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Event Topic: History & Memory

  • MJBW Festival 2026 Closing Night: Out of the Depths, a Musical Soirée

    MJBW Festival 2026 Closing Night: Out of the Depths, a Musical Soirée

    In memory of Sylvia Urbach Z”L, and with thanks to the Krystal Fund

    THIS EVENT is proudly supported by:

    Joseph Toltz, Galit Klas, Adam Starr

    Bucharest, 1945: a small team of Polish Jews are gathered in a house set up by the American JOINT to support recently liberated survivors of the camps and ghettos. While compiling testimonies from those who come for food, provisions, and advice for safe places to resettle, they also gather songs of wartime experience, which are collected and printed in a short run. 

    Sydney, 2013: one of these fragile songbooks is found in the estate of a survivor in Sydney, preserved from deterioration by chance, pressed between pages of another music score. It is one of only 5 remaining copies in the world. Thirteen years later, the book is reborn as Out of the Depths: the first collection of Holocaust songs.

    The finale to Melbourne Jewish Book Week is conceived by the 2026 book’s co-author Joseph Toltz in association with Galit Klas, Adam Starr and other brilliant Melbourne creatives and klezmorim. Melodies from survivors are woven around the wartime narrative of the editor Yehuda Eismann, the custodian Olga R, and the designer of the book, Flora Romm.  

    As Professor Marcia Langton AM noted in her keynote launch of the book in June, the songs “capture experiences at a temporal proximity rarely available in written testimony. A single object retained among personal belongings becomes a material anchor for reconstructing an entire cultural history. It is a testament to the enduring power of cultural resistance.”

  • Closing Conversation: Jonathan Freedland

    Closing Conversation: Jonathan Freedland

    Melbourne poet and literary critic, Tali Lavi and award-winning journalist and author, Jonathan Freedland, will discuss his bestselling books – The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them, the compelling true story of a high-society, anti-Nazi resistance network in 1943 Berlin, and The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, the remarkable account of the life of Rudolf Vrba, who together with fellow escapee Alfred Wetzler first revealed the full truth of the notorious death camp.

  • Telling the Untold: From War-Torn Europe to Post-War Australia

    Telling the Untold: From War-Torn Europe to Post-War Australia

    Raya Goldtwig, Jonathan Kanat, Fiona Kelmann, Joe Reich – moderator Daniel Haumschild

    Ninety-year-old Raya Goldtwig recounts her childhood and her family’s desperate wartime measures, as if it were yesterday. By contrast, Joe Reich must embark on a forensic search to uncover his father’s Holocaust experience. Jonathan Kanat reveals how secrets from the Holocaust reverberate with devastating impact, long after his mother has settled in Melbourne. And Fiona Kelmann edits her grandmother’s memoir, as well as taking on the sacred role of scribe for another survivor. In telling these Holocaust stories, all four Melbourne-based authors have ensured that we will never forget.

  • Intersections: Shared Histories, Different Journeys

    Intersections: Shared Histories, Different Journeys

    Merav Fima, Ayelet Tsabari, Sanjiva Wijesinha – moderator Marcelo Maghidman

    From the Middle East to the Americas, Europe and the Orient, Jewish communities have developed distinct traditions while remaining connected through history and time. Bringing together Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi and non-Jewish perspectives, this conversation explores the diversity of Jewish cultures and how this manifests in the stories we tell. What unites us despite our differences, how do others perceive us, and how do we perceive ourselves?

  • Nazis in Australia: Fact, Fiction, Print and Screen

    Nazis in Australia: Fact, Fiction, Print and Screen

    How did Australia become a refuge for alleged Nazi war criminals after WWII, and what happened when investigators set out to find them? This session explores fact, fiction, print and screen through the work of Danny Ben-Moshe, Mark Aarons and Dan Goldberg, moderated by Simon Holloway. From the Special Investigations Unit’s pursuit of justice for Holocaust victims, to the documentaries Our Dad the Nazi Killer and The Hunt for the Last Nazis, and most recently the novel The Watchmaker’s War, this discussion uncovers hidden histories, family secrets and unsettling truths in Australian suburbs.

    **Speakers:** Mark Aarons, Danny Ben-Moshe, Dan Goldberg – moderator Simon Holloway

  • Upstanders Not Bystanders

    Upstanders Not Bystanders

    What inspires some people to stand up to hatred in the face of danger? In this call to action, Erica Frydenberg speaks of the remarkable heroes who saved countless lives during the Holocaust. Michael Scott explains his drive, as a non-Jewish ally, to shine a light on the exponential rise in antisemitism since October 7. Lee Kofman speaks from the heart about the online doxxing of 600 creatives, and how Ruptured has confronted the scourge. And Kylie Moore Gilbert provides insight into the plight of Iranians and her experience as a hostage in Tehran. This huge session will be expertly convened by Rachelle Unreich who has herself contributed to 3 recent anthologies on being Jewish today.

    **Speakers:** Erica Frydenberg, Lee Kofman, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Michael Scott – moderator Rachelle Unreich

  • International Spotlight: Rachel Cockerell in Conversation with Deborah Stone

    International Spotlight: Rachel Cockerell in Conversation with Deborah Stone

    THIS EVENT is proudly supported by:

    On June 7th 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail not to Jerusalem or New York, but to Galveston, Texas. In a highly inventive style, Cockerell uses exclusively source material to capture history as it unfolds. Melting Point follows her great-grandfather David Jochelmann’s family through two world wars, to London, New York and Jerusalem – as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past. Deborah Stone, Editor-in-Chief of The Jewish Independent, leads a captivating conversation with London-based historian and author Rachel Cockerell.

  • Remnants: When The Past Comes Home

    Remnants: When The Past Comes Home

    THIS EVENT is proudly supported by:

    Sophie Stern, Joseph Toltz, Michael Visontay – moderator Benjamin Preiss

    Estranged sisters are forced to reckon with their wounds when they inherit their grandmother’s dilapidated home; a rare and fragile booklet of Holocaust songs is almost discarded when found deep in a cupboard; and an obscure legal document in a strongbox leads to a trail of leaves from the Gutenberg bible. In this session, a novelist, a musicologist and a journalist traverse the real and fictitious, to uncover remarkable stories in which physical remnants ‘speak’ from the past.

  • International Spotlight: Ayelet Tsabari in Conversation with Lee Kofman

    International Spotlight: Ayelet Tsabari in Conversation with Lee Kofman

    Ayelet Tsabari is the acclaimed, Israeli-Canadian author of best-selling memoir, The Art of Leaving. Her debut novel, Songs for the Broken-Hearted – a sweeping, multigenerational saga of love, loss and reconnection and the complex history of Yemeni Jews – is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Fiction, the Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award and A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024.
    Ayelet is in conversation with Lee Kofman, Russian-born Israeli-Australian author of six books and editor of three anthologies. Lee is a writing teacher and mentor based in Melbourne.

  • Nazis in Australia: Exploring the Legacy of Australia’s Special Investigations Unit

    Nazis in Australia: Exploring the Legacy of Australia’s Special Investigations Unit

    In 1986, Australian journalist Mark Aarons produced an explosive radio documentary series that drew attention to the number of former Nazi war criminals living in Australia. This led to a parliamentary enquiry that resulted in the formation of Australia’s first Special Investigations Unit, directed by Graham Blewitt from 1991-1992. Professor Konrad Kwiet served as the chief historian for this unit as they excavated killing fields in Ukraine, and sought to prosecute war criminals here in Australia.