Dimensions
154 x 233 x 25mm
In 2005, when Germany opened its controversial Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin, they searched the world over for a Holocaust survivor who could speak for the six million dead – and for those who had survived. Among Steven Spielberg's Shoah archives, they found what they were looking for: Sabina Wolanski, an Australian citizen, now living in Sydney, had been just 12 when her home town in Poland was invaded by Nazis. First her adored mother, then her brother and father were murdered. The family conspired to save Sabina, the much loved baby of the family, who was hidden in a series of homes and underground hovels.
After the war, alone and defenceless, but with a strong will to live, Sabina sought shelter through an unsuitable marriage, then emigrated to Australia with her second husband. She turned her back on the past in order to survive the present. A thriving business – an unusual achievement for a woman in Australia in the 1960s – a loving, if unorthodox family, and her own appetite for life, helped her feel safer than she had in Europe. But as time wore on she began asking herself questions; why had she survived when so many died? Would the horror of what had happened ever leave her? Those questions came to a head when she returned to Berlin to attend the trial of the man who had killed her brother and father. There, she met a woman who changed her way of thinking, the daughter of a Nazi, who was researching her own, agonising past. As their friendship developed, Sabina found a way to come to terms with her past...
As she said in her speech in 2005, she had faced the worst humanity had to offer – and survived it. If the Holocaust had taught her anything, it was that hatred and discrimination are doomed to fail, and that the way forward lies in breaking that cycle. Her ability to forgive, to live, and to live well, has been her greatest triumph.
