Australia has had the largest influx of Holocaust survivors post war outside of Israel. Those survivors are now few in number leaving second and third generations to piece together their family’s stories. Rachelle Unreich has captured her mother’s story in A Brilliant Life. Tess Schofield -Peters’s book, Dear Mutzi tells of her grandfather’s experience fleeing Nazi Germany and Louise Helfgott explores her Polish family’s Holocaust past. This trio of authors discuss why they have detailed these dark family stories and what they learned by doing so.
Artists
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Rachelle Unreich
Rachelle Unreich has been a journalist for 38 years, contributing to publications including The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and Harper’s Bazaar. Her first book, A Brilliant Life, tells the story of her mother Mira, a Holocaust survivor, and has been published in Australia, NZ, the US, UK, Canada and South Africa. It was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year and the ABIA awards New Writer of the Year.
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Louise Helfgott
Louise Helfgott is an award-winning writer with a PhD in Creative Writing from Edith Cowan University. Recent credits include Thistledown Seed, published July 2022 by Brandl and Schlesinger and shortlisted Dorothy Hewett Awards, 2018, WA Premier’s Book Awards 2023; Potchnagoola, commissioned and staged by the Katharine Susannah Prichard Centre, October 2019; Light of her Eye Todhunter Literary Award, 2014; Staged 2018 Perth Fringe Festival; Frames staged Subiaco Arts Centre, 2014; A Closer Sky nominated AWGIE award, 2005; The Bridge – shortlisted New Musicals Australia 2011; Can You Hold the Sun? – Poetry anthology published by Free XpresSion 2004
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Tess Scholfield-Peters
Tess Scholfield-Peters is a Sydney–Eora based writer and academic currently based at the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches creative writing. Tess began her writing career in community journalism and has since completed her doctorate, for which she wrote her first book Dear Mutzi (NLA Publishing), a hybrid narrative non–fiction about her grandfather’s migration from Nazi Germany to rural Australia. Tess’s writing appears in Life Writing, New Writing, Southerly, Cinder and Ethical Space journals, among others, and currently she is working on her second book, an historical fiction about female journalists in Sydney during WWII.
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Steven Cooke
Dr Steven Cooke is the CEO of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum. He has over 30 years’ experience in the cultural heritage sector across both museums and academia, and has published extensively on both the historical evolution of Holocaust museums and memorials, and new approaches to sharing Holocaust survivor testimony. His work has led the Australian Government to appoint him to the Australian delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, where he represents Australia on the Memorials and Museums Working Group. In 2020 he was the lead investigator on the landmark Gandel Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness in Australia Survey.