Online Flip Book / Download   Back to our Information Page

It was the holiday in Olinda, they all agreed, that marked the beginning of the end. Mr and Mrs Bensky, Mr and Mrs Small, Mr and Mrs Pekelman, Mr and Mrs Ganz and Mr Berman had been a group for thirty-two years. ‘Our company’, they called themselves. Every Easter and every Christmas they went somewhere together.

At first the holidays were modest. They were all migrants, newly arrived refugees, when they met in Australia. They met in the summer of 1950, at Solly Nadel’s Guest House in Hepburn Springs. Mr and Mrs Bensky had arrived at Nadel’s on a truck. Mrs Bensky and Lola had travelled in the cabin with the driver, and Mr Bensky was strapped to a chair on the back of the truck.

Josl Bensky had paid Jack, the driver, to drive them to Hepburn Springs. In two weeks, Jack would come and pick them up and take them home. The return trip cost Josl five shillings. Mrs Bensky had wept all the way there. She was sure her Josl was going to fall off the truck. And Lola, unnerved by Mrs Bensky’s cries, had screamed all the way to Hepburn Springs.

When they arrived, Mr Bensky had had to wait for Jack to unstrap him. He felt a bit humiliated when a group of guests gathered to watch.

It was the Benskys’ first holiday in Australia. Mrs Bensky entered Lola in the fancy-dress competition. From some cardboard and newspaper and glue, and a bottle of black ink, Mrs Bensky made Lola a witch’s outfit. A black pointed hat, a black fringed cloak and a big false nose. Little Lola, the witch, won second prize.

By the end of the fortnight the ‘company’ had been formed. Mr and Mrs Bensky, Mr and Mrs Small, Mr and Mrs Pekelman, Mr and Mrs Ganz and Mr and Mrs Berman had gone for walks together after dinner at night. They had bottled the mineral water from the springs together. They had eaten together. They were firm friends.

Mr and Mrs Pekelman had arrived in Melbourne only four weeks earlier. Mrs Bensky took Mrs Pekelman under her wing. She introduced her to Mrs Papov and to Mrs Berg. It was essential, Renia Bensky explained to Genia Pekelman, to be on the good side of these gossip-mongers.

Later, in Melbourne, Renia took Genia shopping. The two women bought a length of black knitted fabric from the Victoria Market. From this material, Renia made two tops with scooped necklines and three-quarter sleeves, and two straight skirts.

Renia made a whole wardrobe for herself and Mrs Pekelman. The total cost of this wardrobe was less than the price of one dress at Myers. Mrs Bensky felt very proud of herself. Mrs Pekelman was grateful, and she remained in eternal admiration of Mrs Bensky.

The two women looked so stylish, so elegant, so beautiful in their new clothes. Mrs Bensky’s hair was cut in the new, chic, short, gamine style. She had taught Mrs Pekelman how to roll her thick auburn hair into a chignon. Both women were olive-skinned and strong-limbed. Looking at them, it was impossible to believe that five years ago Renia Bensky was in Auschwitz and Genia Pekelman was in Bergen-Belsen.

At Solly Nadel’s Guest House, the men (and an occasional woman) sat inside and played cards. One hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit, and they sat with the windows closed, the air thick with cigarette smoke. And they played cards. They played Red Aces, poker and gin rummy.

The women sat in small groups outside. They chatted to each other and fussed around their own children and other people’s children. Shouldn’t little Johnny be wearing a sun hat? How could Harry’s mother let him out without some sunburn cream on his nose? And look at that Layla, didn’t Mrs Hersh know that a young girl shouldn’t be allowed to get so fat? And the Horowitz boy, he was already out of control. What would it be like when he was a teenager? For the women on holiday, here at Solly Nadel’s in Hepburn Springs, these were the questions of the day.

At night there was dancing. The guests at Solly Nadel’s could be divided into six categories. The good dancers, the bad dancers and the non-dancers, and the good card-players, the bad card-players and the non-card-players.

The good dancers enjoyed the highest status at Solly Nadel’s. Their importance could only be surpassed by a professor or a doctor. There were not too many professors or doctors at Solly Nadel’s, so the good dancers were the elite.

‘Look at that Mr Gruner, what a dancer,’ Genia Pekelman said almost every morning at the breakfast table. ‘He dances the tango and the foxtrot like he was in a world championship of dancing.’ Genia Pekelman, who was awkward in the kitchen and around the dinner table, turned into a light-footed, delicate slip of a girl on the dance floor. All her self-consciousness left her. She side-stepped and back-stepped. She whirled in neat, graceful circles. She swivelled her hips and held her head at a coquettish angle.

During the day, the ballroom at Solly Nadel’s was used as a dining room. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were served there. At meal times the noise was deafening. One hundred and twenty people ate and talked simultaneously. They ate while they talked. They talked over the top of one another. If they felt they weren’t being heard, they shouted. Some of the guests shouted everything they said. The same conversations were repeated every day. The sentiments that were voiced were interchangeable among the guests. Mrs Bloom would probably be saying the same thing as Mrs Fink, and Mrs Freedman’s thoughts often echoed Mrs Rose’s.

Slivers of sentences shot through the room like crossfire. ‘How old is little Esther? Oh, she’s not talking yet? My Johnny says many words. And Esther is still in nappies? What a shame. Johnny says for quite a few weeks already, “I need pishy. I need cucky.” ’

Most of the men were looking for ways to better themselves. The same conversations travelled from table to table. ‘Did you hear that Mr Brown was looking for a good tailor? You can get a job at the Renee of Rome Factory. He doesn’t pay so good, but he always gives the Jews work. Watch out for Mr Sal. Never do piecework for him. He complains about every garment.’

*  *  *  *  *

Every summer Solly Nadel employed Mr Muller, an elderly Austrian baker, to bake bread. Mr Muller worked seven days a week in December and January. He baked from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. He baked rye bread, pumpernickel and Vienna, and he baked special challah rolls for dinner.

There was never any bread left on the tables after the meals. Mr Grossman saved the leftover bread from his table. After two weeks, he took home three cardboard boxes of bread. Other people did the same.

‘He is a peasant, that Mr Grossman,’ said Mrs Lipshutz. Frieda Factor interrupted her. ‘We should understand, Mrs Lipshutz, that this is not his normal behaviour. I don’t know if you know this, Mrs Lipshutz, but Mr Grossman was in Mauthausen concentration camp.’ ‘Well, he is now in Melbourne, Australia, where there is plenty of bread,’ Mrs Lipshutz replied. ‘That sort of behaviour causes anti-Semitism,’ she added.

Mrs Lipshutz, who had been in Australia for ten years, was not happy with the postwar influx of Jews. ‘They are a different brand of Jew altogether,’ she told her Australian neighbour, Mrs Cunningham. ‘They are peasants. We, Adam and I, came from cultured families. We read books, we went to the theatre, we went to the opera, we always had the best seats. We travelled in Europe. My father spoke fluent French. We were not peasants. You will see, these Jewish refugees will make the Australian people into anti-Semites.’

‘Oh, no, Mrs Lipshutz,’ said Mrs Cunningham. ‘I feel so sorry for some of them. They’re still young girls. With those numbers on their arms they remind me of branded cattle. And Mrs Lipshutz, I met a young woman who was a dentist in Warsaw before the war, and now she is a cleaner. And her sister, who was a doctor, is working as a machinist.’

‘Pheh!’ said Mrs Lipshutz. ‘They all say that they were doctors in Poland.’

Later that night, Mrs Lipshutz told Mr Lipshutz that her greatest fears had been confirmed. Mrs Cunningham, their hard-working, church-going neighbour, had told her that these new Jewish migrants looked like cattle.

If it was so easy for a good, kind person like Mrs Cunningham to be an anti-Semite, said Morry Lipshutz, what hope was there for the world?

*  *  *  *  *

The company went to Solly Nadel’s for their Christmas holidays every year until 1959. By then they had a bit more money. Things were looking up for most of the group. The Smalls and the Pekelmans were partners in a knitting factory. Mr Bensky owned Joren Fashions, a small factory that manufactured ladies’ suits. Costumes, Josl called them. Pola and Moishe Ganz already had six machinists working for them at Champs Elysees Blouses, and Mr Berman wholesaled plastic bags. Joseph Zelman was the wealthiest of the group. He was already building his sixth block of flats. He bought the land, built the flats, and sold them as they were being built. He worked day and night. He undercut his competition by settling for a smaller profit. In 1959 he was on his way to banking his first million.

In 1959 the company went to Surfers Paradise. They rented four units in the same block in Cavill Avenue. Mrs Bensky brought her own frozen chicken stock. Mrs Zelman brought six pounds of lean beef, which she made into three big klops on the first day. One klops for lunch, and two for later in the week. Mrs Ganz stewed a big pot of apples and baked a sponge cake, and everyone felt at home.

They ate their meals outside, around the swimming pool. At night they walked along the beach. For Mr Bensky, the highlight of this holiday was the matzoh brei that Mrs Zelman made for everyone most mornings. Josl was the first at the breakfast table each morning. He looked so happy eating the matzoh brei that Mrs Zelman thought she could have happily made it for him forever. Some men, she thought, are so easy to please.

Surfers Paradise, the company decided, was a very successful holiday place. They went there often after that.

The company had other memorable holidays. They went to Rotorua in New Zealand. They had mud baths and mineral spas. Mrs Bensky loved this. She sat happily for hours covered in hot mud. Josl had to be ordered into the mud. He hated it. On the second day Josl sprained his ankle, and had to spend the rest of his New Zealand holiday doing what he liked best. He lay on the bed in the motel room and read detective novels. He finished a book and a box of chocolates a day.

Mrs Ganz and Mr Zelman went to the mineral baths together. Mrs Bensky was worried. She feared that the attachment between them was more than it should be. No-one else appeared worried.

In New Zealand the company discovered duty-free shopping. All the families came home with new cameras.

In 1982 the company went to Israel. They had planned this trip for months. Mr Bensky was in charge of the itinerary. They stopped in Las Vegas on their way to Israel.

Mr Bensky was one of the keenest card-players of the group. He loved to gamble. Mr Zelman and Mr Pekelman thought that Las Vegas wasn’t really on the way from Melbourne to Tel Aviv, but they kept their thoughts to themselves.

Josl Bensky was deliriously happy in Las Vegas. He lost at blackjack, he lost at roulette. He lost playing chemin de fer and five card stud poker. He played the poker machines in the main gambling hall, and he played the mini poker machines in the toilets. In two days Josl Bensky lost $700. ‘Las Vegas’, he told everyone in Melbourne when he got back, ‘was the best part of the trip.’

*  *  *  *  *

‘There’s too many Jews here for me,’ said Izak Pekelman in Israel. ‘I don’t feel so good among so many Jews.’ The rest of the group thought that what Izak said may have sounded a little strange but, in different ways, they all knew what he meant.

Renia Bensky stayed in the hotel room with the flu for most of their three weeks in Israel. Genia Pekelman wouldn’t go to the pictures, or to the theatre, or to any concerts. ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ she said, ‘I would prefer to stay in the hotel. It makes me too nervous to be with a crowd.’ To her husband Genia said what the others had understood she was trying to say: ‘Izak, I can’t stand being in the middle of so many Jews. It makes me too nervous. What if someone starts to shoot at us? It reminds me too much of too many things.’

George Small couldn’t eat anything in Israel. ‘This is not what we ate at home in Poland,’ he said. ‘This is the food of Arabs, not the food of Jews.’

In Mea Shearim, the Orthodox area of Jerusalem, Josl Bensky bellowed: ‘Who do they think they are, these Orthodox? What are they doing? Why do they have to draw such attention to themselves? Where in the Talmud does it say you have to wear such a long black coat, and the short black trousers, and the black hats? This is the modern world, not the old world. Stupid bastards. They cause trouble for everyone. Haven’t the Jews had enough trouble?’ By now Josl was almost in tears.

That night the company were having dinner in Jerusalem. A group of Orthodox young men came and sat at the next table. Josl looked at them and said loudly, ‘Oy, I’m going to vomit.’

Mr Berman liked Israel. But Chaim Berman was a quiet man. He always agreed with the majority. He kept to himself the elation that he felt at being in the homeland of the Jewish people. He loved the robustness of the people, the honesty, the lack of artifice. He loved the commitment and the loyalty. Chaim thought that it was a privilege to live for an ideal, and in Israel people were living for an ideal. They had, Chaim Berman thought, something more valuable than central heating and new television sets.

Pola Ganz had hoped that she would be able to find Chaim Berman a new wife in Israel, but after a few days Pola decided that a Jewish woman from Melbourne might be more suitable.

‘You have to be careful with these Israelis,’ she said to Ada Small. ‘We wouldn’t want to find Chaim a wife who married him because he owns a nice house and a good business in Australia.’

Ada Small agreed that they had to be careful.

The group visited a kibbutz in the Negev. They all loved the kibbutz. They were very impressed by the size of the kitchen, and the laundry facilities. ‘Did you ever see such a stove in your life?’ said Joseph Zelman. With all his blocks of flats, Joseph knew about kitchens.

‘Australia is paradise,’ Josl Bensky said on their last night in Israel. He raised his glass and proposed a toast to Australia. ‘To Australia,’ they all chorused.

*  *  *  *  *

In Israel, Renia Bensky had become increasingly agitated about Pola Ganz and Joseph Zelman. Several times, she thought, she had caught them looking at each other tenderly.

By the time she was back in Australia, Renia Bensky was sure there was a heat between Pola Ganz and Joseph Zelman. And Renia Bensky felt hot watching them.

‘Poor Mina Zelman,’ Renia said to Josl. ‘She hasn’t suffered enough? It wasn’t enough what she did go through in Bergen-Belsen? Now she has to have a Romeo for a husband? And what about poor Moishe Ganz? Maybe he is not so intelligent as our dear Joseph Zelman, but he has always been a first-class husband to Pola. The trouble with Pola is that she doesn’t know when she’s got something good. She is always looking for something new. She says to me, “Oh Renia, I’ve found a new hairdresser. Oh Renia, I’ve found a new dressmaker. Oh Renia, this manicurist is better and cheaper.” Now, whatever Joseph Zelman has got in his trousers is something Pola Ganz thinks is better than what she’s got at home.’

Renia knew that after the war there were strange and hasty alliances formed. Women married for security. Men married mothers. Strangers married strangers. People were starved of comfort, companionship and affection. Odd matches were made. There was not always time to wait for love.

Young girls married older men. Students married their teachers. Neighbours and cousins got married. Everyone was in a hurry to begin a normal life.

Dead wives, dead husbands and dead children were present at many of these marriage ceremonies.

Renia decided that something had to be done about Pola and Joseph. She hired a private detective. Two weeks later, the private detective gave Renia a photograph of Joseph Zelman sitting in his car outside Pola Ganz’s house. Renia felt very pleased with herself.

It was Easter, and the company went to Olinda. Renia packed the photograph carefully at the bottom of her suitcase. She hadn’t told Josl about the detective.

In Olinda, it seemed as though it was going to be another nice Easter break. The group settled into their holiday routine. They ate nice big breakfasts, they went for walks, they sat in the autumn sun. They had good lunches, a nap after lunch, another small walk and it was time for dinner. After dinner they played cards. After three days they were all in good spirits, and felt invigorated by the country air.

On Sunday night, Renia showed Ada Small the photograph. Ada didn’t say much. ‘Why have you got a photograph of Joseph in his car?’ she asked. Renia explained the location of the photograph, and its implication.

Ada Small went straight to Pola Ganz. Pola laughed and showed the photograph to Moishe. Moishe looked carefully at the photograph. He didn’t say anything. Later, he said to Josl: ‘So what, what does that photograph prove? Nothing.’ Josl had to agree.

Nobody mentioned the photograph to Mina Zelman.

‘She’s got enough trouble,’ said Ada Small. ‘She’s so tall. At her height she would never find another husband.’

Pola refused to speak to Renia Bensky. Renia tried to explain that she had done this for Pola’s own good, but Pola wouldn’t even come near her.

‘If she is going to be so unintelligent about this,’ Renia said to Josl, ‘she can go to hell. I am finished with Pola Ganz.’

The atmosphere became so unpleasant that the company left Olinda a day early.

What was really shocking about all of this, Ada Small said to her manicurist, was that Renia Bensky and Pola Ganz had almost been machatunim. There was no word in English for machatunim, Ada explained. Machatunim was the word for the relationship between a couple’s parents-in-law. Renia and Pola were almost the mothers-in-law of each other’s children. Renia’s daughter Lina had almost married Pola’s son, Sam.

There was an unspoken, unanimous decision among the company not to tell the children why they were no longer friends. The children had to be protected.

One of Lina’s colleagues at the law firm where she worked told her that she’d heard a rumour that the rift between Renia and Pola was caused by Renia’s accusations that Pola had committed adultery with Joseph Zelman.

Sam Ganz laughed when Lina told him. ‘My mother, having an affair? You’re joking. She goes to bed in flannel nightgowns and wears face cream, throat cream, neck cream, arm and leg cream. As a kid, I used to watch her hop into bed and wonder why she didn’t slip straight out again. There must be another reason Renia and Pola aren’t speaking.’

Mrs Zelman also wondered why Renia and Pola weren’t speaking. Maybe Mrs Ganz had done something she shouldn’t have been doing with Mrs Bensky’s Josl. She wouldn’t put it past that Pola Ganz to meddle with someone else’s husband.

Mr Zelman and Mrs Ganz also stopped speaking to each other. ‘He was a rotten lover,’ Mrs Ganz said to her sister. ‘He wore his socks to bed.’

The company collapsed. Mr Small and Mr Pekelman and Mr Berman met Mr Zelman and Mr Ganz to try and patch things up. They agreed that it was important to forgive and to forget. To make a fresh start. But the women wouldn’t budge.

Moishe Ganz believed his wife, and wouldn’t hear a word against her. Josl, although he thought that Renia shouldn’t have interfered, knew that she didn’t do it out of malice.

People took sides. Mr and Mrs Small sided with the Ganzes, and Mr and Mrs Pekelman stayed loyal to the Benskys. Chaim Berman remained friendly with everyone.

For thirty-two years the company hadn’t missed a Saturday night at the pictures. Now they stopped going to the pictures. They stopped playing cards. They stopped going out for supper. They stayed at home.

Mr and Mrs Small and Mr Berman took short walks around Caulfield, but their hearts weren’t in it. The Zelmans tried to learn bridge, but everyone else at the Herzl Club could play well, and they gave up. Izak Pekelman took up golf. He dropped it a week later.

At weddings, barmitzvahs, engagements and anniversaries and birthdays, people knew to put the Benskys and the Ganzes at different tables.

Genia Pekelman talked separately to Renia and Pola. She begged them to make up. She said to each of them, ‘Couldn’t you just put this behind you and make a new start?’ That approach hadn’t worked with Genia’s daughter Rachel, and it didn’t work with Renia and Pola.

Genia tried again. ‘If you can’t be friends, at least don’t be enemies. Let us all go out together again, and maybe things will get slowly better. And we will be a group again. And people will stop talking about us. And if things are not as good as they look, at least it will look as though they are good.’ Genia’s mother used to quote this old saying to her. It had a melodic lilt in Yiddish that got lost in the translation. Nothing that Genia Pekelman said moved Renia or Pola.

This was the price of success, thought Genia. This is what happens when you can afford to hire a private detective. Life used to be so straightforward in the old days in Melbourne, thought Genia.

When they first came to Australia, some of them had lived two families to one room. Even the most comfortably off of the group, the Smalls, lived in a room at the back of their factory.

On weekends all their children played together. Now, when Genia reminded Rachel that Jack Zelman was unattached, Rachel replied, ‘I hate Jack Zelman.’ Rachel and Jack had played together so nicely when they were small.

Genia had thought that she had created cousins for her Rachel and her Esther in Australia. A new family. She thought that the company and their children would regard each other as family. As cousins, aunties, uncles, nephews, nieces. As it turned out, none of their children were friends, except for Lina and Sam. And now the company themselves were no longer friends.

They had all ended up, Genia thought, in the same position that they had been in in Germany after the war. No family. No close friends. At least they had their children. But the children were another story. Even the children had brought them troubles.

Soon, Genia thought, they would all start dying. And they would die alone. One of Genia’s most comforting thoughts had been that she would never have to die alone. Not like the hundreds and hundreds of dead in the streets in the ghetto.

So this is how things had turned out, thought Genia Pekelman. This is how things had turned out in the goldeneh medina, the new world.