VOLUME 4 NO. 1
FEBRUARY 2016
Melbourne Child Survivors Website Dear Child Survivors Welcome to the first edition of Connections for 2016! Our first exciting news is that Child Survivors will have their own website, a link on the Jewish Holocaust Centre’s website will take you to the CSH home page where you will be able to read “About Us” the history of the Melbourne child
survivor group, personal child survivor stories in the ‘My Story… My Life’ section, the research section will feature articles and essays by Dr Paul Valent and other notable experts who have written extensively about child survivors. ‘Connections’, our own newsletter, will be available to read and share and we are hopeful our site will be up and running within the next 12 months. Viv Parry, Chairperson, CSH
CSH Forum - “Children Remembering Hurt” Following our first extremely successful forum and panel discussion ‘Children Surviving Hurt’, panelists headed by Dr Paul Valent, psychotherapist, traumatologist and child survivor (together with Richard Rozen OAM, Bernadette Gore and Floris Kalman) will explore “Understanding the nature of Holocaust memories in survivors”. As Dr. Paul Valent writes: “In the 1990’s, an unremembered group of survivors made their appearance - Child survivors of the Holocaust, that is, those survivors who were children
in the Holocaust. Their own memories were overshadowed by their parents who told them “What would you know, you were only a child”’ and who desired that their children remembered nothing. So suppressed were those child survivors, that they had not even recognized themselves to be survivors.” This forum sets out to explore how child survivors deal with past memories and aims to create a pathway to better understanding the way the mind works in those who have experienced traumatic events as children. Audience participation will be encouraged. Date: Sunday 17 April Venue: Jewish Holocaust Centre Time: 2.00pm – 4.00pm
Claims Conference Update It is certainly not too late to commence filling in your Claim form. You still have two options: Go to the claims Conference website www.claimscon.org find the Survivor compensation link on the menu and download the application form. You can also phone Jewish Care Victoria on 8517 5999 and ask to speak with a Client Support Person handling the child survivor compensation applications and make an appointment to sit with a consultant and complete
your application form at their office or in your home. Either way we suggest you call JCV to make sure your application is correctly filled in or to ask which documents you might need to bring with you for your appointment. There is a chance you may be eligible for the Hardship Fund if you do not meet the Child survivor compensation claim criteria, both really worth checking out with JCV.