Israel Kipen
I must tell you that the restrictions of time applied to me make it particularly difficult for me to deal with the communal aspects of Ashkanasy's involvement. In the fifteen minutes it is a very difficult task to accommodate, so I had to make a very difficult decision. I decided instead of covering a little bit of everything, I will deal only with one aspect of Jewish life in which he was so involved and which had such a profound impact on the development of the Jewish community of Australia. Tonight I will deal with two aspects of Jewish post-war immigration into Australia and of the impact it had on the Jewish community as we know this community today.
But first, as I see some younger people in the audience, a quick historical background would be in order. 1945 was the end of the Second World War and the realization of the immensity of the tragedy of the Holocaust when the camps were opened. 1946 President Truman is asking the mandatory power of Palestine to admit 100,000 Jews from the camps as a humanitarian gesture which the Attlee government flatly refused. 1947, the British government surrenders the mandate over Palestine to the United Nations and at the end of the year, to be exact on the 29th of November of that year, the historical decision of the United Nations deciding to divide Palestine into two states, a Jewish and Arab state.
The Jewish state came into being on 14th May 1948, the first War of Independence started twenty-four hours later and lasted for nine months. It was only after the successful conclusion of the first war, which was a miracle in itself, that the real task of emptying out the camps in Europe started and the tent cities in Israel grew suddenly to very major proportions. That's the background.
On the Australian scene during those years of the second half of the 40's, the then Minister of Immigration Arthur Calwell was a very, very busy man. I think he spent more time in Europe than in Australia, he spent a great deal of time there. What he did was to go through the camps, then conducted negotiations and signed up deals with different European governments and shipping companies. This brought about the major influx of post war general migration to Australia which was to make Australia the multicultural society which we are today.
But he also had a special eye and a special understanding for the Jewish aspect of this situation and the tragedy which hit the whole world when the Holocaust details became known. As a matter of fact, when I arrived here in May 1946 I brought with me a personal letter from Alec Masel who was at that time already in Shanghai, sent by Arthur Calwell to investigate the numbers and potential of Jewish refugees, German refugees and Austrian refugees, some of whom who been there since 1934 and Polish refugees who arrived there in 1941, together with the Russian community which was also stateless. There was a potential of 35,000 Jews ready and willing to move out because the political situation in China became very chaotic. That's why they preferred a letter should go by hand rather than entrusted to the post, which I delivered to Arthur Calwell in person in a private home in Balaclava Road.
But at the same time at the end of 1948, I think it was, I can't be sure exactly of the date, Arthur Calwell on behalf of the Australian government made an offer to Australian Jewry to make available 5,000 landing permits for Jewish refugees in the European camps which was a very, very fine and generous offer. The problem with that offer was that he insisted that all potential immigrants must undergo the same health test as applied to any other refugees coming to Australia.
That created a major problem and a trauma within the Jewish community. On the one hand we were all very delighted with the offer and appreciated it, on the other hand it presented the leadership of the Jewish community with a major problem to decide - because this particular demand meant that at a time when the fledging state of Israel was no more than a year old, circa 600,00 of them all together, not prepared to be able to look after few new arrivals there, they had to take in anybody who was Jewish, irrespective of their state of health, irrespective of their physical or mental state, having gone through the death camps and so on.
Here the Australian government only wanted able bodied, only healthy people to come to this country which meant that the small percentage of healthy people who survived would have had to come here. All the sick, all mentally disturbed, the jetsam and flotsam of the camps, they would have had to go to Israel and they would have to be the people to build the state. That was a major moral issue for the community which was not easy to solve, it was so serious a rift within the community that Maurice Ashkanasy had no option and in his position as the leader of Australian Jewry he called for an interstate conference to come and deal exclusively with this one item of the agenda.
It took place I think some time in the early months of 1949 in the ballroom of the minor synagogue at Toorak. There was a very sizable delegation from Sydney and the same number of people from Melbourne. I was one of the delegates from Melbourne by sheer chance because I certainly did not belong three years after my arrival in Australia to the top leadership of Australian Jewry then, but so it was. People who advocated to accept the offer were the representatives of the welfare organisations. Leo Fink in Melbourne and Syd Einfeld of Sydney, representative respectively of the two major bodies, because it was offered to them on the understanding that they will look after people who arrived here, that they will facilitate their integration, they would help them with their needs and that is why the offer was made to them. They were very, very keen to accept it.
On the other side of the table or the barricade, whichever way you want to call it, was Paul Morawetz in the first place, who presented the flipside of that proposition and aided by a young fellow of thirty who did not speak proper English at that time, they put the other side of the argument. The debate was a passionate one. It was heated, at times acrimonious, and at times so bad that Ashkanasy had to break proceedings, in fact twice, to let tempers cool before he carried on again.
I am mentioning those details to convey to you how deep this issue cut across the community and individual attitudes. The result was almost a foregone conclusion-the offer was accepted. Why do I mention it? Because I remember Maurice Ashkanasy sitting at the head of the table as the independent chairman of this meeting, and I remember his face, and I remember the twitching of the muscles of his face because his face conveyed to me the entire agony and the entire sense of moral dilemma-Ashkanasy the Jew, Ashkanasy the pre-eminent Australian citizen and yet the Zionist at the same time, who had to find in his conscience the means to be able to accept this offer. It was by a majority decision and that is how it was. That was one aspect of the influx of Jews after the war and it applied almost entirely to the Ashkenazi part of the Jewish community.
Now a much shorter detail, I'm very mindful of your patience and I am pleading for indulgence. In the mid 50's Anglican Jewry celebrated the scenery of the return of the Jews to England. They returned after Oliver Cromwell came to power and found the treasury empty and he needed some money to carry on the business of the state. There were Jewish bankers who were expelled from Spain and from Portugal who settled in Amsterdam and it was to those Sephardi Jewish bankers that he turned for an infusion of money to be able to carry on the business of the state. That is how the beginning of the return of organised Jewish community to England has come about, apart from a small community of Marranos who lived there for a number of years but identified themselves ultimately when it became official and kosher to be a Jew again in England after 360 years.
One of the invited guests to that very elaborate celebration was the spiritual leader of Sephardic Jewry in the United States, Rabbi Dr de Sola Pool. But instead of crossing the Atlantic and going straight to London he made a detour and came via Australia with one purpose in mind. He wanted to meet and talk to Maurice Ashkanasy. What he wanted to talk about was a matter related again to immigration. According to the White Australia Policy, which was in force then, North African Jewry was not classified as white and therefore could not obtain landing permits to Australia and the rabbi thought perhaps he could persuade the leader of Australian Jewry to intervene and to put a good word in, to see whether this restriction could be somewhat ameliorated.
It was my pleasure to take Rabbi De Sola Pool to Maurice Ashkanasy's office in Selbourne Chambers. It was a tiny little front entrance and the secretary sitting there in whose very capable hands Jewish affairs were very well looked after, as it has been put. As it happened he had a client with him and it was a little while before he came. With a smile on his face he shook hands with his guest and said to him, 'Rabbi with a name like Ashkanasy, truly I don't have to say any more.'
I don't know whether you got the full drift of what he was saying because it may sound strange if I tell you that what Ashkanasy told his guest was that if carrying the surname Ashkanasy he was a hundred per cent sure that he was Sephardi. Because if you meet anybody in the world with the surname Ashkanasy you can learn from it that they are Sephardi. I left them to themselves for a short while. Maurice promised to do what he could but obviously the restrictions of the White Australia Policy continued for a while and nothing could be done about it until the government changed or eased White Australia and the conditions for Sephardi Jews to be able to benefit from landing permits. That is why from the point of view of the structure of our community the Sephardi component is ever so much smaller because when they wanted to come they couldn't get in.
Mr Chairman, I was interested to hear you quoting Robert Menzies and the Shloshim memorial service. Let me add one more quotation from that very evening. I was there, Robert Menzies was in a very particularly jovial mood considering the circumstances of the occasion. Whilst he was saying all those nice things he stopped for a minute, and then turned around, said the following, 'I taught Maurice Ashkanasy many things, there is one thing I couldn't teach him, I couldn't teach him politics.' Thank you, Mr Chairman.