Extracts from Armstrong, D. (1998) Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations, Sydney, Random House Australia pp 252 - 385. Diane Armstrong immigrated to Australia with her parents in 1948.

“…It’s hard for me to realise that I was actually there, a rosy two-year-old learning the names of animals on my father’s knee when atrocities on a scale not seen in Europe since the days of Genghis Khan were being perpetrated all around me.

For most of my life I’ve thought of the Holocaust as something that happened to my parents, not to me, so it’s an effort to place myself on that terrifying stage and see myself as being inside that poisonous web that was ensnaring us. With a toddler’s watchful gaze, I must have seen their frightened eyes darting towards the door and at each other, and sensed the terror in the words they couldn’t articulate.

My mother told me that for a long time afterwards, whenever someone knocked on the door, I would place a finger on the tip of my nose and whisper, ‘Shh! Germs!’, and in spite of their grief they would smile at my mispronunciation.

Diane Armstrong in 1946                    Diane Armstrong today

…My father had managed to obtain permission for us to stay in Lwow (in Poland) for the time being, but when the Germans began hunting down Jewish children with relentless savagery, he realised that we had to escape as soon as possible. It was as hard for a Jew to find a hiding place in Poland in 1942 as for a deer to hide from a pack of wolves on a treeless plain. Our only hope of survival was to pose as Catholics…

Several days after our departure, my father obtained false papers stating that he was Henryk Boguslawski, a Catholic dentist…For a Jew to take off the armband and live on the Aryan side would be difficult and risky. He’d have to watch every single word for fear of giving himself away. But there was no choice. Staying in Lwow meant certain death and, no matter what happened, Danusia (I) must survive…But the fear that my curly hair was going to expose our Jewish identity and cause our death affected my father for many years to come. Long after the war was over, years after we’d arrived in Australia, when I was already fourteen, he still insisted that I keep my hair in plaits and refused to let me cut it. He was still terrified in case it looked too curly.

…After watching me for a few minutes, the stranger asked, ‘What’s your name, little girl?’

Without looking up, she replied, ‘Danusia Boguslawska.’

‘But what was your name before that?’ he insisted.

Henek, who was standing by the open window, froze when he heard the last question…he was struck dumb and stood there helplessly awaiting her reply on which all their lives depended.

The child looked up, stick poised in her hand, and stared at the man’s ingratiating smile. ‘That’s always been my name,’ she said with a touch of impatience.

Henek breathed out in relief…For the rest of the war, however long it lasted, the lives would hang in the balance of every single word they uttered.

…Thinking back on this incident today, I don’t know whether I’d simply forgotten our original name or whether I knew that it must never be mentioned…But whether it was my good memory or bad memory that saved our lives on that occasion, it’s a revelation that our survival depended on me, as well as on my parents.

…When I return to visit the convent in 1989 with my husband Michael and daughter Justine…the headmistress is eager to show me around…In one of the classrooms girls in navy skirts and blouses with sailor collars, just like the ones I used to wear, jump to their feet when we enter. ‘This is Pani Diane Armstrong from Australia who was a pupil here once and has come back to see her old school,’ Sister Fabiola tells them. I don’t tell Sister Fabiola that Danusia Boguslawska who attended the school from 1945 until 1948 was a Jewish child whose parents had been too apprehensive (even after the war) to reveal her religion…After so many years I still feel uneasy about revealing my religion in Poland.”