Who Gives?

WHO?

Abram Goldberg, 85

WHERE?

Elsternwick, Vic

WHAT?

Volunteer, Jewish Holocaust Centre

WHY?

Abram Goldberg knows first-hand what it is to suffer from senseless hatred and racism. The Polish-born survivor of the Holocaust was orphaned as a young man at the hands of the Nazis.

Born in 1924, Abram was incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto between May 1940 and August 1944. He was then transported to Auschwitz before undertaking forced labour in camps in Germany.

Since his liberation by the American Army on May 2, 1945, Abram pledged to give a voice to those 6 million Jews who died. To this end, he has been heavily involved with the work of Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Museum, since its beginnings in 1984, as a member of the executive, a former treasurer and a committee member.

But it is Abram’s work as one of the volunteer guides to the more than 400, 000 secondary school students that have attended educational tours of the centre that he believes is his “legacy”.

“I was lucky enough to survive and I promised myself that if I survived I would speak out in the name of the 6 million who didn’t and never allow them to be forgotten,” he says.

Established under the patronage of Jerusalem’s Holocaust memorial and museum Yad Vashem , the Jewish Holocaust Centre’s Nona Lee School Education Program enlightens secondary school students about all aspects of the Holocaust with the added benefit of having survivors share their stories.

Abram says the thousands of letters addressed to him personally, as well as to other volunteers, is testament to the incredible work the centre does.

“We are spreading the message of tolerance and acceptance. We are speaking out against racism and genocide,” he says.

Abram says that while the students who pass through the centre are irrevocably changed by their experience, he believes the world has a long way to go.

“What still goes on in the world, racism, murder, genocide, you name it, it still goes on. As a survivor it pains me. It is very difficult to accept that after so many years the world has learned so little.”

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