Far From Home, In Touch With Memory: Young Austrians Volunteer at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum

SBS Australia

20 hours ago

The Austrian Service Abroad programme allows young adults to go abroad and serve in Holocaust remembrance institutions around the world
Four Austrian volunteers are at serving the Melbourne Holocaust Museum
They guide Australian school students through the museum SBS Hebrew
14/06/2025 08:16 Tim: My name is Tim. I'm 19 years old. I've been at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for almost 10 months now. I come from Austria, from, uh, uh, from the district of Corne work in a small town called uh Stetten. Julian: My name is Julian. I am from Upper Austria, from a small village called, and I've been at the museum for 8.5 months now. Ellis: My name is Ellis. I'm also here at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum since 9 months, and I'm from Lower Austria in a small town called Presbaum. Gregor: My name is Gregor. I've been here at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for about 9 months, and I'm originally from a small Austrian village called Mihildorf. Julia Grewe: Could you explain what the Austrian exchange services? Gregor: So the Austrian Service abroad programme is a programme that enables uh mostly young civil servants to go and serve abroad. So in Austria we still have compulsory military conscription for young men who can also serve in civil institutions like hospitals, and then there's the Austrian Service abroad programme, which, as I said, allows us to go abroad and serve mostly in institutions that remember the Holocaust and work on Holocaust remembrance. Julia: What motivated you to choose this service at the Holocaust Museum?
Tim: For me, I have to say it was intriguing That there was a Holocaust museum so far away from Europe, from where everything happened. What I didn't know at the time is that Melbourne had one of the highest survivor population in the world. I think it's the 3rd highest. I definitely don't regret coming here and uh, the community has been so welcoming and amazing and it's, it's awesome, yeah.
We're the last generation who gets to ask survivors questions and and talk to them. That's what has impacted me the most - Talking to survivors over coffee. Tim Julian: For me, it's my history teacher. She was really engaged in the memorial service in Mathausen in Austria, and she brought us the Holocaust era. And since then, I've been really interested in the Second World War and the Holocaust. And I chose Australia just because it's that far away. And I was also similar as Tim. Interested in how this topic is being treated here so far away from Austria. Gregor: For me, the reason why I wanted to do a remembrance service, or something in a Holocaust institution was because my history teacher in school organised a meeting and an interview with a Holocaust survivor from Terrisianstadt, near Prague in Czechoslovakia at the time. And that really made me interested on a personal level in, uh, like the Holocaust. And also just like Julian and Tim was really wanting to get far away from Austria for once. Ellis: For me as well, just the whole topic, the Holocaust was always a really emotional topic, especially in school when we visited the former concentration camp, Motthausen, that's when I knew I just want a more detailed deep dive into this whole topic and also engage in the memorial culture and yet to come here was just the perfect opportunity to be able to experience so many new things and yeah, just to work in this really great museum with a great environment. Yeah, it's just truly amazing, I think.
The Holocaust is such a big topic and there's so much to explore, so much to know, and yeah, it's not always easy to have the best answers Ellis Julia: What kind of work have you been doing day to day? Can you give an example of your typical day? Tim: Work starts for us at at 9:30. Most of the time we're with the education programme, which works with the schools all over Victoria. They usually arrive in the morning and our task is to guide them through the museum. We each have like a few stops through the exhibition, and we give them a tour through the exhibition and later, later on, they also have the chance to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak and ask them questions Which is incredible because we're the last generation who, who can, who gets to ask survivors questions and and talk to them. And I think that's uh what the what the museum is is doing and and pushing with that uh with the programme is wonderful. Julia: You've spent a lot of time in the museum, which specific artefacts or stories in the museum made a lasting impression on you? Gregor: There are two models of certain locations. Uh, one is of a synagogue in the Polish town of Chenhova, and one is a model of Treblinka, the, uh, extermination or death camp in Poland. Both of these models were built by one of our survivors here. His name was Haim Steier. He was really involved in the like in the setup of the museum. These models are a big part of the exhibition. And also his daughter is still volunteering here at the museum quite a lot. These models have made quite an impact also because of Haim's personal story. He was one of the only 67 survivors of Treblinka, a camp where almost 920,000 people were murdered.
I didn't know that these stories were so individual to all the people. It's different for everybody, and everybody of those 6 million that also died had a different story, and it was all different people. Julian Tim: It's, it's not a, it's not a specific artefact, but it's more a survivor. It's Abram Goldberg. He is 100 years old now and he's one of our oldest survivors and he used to be in a, in the lodge ghetto and he also was in the, in the resistance. He buried some documents in the ghetto to have it as evidence after the war. These documents are in the museum now, and I think his dedication and his like will to live and keep going, uh, impacted me the most in the museum and also to be able to talk to him comes in the museum every other week to talk to the students and to have the chance to be able to, to talk to him, ask him questions has been amazing. So I think that's, that's what has impacted me the most, talking to the survivors over coffee. Julia: You've guided Australian high school students through the museum. What questions or reactions from the students stood out to you? It's Ellis: pretty different and also depends on the schools. Sometimes we get really deep questions, for example, how the Holocaust was humanly possible, and sometimes it can be quite difficult to have the answer of these questions because the Holocaust is such a big topic and there's so much to explore, so much to know, and yeah, it's not always easy to have the best answers because um some of the questions are still getting discussed today, but we also get like simple questions, for example, students asking the survivors if they met Adolf Hitler, for example, because this is the only thing that they are associating with the Holocaust. So yeah, it's pretty different, but yeah, we do get a lot of great questions from the students.
The Austrian Service Abroad programme allows us to go abroad and serve in institutions that remember the Holocaust and work on Holocaust remembrance Gregor Julia: You've been working with elderly Holocaust survivors who speak to students at the museum. How has that shaped your understanding of what happened and whose story impacted you the most and why? Julian: Personally, I didn't know that these stories were so individual to all the people. Some of them travelled around all of Europe trying to find a safe place. Some of them were in a concentration camp, so it's different for everybody, and everybody of those 6 million that also died had a different story, and it was all different people, so that was the thing that really stuck to me. The story that sticks out is the one of Henry Eckhart, who is actually still alive and and still comes to our museum to talk to school students. He actually was a child, a child during the Holocaust. He came to Australia and just went to school like everybody else, and he specialised in medicine, specialised in bone marrow cancer of children, and he Invented a treatment that was able to bring down the death rate of children with this cancer from 90% to below 10%, so that was a really huge achievement, and we've actually had students coming in saying they know Henry Eckert because he saved their relatives' lives or our life or their mother's life or stuff like that, which is really, really moving. So that's what I took away. Julia: What message would you like to share with the Jewish community in Australia who may be listening now?
Tim: Thank you for, for taking us in, uh, ever since my first day I got here, I've been, I've been welcomed. I've got to learn a lot of new traditions, new holidays. It has been a really welcoming and, and nice experience and I, I'm very grateful for that.