Sydney Levine, b. 1914, Sydney, Australia.

“I was born in 1914, so I was a 19-year-old (Jewish Australian) student of dentistry at Sydney University when Hitler assumed power in Germany in 1933 and began the persecution of Jews. We were a long way from Europe and its

affairs but we were not ignorant of them. We knew of the rise of fascism, which was much more unpopular than communism - like many university students of the time, we were of the Left and wanted to rid the world of fascism. We wanted to make a better world, free of poverty and oppression.

Major Sydney Levine, Australian Army Dental Corps, Madang,New Guinea 1944

I remember that in May 1933 a rally was held in the Sydney Town Hall to protest against the Nazi persecution of the Jews. It was convened by the Lord Mayor of Sydney and there were prominent speakers. So if not before, we now knew that the Germans were depriving Jews of basic freedoms and incarcerating them in concentration camps. This was an emotional experience for the Australian Jewish people and it was associated with a ‘German Jewish Refugee Appeal’.

Dr Sydney Levine today

All this outward expression of Jewishness was amazing because at that time and as long as I could remember, Jews were encouraged not to make themselves conspicuous because of the perceived notion that being conspicuous would promote antisemitism. Pogroms in Russia were still in their minds - my own father had experienced that.

Jews and some others began a campaign to boycott the sale of German and Italian goods. But it was with the arrival of the first refugees with their stories that we were to appreciate the enormity of the brutalities of the German government. First came German Jews and then, after the German occupation of Austria, Austrian Jews arrived. This influx and the thought of large numbers of Jewish refugees arriving created in the minds of some local Jews a fear that this might bring a wave of antisemitism. (We were to learn later that the Australian and many of the Allied governments did not want their populations diluted by refugees.) But Australian Jews did rally around the refugees and there was a welfare society which welcomed them and helped them to fit into their new environment.

But these refugees were ‘different’ from the Australian Jews that we were used to; maybe we only knew Eastern European Jews. Many Australian non-Jews were unsympathetic to the refugees, or even hostile, calling them ‘reffos’. Australians have always had pejorative names for outsiders: ‘dago’, ‘wog’, ‘mick’, ‘pommie’ and so on. Of course there were many non-Jews who showed the refugees much sympathy. It must be pointed out that at that time Australians very much disliked Germans, and had done so ever since the First World War, and these refugees were Germans, as well as Jews.

Also these refugees looked different: they dressed differently, spoke English with a foreign accent and the men carried briefcases (these Jewish refugees introduced the briefcase to Australia). Many Australian Jews, myself included, thought that many of them were arrogant and we disliked their air of superiority. They thought of themselves as 'cultured Europeans' and us as 'inferior beings'. I was told that we lacked culture here in Australia and I replied ‘but we don’t have concentration camps.’ But in spite of these early feelings and impressions local Jews ‘took up’ the refugees and befriended them.

There is sometimes difficulty in distinguishing what I remember knowing at the time from what I now know about that time. It is a long time ago. I served in the Australian Army for some five and a half years during the Second World War, partly in New Guinea and New Britain. Although this kept me away from the mainstream of Australian life, I had Australian newspapers sent to me and kept a diary which included press clippings of military and social significance. These mentioned below started my real knowledge of the German atrocities inflicted on Jews.1. Sydney Morning Herald (S.M.H.) 26.6.42 reference to Nazis killing 700 000 Jews in Poland, 2. S.M.H. 10.12.42 account of Vichy French persecution of Jews, 3. S.M.H 18.12.42 mentions massacre of Jews, 4. Northern Herald Charters Towers (N.H.C.T.) 25.5.43 mentions 2 million Jews killed in Europe, 5. N.H.C.T. 7.6.43 account of gas chambers in Treblinka, 6. Sydney Telegraph 2.5.44 mentions 3 million Poles and Jews massacred and refers to Treblinka camp.

After the war ended we learned of the Holocaust in all its horror and the Allies’ reluctance to assist the Jewish victims.”