VOLUME 13 NO 1
MARCH 2024
Dear Child survivors of the Holocaust, We trust you are all managing as well as possible in these difficult times. Please know that Lena and I are as determined as ever to make sure that the CSH group stays connected in the best way we know how; through th h inspiring i i i and heartfelt stories that we hope are meaningful for Child survivors and your families. This edition of Connections has some wonderful news; our incredible and important CSH patchwork wall hanging has been restored to its former beauty and now hangs proudly at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.! It is sad our much-loved CSH member, Eva Marks, who created the concept for the patchwork wall hanging, is no longer with us but our dearest Paulette Goldberg who stitched the squares for this irreplaceable work, is very much alive and well and living in Sydney. Paulette, we hope to see
you in Melbourne soon to visit your amazing handwork. Dr Paul Valent, founding president of the CSH group in Melbourne, well over 30 years ago, has written a piece in answer to my request “to provide a much-needed reminder how important e most love and random acts of kindness are in the distressing of times”. Paul ventures back to a childhood memory that still remains precious and comforting, eighty years on. We welcome the new Melbourne Holocaust Museum CEO, Dr Steven Cooke and his first letter to Child Survivors. CSH Peter Nash shares his incredible story. Wishing you all the very best in every way Viv Parry & Lena Fiszman
Lena’s Desk: Hidden Child: how I survived the Holocaust by Baroness Regina Sluszny During the horror of World War II, many Jewish families in Belgium were forced to hide their children in the hopes that they would avoid detection by the Gestapo and ultimately survive the war. In Belgium alone, more than 5000 children survived the genocide via disguise and concealment from the world. This is the Regina in Hemiksem as a story of Baroness Regina child, 1944 Sluszny: one of Belgium’s remaining Holocaust survivors, and one of the Hidden Children. My name is Regina Sluszny, and I was a little older than a year when the war started in Belgium. I lived in Antwerp with my mother Jenta, my father Jacob, and two brothers, Marcel and Eli; born into a Jewish family who emigrated from Poland in 1930. We lived quite peacefully in Antwerp until May of 1940, when German soldiers invaded Belgium. Their main goal was to eliminate the
entire Jewish population, to exterminate them. Even the children. Soon after the occupation began, they introduced new laws, specifically targeted towards the Jewish population. The first law, which came into effect in 1941, stated that all Jews had to be registered in the town hall on a separate list called the Joodselijst: the Jewish List. A copy of this list was given to the German officers in charge so that they could go and pick up all of the Jewish families and assemble them in Mechelen at the Kazerne Dossin – a detention and processing centre. From there, they were sent to the extermination camps in 27 trains between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,000 mothers, fathers, and children, including babies, were sent to be killed, and only around 1,200 came back. Hiding in plain sight In mid-1942 my parents realised it was too dangerous to stay in Antwerp with three small children. My father knew the daughter of a woman named Poldine from when he was working in the markets before the war. Poldine kept a pub and guesthouse with some rooms in Hemiksem - a small town some 15 minutes from Antwerp. She had two empty rooms at the guesthouse, which she offered to us,