1. Intro to my journey

Journey to the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Russia

I'm starting a blog because I'm about to go on the most extraordinary trip, led by reform Rabbi Fred Morgan, to the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Russia. Why am I going there? Because of family history, both painful and joyful. The pain will be 

visiting Babi Yar where one of my late mother's brothers was brutally murdered with his wife and baby daughter and approximately 100,000 other Jews plus Soviet POWs, communists, Gypsies, Ukranian nationalists and civilian hostages, totalling 150,000. This at the hands of Ukranian soldiers. under instruction from the Nazis. This will be unbearable as was my visit to Auschwicz from where my mother, Bronia, (above) was transferred to Bergen Belsen.

The joy will be visiting Lithuania where my late father, Meyer, (above) successfully sought a life-saving transit visa from the righteous gentile, Chiune Sugihara, (left) to whom I am indebted for my existence. My father and his first wife, Roza, went to Shanghai where there was safety from the genocide despite the fact that the Nazis wanted the Japanese to murder the thirty thousand refugees in the ghetto. The Japanese had no hatred for the Jews and refused to kill them, interring them in a ghetto instead.

In 1942, in the Shanghai ghetto, Roza gave birth to my brother, Jack. After Roza's death in Australia from tuberculosis, Dad met and married our Mum, who in 1950, gave birth to my brother, Ian, and two years later, to me.


In 2008, I travelled with my son, Alex, to see that ghetto and had published the story of the Jewish refugees' survival in Shanghai in the Jewish News.

I love to travel. Wherever I go, I visit the sites where my parents lived, were imprisoned, escaped from or were rescued. On the bright, colourful side, I'm obsessed with art and spend hours in art museums. I'm in my third year studying art history at Monash Uni. There, it's called Visual Culture and most of the units are about contemporary art beginning with the start of the twentieth century up till now.

Presently I'm studying a unit called Post War Practices and am seeing the transition of art from the canvas to the stage, street, earth and installation.

My main interest is in feminist art and I'm impressed with Yoko Ono's Fluxus pieces. I never knew all this about her, all that she did, beyond John Lennon and preceding their relationship.

Above, Yoko Ono's Cut Piece, where she invites the audience members to come onto the stage to cut her clothes off her body. The behaviour of the audience is surprising and in this, as in many of her performance art works, she is critiqueing the male gaze, that is, the voyeurism women are subjected to. 

Am I an artist? Yes. I do bizarre and outrageous, colourful, formless crochet. VERY OCCASIONALLY:)

My real art passion is for

keeping journals. They're wordy and visual. I love creating travel journals. This collaged page from my journal was done in Perth where I went to see art from MOMA and visit the quokkas on Rottnest Island. There are journals all over my house, choking the cupboards, filling the drawers and vying for space in the pantry!

Made a discovery today about my forthcoming trip to ArtBasel in June. There are two festivals starting just before it called LISTE and VOLTA9 that feature emerging and young artists's works.

ArtBasel uses a strict criteria for its entrants and the other two festivals allow new artists a go. What an exciting time in Basel from 10 to 16 June. ARt art aRt ArTARt art aRt ArTARt art aRt ArT

On Rabbi Fred Morgan's tour, I hope to be be looking up the address where my father, Meyer, and his first wife, Roza, stayed in Vilno, (Vilnius) and where they were sent a postcard to 11/5 Raugyklos gatve (street).  It's 10 minutes from the hotel we're staying at. Here are two images of the postcard sent to Roza (and Meyer) at their address in Vilnius, Lithuania.

There's a mystery surrounding the postcard. The postal mark has the date in Vilnius on 15/11/1941 but there was a ghetto in Vilnius then and the Nazis were mass-murdering Jews.  Chiune Sugihara wrote transit visas,  which Dad received for Roza and himself, during 1940. Dad and Roza must have already travelled to Kobe in Japan when this postcard arrived. How did they ultimately receive it? More about this when I reach Lithuania.