janeKormanART

About 15 years ago, when I was a mature-age Fine Art student at Monash Uni, I took a semester in Prato, near Florence. We students had to develop a project that had some connection to the area.

I can’t remember why, but I decided to make a video piece on ‘Baggage’ and the stuff we carry around with us.

 

Somehow my research took me to the Deportation museum in Prato, dedicated to the memory of the victims of Nazi concentration and extermination camps - the Jews, Sinti and Romani people, homosexuals and Jehovah witnesses. 

 

To my surprise, I realised that my own family history of persecution was surfacing in this project. 

 

The suitcase can be a metaphor for our own baggage - the accumulation of experiences and influences, not only from one’s own life, but also from the lives of previous generations. It is hard to shed this baggage. Sometimes we don’t even realise the weight we are carrying.  

 

A suitcase is also a symbol for loss, instability, homelessness. As a Jew and daughter of Holocaust survivors, the word ‘suitcase’ triggers memories of my parents’ war time stories of being forced out off their homes in 1939, only permitted to take a small case with them. At Auschwitz all those millions of suitcases were confiscated and their owners sent to their death. My parents were the lucky ones who managed to survive.

 

 A few years after the war, in 1949, my mum and dad arrived in Australia as young refugees from blood-soaked Europe. They were carrying one small suitcase* full of nappies and books. They were astounded by the openness and friendliness of the people who didn't seem to care who was Jewish or who wasn’t. In the early 1950s Australians were more concerned about who was Protestant and who was Catholic. Mum recounts a story from those years:

 

‘Little Celina turned three and a half while we were still living behind the shop. I had been thinking about enrolling her in a kindergarten because I wanted her to learn proper English, so I took her to Wesley Kindergarten, off High Street, Northcote. 

 

I introduced myself and Celina to the headmistress. ‘Religion?’ she asked. I did not know how to answer. After the Holocaust I was very sensitive — it was after everything. 

But the headmistress made herself clear, ‘As long as you’re not a Catholic, everything is alright.’

 

When I left the building, I started jumping and dancing in the street. ‘At last, at last, they don’t persecute the Jews!’ I was overjoyed.

 

Fast forward 75 years, and Jew hatred has finally reached Australia’s shores. Yes, the same country where mum and dad once kissed the ground in gratitude. The same country that sings the words in its national anthem: 

Australians all let us rejoice,
For we are one and free…

 

I shake my head in disbelief. Who would have believed that in 2024, Jews in our once beloved country are feeling fearful and threatened. My generation (the 2nd Gen) are now worrying about their kids and grandkids’ safety. Could it really be true that this so-called amazing country is no longer a safe place for us? 

 

Once again we are being told to go back to Poland or some other country where we had previously been scapegoated and then forced to convert, expelled or murdered. 

Are these warning signs that we need to pack our suitcases once again ? 

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Who knows. We are the wandering Jews.