wayward families, for better or for worse. Some dropped out of school and went back to live in squats and on the streets. One went to prison. We, the ‘do-gooders’, were gratified by the successes, frustrated by the intransigence of some of the kids and saddened by the failures. Were our efforts inadequate or inexpert? Or was it, as Mary had said, that you can only help those who want to help themselves?

  One student wrote to us. After describing other accommodation that he had experienced, the letter ended thus:

  With you I gained friends and a responsible attitude towards life. I know I have somewhere to go at the end of the day. Thank you Homeplus (you crazy oldies), regards GB.

  THE SPINDLERS

  Mr Sid Spindler was a nodding acquaintance of mine for some years. We used to meet at lectures, symposia and other events run by groups such as the Rationalists, the Fabians, the Jewish Democratic Society and the United Nations Association. Occasionally, we exchanged comments about the subject or the speaker. I observed that he was well known and respected and seemed to know of and be involved in many activities.

  In 1996, while he served as a senator for Victoria, I approached him as his constituent and asked if he would table some papers in the Senate on my behalf. In the covering letter I expressed my concerns about the sale of swastikas, other Nazi paraphernalia and race-hate propaganda at the gun shows held regularly in Melbourne.

  Senator Spindler agreed. He helped select the most significant examples from my collection, and took them to Canberra. On the day of the tabling he rang to tell me the time and radio frequency on which I could listen to the procedure. I heard him preface my case briefly, then read the letter and officially table the papers. I was chuffed, and recall thinking that Senator Spindler was the ‘cat’s pyjamas’.

  I was aware of Premier Jeff Kennett’s allegation that Senator Sid Spindler had been a member of the Nazi Party in Germany, and of Kennett’s apology when told that Sid was seven years old when the war started. Several months later, in 1996, the Jewish anti-defamation organisation B’nai B’rith invited Sid to speak at one of their functions, as a forum for his right of reply to Kennett’s slanders. I went to this function and it became a memorable occasion.

  Sid told us he was born to German parents in the Polish city of Lodz. They were part of an enclave of experts involved in running the German-owned knitting mills. Soon after the invasion of Poland, a suburb of Lodz was surrounded by barbed wire and became the infamous slave-labour camp known as the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

  A tramline traversing this camp along one of its streets had barbed-wire fences on both sides of its route. Sid, with his mother, travelled this way to the Lutheran cemetery. All his questions about the people behind these fences, who and why, met with evasive answers. (I remember thinking, when I heard this, that I too would protect my eight-year-old from the gruesome reality.) Sid went on to say that one day the place was suddenly empty of people. His mother was distressed and said this was terrible, but did not comment further. Sid described how, after the war, when these events and the enormity of the Holocaust were revealed, he was greatly disturbed by realising that, just a few streets away from his sheltered childhood, horrifying atrocities were being committed.

  The second part of his talk dealt with the reason he entered politics: the imperative to protect human rights and dignity. But I could not focus on that. I sat stunned by the coincidence I had just discovered. I spent four years and three months behind that barbed wire in Lodz, herded in there with some 170,000 others in early 1940. And I lived on the tramline street. I watched the trams each day, often tried to imagine what the passengers thought of us, and occasionally spat on those trams from the wooden footbridge above.

  I rushed to talk to Sid after his speech. He introduced me to his wife, Julia, and after a quick ‘how do you do,’ I said to Sid, ‘Hey, here is looking at you again! I was there and often watched the trams going through the ghetto, so I might have seen you!’ Sid looked at me for what seemed a long time before he asked, ‘You were in that terrible place?’ I said that I had lived in No. 80 Limanowski Strasse, near the footbridge, and had been ten years old at the time. I babbled on until I became aware of Sid’s distress. He took a step back and looked shocked, as if expecting to be attacked. Julia put a protective arm on his shoulder. Then the thought struck me that Sid expected res
entment or blame from me. But how could I, or anyone, blame a seven-year-old? To resolve this very awkward moment I gave him a long bear hug. Sensing his relief I planted a noisy kiss on his cheek for good measure. Others waited to speak to the Spindlers, and I went home.

  The incident had a familiar effect on me: a drawer fell out of the filing cabinet in my mind and spilt its contents onto centre stage. It took a few days to gather the Litzmannstadt Ghetto pictures and memories and file them away again.

  Freed of his duties as a senator, Sid initiated a spate of projects and activities. As some were in my areas of interest, we joined forces. We found much common ground in our values, views and passions, and in the direction of our pursuits. The discovery of extensive common ground is a joyful and bonding experience. It is grounds for the dance of kindred spirits.

  Julia says that it must have been something in the water Sid and I drank as children in Lodz to account for our synchronised thinking. Yes, the shared cultural ambience of our childhood and growing up in the upside-down world of the war, witnessing the horrendous consequences of prejudice—the barbarous Holocaust—had indeed shaped our attitudes, values and anxieties.

  The Holocaust loomed large in Sid’s psyche and in his notion of collective responsibility and guilt. I argued that this notion, valid or not, should not include children. I also said that he was as guilty of the Holocaust as I was of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

  We also shared and were shaped by the three postwar years spent in Stalin’s area of influence: East Germany for Sid, Poland for me. The perversion of the noble ideal of socialism left a bitter mark on our youthful enthusiasm. To those who have experienced totalitarian regimes, democracy is precious and must be protected from damage.

  We both rejected belief in God. Sid went through a thorough philosophical analysis of his beliefs and values before rejecting religion. In my own rather primitive way I could not accept an omnipotent, omniscient and loving God who allows such great suffering of the innocent. The annual reports of UNICEF tell me that between nine and eleven million young children die terrible deaths from starvation or disease each year.

  We were both alarmed by the success of Pauline Hanson and her brand of xenophobia. Her tactics of mobilising disaffected people—in her case, the farmers—during economic recession, through hatred towards a common enemy responsible for their ills (Asians and Aborigines at first, later Africans and Muslims) had an eerie resemblance to Nazi Germany. Hansonism gave us a fright, and so did the introduction of laws of sedition, the increase of powers for secret police and the fostering of patriotic fervour.

  We found that, before our encounter and growing friendship, we had each supported a number of causes and issues that could be broadly grouped as matters of social justice: I, in my small way of writing letters to the press and supporting petitions and submissions to relevant authorities; Sid, on the larger stage as a senator, a speaker at symposia, a writer of many published articles and as a convenor and leader of action groups.

  The issues included the need for a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, the protection of gay rights, and many campaigns: for prison reforms; against child labour and exploitation in sweat shops; against the privatisation of the CBA bank, the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL) and some prisons; against the appalling treatment of asylum seekers; and, most of all, against the many wrongs still inflicted on the First Australians.

  We both regarded the unregulated market as a jungle where predators prevailed. We both complained about the abolition of the excellent Victorian Law Reform Commission when Jeff Kennett came to power. We lamented the neglect of the valuable research report ‘Knowledge Nation’, produced by Dr Barry Jones AO, and we pleaded for better funding for the ABC.

  When I came to Australia in 1948 everyone, by my standards, seemed very well off except Indigenous Australians. And there was the all-too-familiar shadow of perceived racial inferiority cast over them. But study and a demanding job kept my involvement at a low and sporadic level. On my retirement from work in 1996, I wanted to make a contribution beyond my membership in several Aboriginal groups.

  This path also led to the Spindlers. Julia and Sid had been involved in such hands-on work for many years, and had spent several of them in Alice Springs setting up various services and structures for the local Aboriginals. They were now involved in several projects in Melbourne, and I gladly joined them, participating in their well-structured activities based on the understanding of needs and of cultural sensitivities. Their Towards a Just Society Fund, now with a growing number of participants, provides bursaries for Aboriginal students at several universities in Victoria, while the Friends of Worawa group supports students in an Aboriginal secondary college. These activities are based on the belief that education will provide a circuit-breaker in the cycle of Aboriginal disadvantage. This work also entailed committee and planning meetings, many held at the Spindlers’ home.

  In social settings people sometimes observed how much Sid and I were on the same wavelength and how we often finished each other’s sentences. His German-tinged accent and my Polish-tinged accent puzzled people. To the question ‘How did the two of you get together?’ Sid always replied: ‘Halina and I spent our childhood during the war in the same Polish city but on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence.’ In the awkward silence that often followed one could sense a deepening puzzlement.

  I found instant rapport with Julia. There was no ice to break where she was concerned, and I came to marvel at her many skills and accomplishments. We both enjoy the humour of the absurd—laughter, as Victor Borge declares, is the shortest distance between two people.

  The Spindlers’ four children, married and with successful careers and young children of their own, participate in some of their parents’ activities, and meet with them frequently. It is a pleasure to observe the dynamics of this family, the closeness of the siblings, the high quality of their relationships and their ingrained friendliness. Sid, the proud father, always stressed that, unfortunately, he could not claim any credit for it: his ‘workaholism’ made him almost an absentee father, and Julia alone shaped the family.

  In 2007 I had the great privilege of reading the first draft of Sid’s autobiography. I always thought it important, for his grandchildren’s sake, to have on record Sid’s rebuttal of the allegations of his Nazi Party membership. The book struck me as a valuable document on several levels. It is a vivid description of a child growing up during World War II, and a story of personal struggle with evil and the process of evolving values and ideals. The account of Sid’s early years in Australia forms a slice of the postwar migration experience here. The story of the birth of the Australia Party, followed by the Australian Democrats, offers valuable insights into a period of the political history of this nation. Thanks to Sid’s prodigious work as a legislator, the book reveals how the legislative process shapes and civilises our society.

  The book also describes the extraordinary number of community projects and activities in which Sid and Julia were, and are, involved. While his workaholism may have been, as Sid believed, the legacy of a demanding father, the direction of his activities and obsessions was a legacy of the Holocaust. Unlike me, Sid read many analyses of that event, sought answers and tried to define causes.

  His book highlights significant achievements by an individual who was driven, persistent and unceasing in his fight for human rights, social justice and for positive discrimination toward the disadvantaged. He was not an easygoing, laid-back chap and was rather poor on small talk. Julia’s part in these achievements was large and frequently acknowledged by Sid. He referred to her as the mainstay of his life. And she was, indeed.

  The diagnosis of his liver cancer in 2007 shocked and saddened his family and friends. But Sid worked on his laptop in hospital during chemotherapy, writing major articles and letters to the press. Between treatments he ran our planning and committee meetings with even greater urgency. If compulsive, obsessive social activism were a cure for cance
r, we who loved him could have relaxed.

  * * *

  Sid Spindler died on 1 March 2008, his fiftieth wedding anniversary. By sheer strength of will he prolonged his rapidly ebbing life to meet this date. His death is such a great loss to his family and to the disadvantaged in our society.

  And to me, for he was the brother I had wanted since I was a kid.

  WILLIAM COOPER

  I don’t remember when I first heard about William Cooper, but I recall my amazement and then a kind of elation. He was an Aborigine, a leader fighting for basic human rights denied to his people. And he was a lone voice in Australia protesting against the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria. I saw it as an affirmation of the brotherhood of the oppressed and persecuted.

  William Cooper was born in 1861 to an Aboriginal mother and a white Australian father. As a ‘half-caste’ child he was at risk of being taken away from his parents to be ‘assimilated’, and often had to hide to escape the hunting police.

  At the mission he learned to read and write, and became an avid reader. When the family was forced to move into a reserve, the young William was taken to work as a farm labourer. Later, working as a coachman for a politician in Melbourne, he started reading about countries that had indigenous populations such as New Zealand, the USA, Fiji and South Africa.

  Cooper was forty when his country became the Commonwealth of Australia, under the 1901 Act of Federation. Its constitution excluded the first inhabitants from its state. William Cooper was never regarded as a citizen, had no right to vote and was not counted in the census. Twenty-six years after his death the 1967 referendum ended this exclusion.

  His many fights against the dispossession and persecution of his people included a petition to King George V. This was intercepted by the Australian government, and never reached the king. In 1936 he founded the Australian Aboriginal League (AAL), the first organisation to fight for legal and land rights and parliamentary participation for Indigenous Australians. His opposition to the entrenched racist policies of Australia failed repeatedly.