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Writing a Whole Life: Maria Lewitt's Holocaust/Migration Narratives in ‘Multicultural’ Australia

2014; Routledge; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14484528.2014.954974

1751-2964

Nina Fischer,

Migration, Refugees, and Integration

AbstractMany scholars argue today that the memory of the Holocaust has become transnational, travelling to locations and cultures worldwide. This phenomenon has been explored in relation to technological developments, but thus far little scholarly attention has been paid to the interconnection between Holocaust memory and the post-war migration of survivors. In this article, I redress this critical oversight and examine how memory and migration shape the work of Maria Lewitt, a Polish-born Jewish Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Australia. Come Spring (1980) portrays her survival in Europe and No Snow in December (1985) her Australian migrant life; together, the two autobiographical novels recount 'a whole life', both over time and synchronically, as Lewitt connects private experiences to global historical events. In the 1980s, a time when Australia was increasingly embracing the diversity arising from its migrant population, the texts inserted Lewitt's personal memories into the public discourse in her new home country. I argue that Lewitt combined her memories of survival and migration in order to add her voice as a Jewish Australian to this new 'multiculturalism'. This positioning suggests that we require an approach to Holocaust literature that dedicates attention to sociocultural environments. Such an interpretive viewpoint would allow the investigation of transnational movements of memory from individual perspectives, while acknowledging them as bound within certain national contexts and specific memory cultures.Keywords: memorymigrationHolocaustmulticultural Australia Notes[1] Winner of the Alan Marshall Award for Best Unpublished Novel, 1978.[2] Winner of the New South Wales Premier's Award for Ethnic Literature, 1986.[3] Transnational memory has also been called cosmopolitan (Levy and Sznaider), global (Assmann and Conrad), transcultural (Craps and Rothberg), or world memory (Bennett and Kennedy), emphasizing different aspects; in this special issue focused on migration, 'transnational' is the most fitting term.[4] Lewitt's oeuvre has been minimally discussed, for the most part in reference to her status as a migration writer, see, for example, Ballyn, Keesing, Morera.[5] Consider Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and Elie Wiesel's Night, two canonical works of Holocaust literature that end just after liberation.[6] Another example of this form of Holocaust life writing that encompasses both survival and life after liberation, including the immigration to the United States is Ruth Klüger's still alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. Klüger translated her life story that was first published in 1992 for a German-speaking audience as weiter leben: Eine Jugend. Unlike Lewitt's work, the publication of the English-language version in 2001 took place at a time when Holocaust remembrance had become prominent in public discourses worldwide.[7] The beginning of the novel and the sections concerning her father's death were later published as a short story entitled 'Still Life' in Gael Hammer's collection of Australian Jewish writing (1988). Here, no genre definition is given at all, and the undefined I of the narrator encourages the story's interpretation as an autobiographical piece.[8] Maria Lewitt has become a well-known migration writer in Australia; her poem 'Smugglers' is often taught in schools as an example of migrant literature.[9] The so-called 'Galbally Report' of 1978, for instance, maintained that migrants' identification 'with their cultural background and ethnic group enables them to take their place in their new society with confidence' (Galbally 104–5). However, Western governments around the world often vehemently resisted this change from earlier policies, although it was a social necessity. Indeed, as Gary Freeman maintains, multiculturalism was 'less a choice than an unintended and often most unwelcome outcome' for them (961).[10] There has never been a distinct school of Australian Jewish writing, in part because there are only some well-known writers. Susan Jacobowitz reads Australian Jewish writing primarily through the tropes of migration, integration, and the related 'issues of inclusion and exclusion, of separateness and assimilation, of change, continuation, and survival' (103). Early examples of Australian Jewish migration writing come from Yiddish writers, such as Pinchas Goldhar and Herz Bergner, but with this linguistic choice, the writing of the pre-war and early post-war period was limited to circulation within the migrant community and was not intended for a wider audience (in this case, gentile Australian society). A prominent example of later Australian Jewish migrant writing is Judah Waten's Alien Son (1952), a collection of autobiographical short stories. More recently, Australian Jewish literature has focused predominantly on the Holocaust, as portrayed by survivors and their children (commonly known as the Second Generation). Richard Freadman maintains that about 75% of all Australian Jewish life writing texts fall within the category of Holocaust writing (15). This upsurge of testimonial texts took place mostly in the late 1980s and 1990s as part of what Jay Winter and others have called the worldwide 'memory boom' (273–90).[11] The Jewish migrant condition entails an intrinsic attachment to Jerusalem and 'the Promised Land' as the place of origin, which is incorporated in religious ritual. With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, 'return' has become an option; however, in Maria Lewitt's work, migration occurs only between Poland and Australia. The fact that Israel is not part of this equation is evident in the author's short story 'All the Storms and Sun-sets', in which an Israeli gum tree reminds the unnamed protagonist of Australia: 'I welcomed the gum tree and suddenly wanted to go home' ('Storms' 281). Israel's politics of occupation and its settlement project in the West Bank do not play a role in the protagonist's decision and in Lewitt's oeuvre as such.[12] Historical documents demonstrate that even the First Fleet, which arrived in 1788, carried Jewish convicts. During the period of deportation, about 800 Jews came to the country, and soon after, free Jewish settlers arrived as well (Rutland 11–3). The year 1817, when a chevra kadisha (burial society) was established in Sydney, has been pinpointed as the beginning of organised religious life; Jewish communal life developed during the 1820s and 1830s with the establishment of synagogues and philanthropic societies (Rutland 13–9).[13] The situation of Jews in Australia was generally positive; there was much less anti-Semitism than in Europe, although there were increases during general economic threats to the country, such as in the late nineteenth century and during the Depression.[14] Several groups of Jewish immigrants arrived (for instance, German Jews during the Gold Rush period), but they did not change the community's quiet public image. After the Russian pogroms of the late nineteenth century, fear spread in Australian society at large and among the Jewish establishment that a wave of immigrants similar to the two million impoverished Jews who came to America between 1881 and 1924 would make its way to the Antipodes. However, in the end only a few Eastern European Jews, mostly from an Orthodox background, arrived. These immigrants had little impact on the local form of British-accented Jewish life, although a Yiddish theatre was established in Melbourne in 1911. The trickle of Eastern European immigrants increased in 1933, when 8000 Jews entered the country. With the outbreak of war in the Pacific in 1941, this immigration was effectively ended, even though Australia had previously relaxed its immigration quotas. After 1945, immigration increased again: By 1949, some 15,000 Jewish exiles, mostly Displaced Persons, entered the country, and during the two decades after the war, their numbers reached 27,000 (NSW). Most of them arrived on assisted migration schemes through which Australia sought to boost its population; however, a quota limiting Jewish migration to 25% was introduced in 1948 (Golvan 31–60).[15] This term encompasses a number of racially discriminatory policies that included the preferential treatment of European and particularly British immigrants; the policy was only fully dismantled in 1973.[16] The absence of Yiddish is unsurprising, as Lewitt grew up in an assimilated and acculturated Jewish family. The lack of Hebrew, the language of ceremony and of Israel, reflects the minimal presence of Jewish tradition and of the Jewish state in her work.