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125 pages

English

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We Are Our Memories is a series of vignettes related to events, people and opinions from a recollection of many decades. Having been involved in periods of major distressing episodes as well as joyful ones, the author has been fortunate to meet and contact some historical figures and campaigned ceaselessly for many decades to honour the Righteous Gentiles, the salt of the Earth who saved their fellow citizen at the risk of their own lives. He pays tributes to rescuers. Reports on nazi crimes from an unusual vantage point are communicated by a former appointed functionary. He recalls teachers, colleagues and books that have shaped his life and motivated him not to remain silent. He recalls liberation by the Red Army from the terrors of nazi tyranny and pays tribute to Australia, which he embraced passionately. He has been honoured by Sweden, by the Royal Order of the Polar Star and he has been made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2018.

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
Date de parution	28 mai 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528988131
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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W e A re O ur M emories
Frank Vajda
Austin Macauley Publishers
2021-05-28
We Are Our Memories About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Preface Commentary to Chapter 1 1. The Hungarian Jewish Tragedy – 437,000 Deported In Seven Weeks 2. Names of Infamy Tainted Eponyms 3. The Collaborator: How Could Over 400,000 People Go Silently To Their Deaths 4. The Synagogue In Dohány Utca Budapest 5. Documents Schutzpasses Protection papers 6. A Jesuit Priest 7. Rescuers Who Are Not Well Known: Sándor Ujváry LLD 8. Individual Stories of Survival 9. A Memorable Date, 25 th August 1944, Deportations Halted: My Ninth Close Shave 10. Tragic Knowledge 11. Authors and Icons 12. Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry: My review for Jewish News 13. Recollection the Albrecht Military Arsenal 1944 14. Annual Tributes to Raoul the 2016 Version of Annual Tributes in Australia 15. Courageous Decisions 16. Profile in Epilepsy 17. Failures of Memory 18. Mrs Nina Lagergren 1921-2019 19. Sonja, The Lady Who Never Abandoned Raoul Wallenberg 20. My Favourite American Politician 21. Commemorative Stamps in Honour 22. The Prison Doctor 23. Epilogue Appendix 1 Appendix 2: English Version
About the Author
Frank Vajda survived the Holocaust aged 9, escaped from Hungary, studied medicine in Australia and UK, devoted 40 years to keeping the memory of Wallenberg alive, besides his medical career. Instrumental in bringing about the Honorary Citizenship for the Swedish Humanitarian, who saved his life in 1944.
Consultant Neurologist, Professorial Fellow University of Melbourne, Adjunct Professor at Monash, Director of the Australian Pregnancy Register of Antiepileptic Drugs, Past President of Epilepsy Society of Australia, International Ambassador for Epilepsy, Member of International Pregnancy Register Board, Head of Free Wallenberg Australian Committee, Founder of Raoul Wallenberg Centre of Clinical Neuropharmacology. Awarded the Officer of the Polar Star (Sweden) and Officer of the Order of Australia.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the one-and-a-half million children murdered by nazi Germany and its despicable allies.
Copyright Information ©
Frank Vajda (2021)
The right of Frank Vajda to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528926027 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528988131 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2021)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
May I thank most sincerely my colleagues and friends who have encouraged me and made constructive criticisms of the manuscript. I received valuable advice from my mentors and students, as some of the content relates to my medical career. I wish to thank His Excellency Mr Pär Ahlberger, the Ambassador of Sweden for his support and collaboration in asking me to participate in the launching of the Exhibitions created by the Swedish Foreign Office and the Swedish Institute in Australia, and thus paying further tribute to Raoul Wallenberg. Vadim Birstein has kindly informed me of the latest developments in the Wallenberg case with his admirable insight and carefully documented messages. Mrs Nina Lagergren and her family have always been a symbol of strength in keeping the flame burning, continuing the enquiries directed at the Russians. Cecilia Ahlberg, her granddaughter has been her most effective assistant for many years. Jan Anger has been a strong supporter and close friend for many years, and of great help in interpreting all matters related to Sweden. Susan Berger heads the group, which convenes periodically and continues to keep the issue alive. Kate and Nicklas Wacz have always been incredible sources of information and I am indebted to them.
On the scientific and medical academic side my thanks are due to numerous colleagues and collaborators in neurology, including Mervyn Eadie, Stephen Davis, Sam Berkovic, Ed Byrne, Terence O’Brien, Kimford Meador and my friends in Europe involved with the treatment of pregnant women with epilepsy formalised in the EURAP Pregnancy Register. I wish to thank Emilio Perucca and Piero Perucca, Torbjorn Tomson for constant support and intellectual stimulation related to our common interest in Epilepsy, and Steven Schachter of Harvard for his support. My scientific collaborators and friends, Cecilie Lander, Janet Graham and Alison Hitchcock share the distinction accorded to our joint project, the Australian Pregnancy Register. I have few relatives who survive, but I have a group of close friends, who have given me constant support over the years, the late Count Gabriel Carr, J Wilder, H. Glasbeek, P Farago, P Barta, G. Goldstein, A. Sempill, Y Dunstan, R. Kuhn, E. Somerville, D. Horgan, H Corbett, V. Gallichio, Bob Hjorth, John Dammery, Edward Byrne and Baron A. Szeleczky.
Finally I wish to thank my family who have shared my life and interests in matters dealt with in this book and participated in many adventures related to my journey.
Frank Vajda
I’m told that Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Jesus and Hitler top the list of ‘most books written about’. The top topics? The US Civil War and the Holocaust. Surely nothing is left to be said about the four men and those two immense historic events.
My library has a long shelf devoted to Holocaust literature, from a book predicting it in written in the mid-1930s – Victor Gollancz’s The Extermination of the Jews – to memoirs of survivors written or published decades later. Along with volumes from denialists like the appalling David Irving.
And now space must be found – and attention must be paid – to this fine book by Frank Vajda. We became friends half a century ago when I was recruited to help with Frank’s campaign to have the great Raoul Wallenberg remembered and celebrated in this country.
(Anyone who knows him knows you cannot say no to him. Few people are as focussed and formidable as Frank).
This book is a major contribution to Holocaust literature, written at a time when that monstrous event is fading in the collective memory. Few survivors are still alive. To the young the Holocaust is as remote as the Black Death. Because the Holocaust deaths are even blacker now is the time to remember them. It is always time to remember them.

Philip Adams AO, FAHA, FRSA is an Australian humanist, social commentator, broadcaster, author. A founding member of the Australia Council and chairman of the Film, Radio and Television Board.
Preface
In my autobiography published a year ago, I presented my family’s background and fate, my own background and eight close shaves in the face of nazi atrocities. In terms of other people, I focussed on those friends, who had been encountered by my father. The second part of the autobiography concerned my collaboration and activities with Raoul Wallenberg’s family, their group of friends and supporters, and my own endeavours to pay Raoul homage. I have been trying to make an effort to add recognition for his remarkable achievements in saving more people from nazi genocide than all the other active underground armies combined. These efforts culminated in Raoul being awarded the Honorary Citizenship of Australia, the only such award ever accorded to a person.
In the earlier book, I mentioned that I was born into a middle-class Jewish medical family in Budapest. My family was decimated, almost wiped out in the Holocaust. I lost my father in Mauthausen, where he was starved to death by the Germans. My mother and I survived in a protected house under Swedish and Red Cross protection, and had a number of close escapes from execution, deportation, internment and accidentally being shot at Liberation, by the retreating nazis. We escaped from communist Hungary in 1949, and after spending eighteen months in Austria as refugees we arrived in Australia in 1951. After education in Melbourne, I entered Melbourne University and suffered the devastation of my mother’s final prolonged losing battle with cancer. After graduation in Melbourne, I worked at various hospitals, and went on to further studies in Britain, returning in 1966. Entering academic medicine, I made a further study trip to the UK and subsequently held various posts in Australia. I became deeply involved in the fight for Raoul Wallenberg who saved me from execution seventy years earlier. Currently, I am director of the Australian Pregnancy Register aimed at improving the prognosis of babies born to women with epilepsy exposed to medication.
Since the publication of Saved to Remember in 2016, new photographs and documents emerged, adding further testimony to my stories of narrow escape. These photographs, discovered 72 years after the events of 1944, show details of the midwifery hospital in a panel of fourteen pictures hidden in the National Archives. This was followed by a dramatic discovery of the source of our false papers, which saved our lives. Further enquiry revealed the tragic fate of the staff of the Radiology Department at the neighbouring Jewish Hospital at the hands of the Gestapo radio detection unit – a fate, which my mother was able to avert. These images provide testimony to her intelligence and ingenuity in the face of unspeakable threats.
The current volume highlights these photographs, the source of false papers – a heroic Jesuit priest, the events after the Gestapo visit, and a story of Schutzpasses,