I never met Moshe Fiszman, but I have watched and studied a 9 minute video of Moshe and Uncle Boydie, produced by Viv Parry, which has greatly influenced me. This film will serve as an introduction to an inspiring global project being launched in Australia in August. See below.
The following is what Viv wrote for me this morning, the day Moshe was buried in Melbourne, Australia,
Moshe Fiszman passed away aged 97 May 13, 2019
Moshe Fiszman, at 17 years of age, was a young man who suddenly became the sole carer for his family in the ghetto at Radom, Poland.
For the next five years Moshe was interned as a slave labourer at five different Concentration camps including Auschwitz.
As Moshe would say “How I survived I will never know “. He did survive and went on to be a caring husband of his wife now 99 and a loving father to his two daughters.
Moshe gave his testimony on a regular basis to the Aboriginal men in drug and alcohol recovery as part of the program I devised to help thesemen learn about William Cooper and to witness a role model in Moshe,a man who survived against all the odds.
Moshe told of the day, lyingin the snow with the last of the survivors after a final “Death“ march,he realised they were finally free; the Nazis had fled, fearing the advancing Russian Army.
Freedom after five and a half years meant no family, no country, no future. He wept for twenty four hours, then picked himself up and decided to go on. His mission was to search for any remaining family members.
Most importantly, though, his mission was to tell what really happened during the Holocaust, to make sure those who were murdered were honouredby his telling their story and to keep their memory alive.
Now it is Moshe’s story that must be kept alive. I am hopeful in my own small way, through my film Ties that Bind, Moshe’s story will inspire and will be shared, and it will honour his family and all those who perished, for generations to come.
May his name and his memory be as a blessing.
Viv Parry
Melbourne, Australia
Ties That Bind
Ties That Bind
A short documentary conversation between Uncle Boydie (Alf Turner) – grandson of Indigenous activist William Cooper, and Moishe Fiszman – a Holocaust survivor … This movie was mad…
WE ARE HERE! for Upstanders is a global program that promotes universal human rights and inclusive development. We are headquartered in Perth, Australia.
Using the stories of the Jewish Partisans, WE ARE HERE! seeks to inspire in young people the confidence and ability to stand up in the face of prejudice and oppression.
Holocaust educator and specialist Nance Adler of Seattle, Washington will visit Australia in August 2019. Nance will present to teachers, students and community leaders involved in education. We will also run workshops.
Nance’s Partisans’ Project and Lesson Plan have already been translated by our global team into Russian, Lithuanian, German, Polish and Spanish, and are available for free! https://wah.foundation/lesson/lesson-plan/
Professor Lynne Cohen, recently retired vice-chancellor of ECU – Edith Cowan University, has joined our project team. Lynne was also Head of the ECU School of Education in Western Australia
Through our network of global collaborators, there are now 27 language translations of the Partisans’ Song. The Partisans’ Song portal: https://elirab.me/znk
Recently we arranged translations into Aboriginal Noongar, Arabic and Xhosa, and soon in Zulu, Mongolian and Ladino.
The Partisans’ Song will be sung in Noongar in July at Ellenbrook Senior High School, with planned national media coverage of this World Premiere!
William Cooper
There is a strong theme connecting the Jewish Partisans and William Cooper, the Aboriginal leader who attempted to deliver his protest to the Nazi consulate in Melbourne on 6 December 1938, just after Kristallnacht. William’s petition was eventually accepted by Germany in 2017: http://www.jwire.com.au/uncle-boydie/
The Gandel Foundation, Melbourne has recently announced two scholarships in the name of William Cooper.
This powerful nine minute documentary film features Uncle Boydie, grandson of William Cooper, and Moshe Fiszman, a Holocaust survivor. https://youtu.be/1N700Olmw-U
Ties That Bind is now part of the USHMM’s – The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s (in Washington) presentation.
We are writing a lesson plan for this documentary. This will be freely available to teachers and students around the world.
Our North Queensland collaborator, Barbara Miller, has written the book: William Cooper – Gentle Warrior
We are also expanding our global online collaboration classes with World ORT and other schools. World ORT is the world’s largest Jewish education and vocational training non-governmental organisation. Several lesson plans will be offered to a global audience.
Recite or sing the Partisans’ Song in your home tongue, or in a language you have learnt. Make a video, which can be as creative as you wish or just a simple recording.
The Power Of Words
The background and context
The ‘Partisans’ Song’ – Zog Nit Keyn Mol – written by Hirsch Glik, 22, in the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, is one of the most powerful songs of resistance and defiance ever written.
Today, 75 years on, long after the demise of Hitler’s murderous regime, the partisans’ song is now sung worldwide to mark the Jewish spirit of resistance.
“Zog nit keyn mol, az du geyst dem letstn veg…….Never say that you have reached the end of the road……
Mir zaynen do! WE ARE HERE!
“This says that although it looks like the last moments of the life of the Jewish people, it is not, and where the blood was shed, will begin a new, a heroic and a wonderful Jewish life!” https://youtu.be/koA7fpGxRgw
First time translation and performance of the Partisans’ Song, Zog Nit Keynmol in Nyungar or Noongar, the language of a constellation of indigenous people living in the south-west of Western Australia.
Translation by Jesse John FLEAY – Edith Cowan University, Western Australia on 28 November 2018
Jesse John Fleay
The sound clip:
The translation:
I
Ngay ngayiny birnt
Mari warabiny maar wombar worl djidar mumbakiy
Kaya wanju wanju yakai yey
Budja daaginy Noongar yorga
II
Koorl budjara koorbon
Ngay ngayiny
Mirdap ngoop budja
Yakai kwadjet koorl
III
Ngangk djidar mumbakiy
Waam djenak dja-koorl dhabat
Koora koora nyitting
Koora koora nyitting
IV
Dudjarak ngoop
Dudjarakwombar djerta birak budja
Noongar yorga balay koordidjiny wandanginy
Dudjarak koordidjiny
V
Ngay ngayiny birnt
Mari warabiny maar wombar djidar mumbakiy
Kaya wanju wanju yakai yey
Budja daaginy Noongar yorga
Notes by the translator, Jesse John Fleay:
The universal concepts of the song tie in so well to Noongar songs of despair and war. We don’t believe in evil people, we believe in bad spirits that make people do bad things. So I adapted accordingly.
Also, nothing is ‘hidden’ in the Noongar cosmology, so for concealing, I used the smoke from a campfire, as I believed the masking of the smoke from a campfire worked rather poetically. We also don’t really have palms in the same context of a biblical perspective, so I went with desert (sand plain).
The next stage of the plan is for the choir of Ellenbrook Senior High School to learn and perform the Partisans’ Song in Noongar, under the direction of musical director, Stuart Rhine-Davis.
For more information, including all 25 language translations, visit our education portal: LEARN THE PARTISANS’ SONG
With Jewish Studies teacher, Michele Galanti and retired JS teacher Shirley Atlas
On 6 December 2018
William Cooper’s Legacy
William Cooper’s Legacy
What is that? Well, as you may know, Uncle William Cooper (1860- 1941) was an Indigenous activist and leader of his community, who also saw the injustices of the world around him, at a time when his own people were struggling for acceptance and their place in Australian society. When he heard of Kristallnacht in far off Europe, he organised for a delegation of Indigenous men and women to march to the German consulate in Melbourne, and presented them with a letter condemning the Jewish persecution. The Germans refused to accept the letter, but simply presenting it made Cooper a hero, especially in the eyes of the Jewish community.
Alon Trigger is the composer and Ron Jontof-Hutter wrote most of the text. They both studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem, where Maestro Asher Fisch of WASO also studied.
The aim of the project is to educate through art. In this particular piece, the heroic and unique efforts of Aboriginal leader William Cooper are highlighted through the intervention of a most unlikely man, deprived of rights himself, protesting to the the German Consul-General in Melbourne, representing one of the most advanced countries in the world. William Cooper is therefore a role model whose activism was virtually a lone voice during Germany’s break from civilization in the Nazi era.
Ron’s grandfather, Otto Jontof-Hutter, was one of those arrested during the Kristallnacht pogrom and sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp that 9 December 1938.
The story of William Cooper and Jontof-Hutter appeared in various overseas newspapers in 2015 which is the basis of the Cantata.
While the Cantata describes the metaphysical bond between those two men, despite never having met, artistic licence is kept to the minimum. People, events and text are for the large part genuine.
The Cantata is scored for a 45 piece orchestra, 10 voice choir/2 soloists and is about 37 minutes in duration.
A mini promo version of the duet between Cooper and Jontof-Hutter is available.
Kristallnacht Cantata promo Full Version
Kristallnacht Cantata promo Full Version
Kristallnacht Cantata; A Voice of Courage On November 10 the Nazi German Government ordered pogroms throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Thousand…
There are 3 sections 1- The chaos and creativity of Weimar/Nazi Germany, leading to 2- Kristallnacht and the bond between Cooper and Jontof-Hutter. They sing a duet describing kindness and decency as human values. The last section is about a better world where tolerance and kindness transcend different cultures as common values for all. The Cantata ends with messages for hope and optimism.
The intention is to perform the Cantata in Melbourne around April 2019. There have also have been expressions of interest to have it performed in Zurich, Germany, Los Angeles and Perth.
Alfred (Uncle Boydie) Turner, Cooper’s grandson, as well as Auntie Daphne Milwark his grandniece are both supportive of this cantata.
Viv Parry – Aboriginal People and the Holocaust Programs
Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective by Gary Foley
Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective
In a way these people were perhaps unconsciously repaying the gesture of solidarity and empathy extended years before by William Cooper and his intrepid band of Koori resistance activists.
On December 6, 1938, a fierce-gazed Indigenous man from the Murray River began a march from Southampton Street Footscray to make a simple demand for justice at government offices at 419-425 Collins Street, Melbourne. But this wasn’t a protest to defend Aborigines. It was a protest to defend Jews. And it wasn’t against a state government or Federal government. It was the German Government.
The protest was led by William Cooper. And 75 years after the event, it’s now clear that it was the only one of its kind. It’s something that didn’t happen in London, or in Paris or even in New York. It happened in Melbourne, organised by people who weren’t even citizens in their own country.
On that day, towards the end of his life, William Cooper stood up for the Jews of Europe. But as you’ll learn, it was only one of many astounding acts of justice this man made, even in his last years.
Who was William Cooper?
William Cooper was an Aboriginal. An activist. A unionist. A devout, Bible-reading, church-going, hymn-singing Christian.
Through his life, he worked as a shearer, a writer, a public speaker and, by the time he died in 1941, a political leader who could successfully demand a face-to-face meeting with the Prime Minister. As a man in his 70s, he started Australia’s first indigenous justice movement – the Australian Aborigines’ League. A movement which, long after his own death, would lead to the famous 1967 referendum.
But this was no communist radical. William Cooper was a Christian who believed the best thing that had happened for Australia’s first peoples was the Christian missions. He would argue passionately, often from the Bible, that Aboriginals ought to be treated as equal citizens in this country.
Once you learn where William Cooper came from, and how he came to stand up to injustice, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t heard of him before. But to begin, take a closer look at the day he challenged the Third Reich.
The March Against Tyranny
It was with his friends from the Australian Aborigines’ League that Cooper resolved to stand up to Hitler. It followed the night of “broken glass” on 9–10 November, 1938. In that terrifying 24 hours, Adolf Hitler’s brown shirts, the Sturmabteilung, rampaged through the streets of Germany looting, burning and smashing Jewish stores, buildings and synagogues. In just a few hours, nearly 100 Jews were killed and approximately 30,000 incarcerated in concentration camps.
Across the country, Australians were stunned as they read the stories in their newspapers. But Cooper stood up, gathered his Indigenous friends and family from Fitzory and Footscray, and they walked. Mind you, one of the reasons they walked was they had no money. In fact, Cooper was raising several grandkids in his home, and they didn’t even have electricity or gas. He’d rather spend it on ink, paper and stamps for his work for the Australian Aborigines’ League.
They arrived at the imposing stone building and climbed the stairs. He demanded a meeting with Doctor Drechsler, the General Consul of the Reichs Consulat – to speak against the Nazi mistreatment of Jews that had begun on Kristallnacht a few weeks before. But when they got to the door of the Reichs Consulate, the Nazi administration wouldn’t let them in.
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the world’s leading Holocaust research centre, says that, indeed, this protest was the only one of it’s kind in the world.
How did this happen? Why was it that – of all minority groups who could have stood up for the Jews in the 1930s – it was an Aboriginal man from one of the smallest tribes who made a stand? What drove this man, who could have been spending his twilight years fishing for Murray Cod in the Barmah Forest, to become a man who meddled in matters of state? What gave him the temerity to speak against the German Reich?
William Cooper (Aboriginal Australian) – Wikipedia
William Cooper (Aboriginal Australian) – Wikipedia
Lore Zusman was born in Königsberg 90 years ago. Here are her memories of the Königsberg Synagogue, Kristallnacht and a book presented to her mother after the synagogue was destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938. Königsberg / Kaliningrad KehilaLink with links to the synagogue and Kristallnacht. Hear Erika Sternberg’s story on Kristallnacht in Breslau. Click on her image. Commemoration in Perth – 9 November 2016 Just received: An email from Susan Taube of the USHHM I was only 12 years old when the Nazis ransacked Jewish homes and buildings in my neighborhood on Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass.” They took my father away to Buchenwald. My mother, sister, and I didn’t know if we would ever see him again. Our front door was smashed, our books torn apart, our dishes shattered. And with my father gone, we were left to pick up the pieces. This week marks the 78th anniversary of that terrible
Reprinted from The Jerusalem Post By RICHARD SHAVEI-TZION (My wife Jill’s cousin) 1 January 2015 Remembrance and Renewal How a song survived the Holocaust, traveled around the world and returned to the city of its birth. The Ramatayim Men’s Choir of Jerusalem.. (photo credit:JURGEN ALBRECHT) The 10 Tevet fast is designated as a “general Kaddish day” for those whose relatives died in the Holocaust and whose date of death is unknown. But it is not only people who disappeared without a trace in the Holocaust; many of their magnificent achievements across the gamut of human endeavor were lost to humanity. One of the great accomplishments of German and other European communities destroyed in the conflagration of World War II was the magnificent performance of Jewish liturgical music composed in the 19th and 20th centuries.Fortunately, unlike great works of visual art, music can be written and copied.Thus, although great composers, cantors and choristers were murdered and
A short documentary conversation between Uncle Boydie (Alf Turner) – grandson of Indigenous activist William Cooper, and Moishe Fiszman – a Holocaust survivor …
This movie was made in Australia in 2017. It is also now part of the USHMM’s (Washington) collection.
Watch “The Ties that Bind” from the Jewish Holocaust Centre | Hero Town
At Hero Town, it is our utmost priority to empower people to stand up in the face of adversity and injustice. It was our immense honour, then, that we were invited to the premiere of a documentary directed by Viv Parry titled Ties that Bind: From Auschwitz to Cummeragunja. We spent the full day at the Jewish Holocaust Centre and we left feeling deeply affected, saddened at the tragedy but also awed at the tales of survival, heroism, and resilience that we were invited to share.
