Reminiscences of Bigotry by Herbert Freilich(AM)

My recollections of bigotry stories are disproportionately from a Jewish perspective. Others, from different backgrounds, would have different recollections.

Bigotry is universal. It is the target that differs.

***

I went to the Kindergarten at Scots College in Mansion Road, Bellevue Hill when I was not quite 5, about February 1930. Scots College was then and presumably still is a Presbyterian school. Ecclesiasticism was strong then.

One of my earliest memories is of the kindergarten, presumably on the first day. The teacher was, I think, a Miss Evans. She looked at the paper before her , looked at me and said:"Freelitch, that's a funny name" and "what religion are you?" I said "Jewish". Her brow cleared. "Oh that's alright, as long as you're not Catholic". Apparently I went home and said "Mummy, what's Catholic?"

In the same vein, some years later, probably about 1935, one of the boys mentioned "Catholic" in class. The form master nearly had apoplexy. The word "catholic" means "universal" he thundered. WE belong to the Universal Christian Church. What you are referring to is the Roman Church. Don't you forget it.

I went to Scots Preparatory School from 1930 to the end of 1936 when I went to Sydney Grammar. The only time I can recall being personally confronted with religious or ethnic difference was when I was about 6 or 7 and was told, purely as a matter of known fact, that I had killed Christ. "I didn't" I said "I haven't killed anybody".

At that stage I doubt if I knew who Christ was.

***

From 1933, with the increasing Nazification of Germany, the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935 and particularly after the Anschluss with Austria, the Sudetenland crisis of August/September 1938 and the aggressive and growing power of Hitler's Germany, some European refugees were allowed into Australia. The numbers were relatively small - a few thousand - but the popular attitude was far from sympathetic. They were the "Reffos". They were mostly, if not entirely, Jewish and in an overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon population they stood out disproportionately to their numbers. Apart from the accents and the limited English, the European clothes were a giveaway.(One did not then use the term Anglo-Celtic; there was still a dividing line between British and Irish origins. The fact that the Welsh were of Celtic origin was not considered. The Welsh, like Lloyd George and Billy Hughes, were Protestant. The Italians and Greeks - the "dagos and wops" - were of course not thought of as Australian at all!)

I met quite a number of refugees at Jewish community functions and those who contacted my father for advice and assistance. Most arrived with nothing.

My father's sister, her husband and infant son arrived from Antwerp in early 1939.

My mother's youngest sister, a girl in her twenties, had a visa to come and was booked on a ship to sail from Danzig on September 1st, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland. She is believed to have reached Danzig on the day. She was never heard of again, her fate unknown.

In 1939 or 1940 I was 14 or 15 and a schoolboy at Sydney Grammar. I used to catch the bus outside Winns store in Oxford Street. At the bus-stop in Kings Cross a foreign-looking man asked the conductor a question - presumably a bus direction. He received a reply along the lines of: "Bloody reffo bastard. Learn to speak English why don't you. Get out of here." The conductor pulled the cord and the bus left leaving the man standing off the kerb. I was shocked. I was even more shocked at the reaction of the bus passengers. "Good on you mate. That's the way to talk them. Reffo bastards. etc."

I was stunned. I felt I should stand up and protest. But I didn't. I sat silent. And have felt ashamed of myself ever since.

Perhaps the Foundation on Bigotry is the protest I did not make 60 years ago.

***

The first time I was given any understanding of homosexuality was on the ship going to England in 1952. In those days ships were crowded with young people going on the great adventure to Britain and Europe. Some, like me, to pursue post-graduate studies and degrees. Shipboard life was an adventure in itself, duty-free beer and wine, relative sexual freedom, exotic sightseeing, Colombo, Aden, Suez, Naples.

I was sitting at a table on the boat-deck one morning when one of the fellows came over and asked if he could join me. I said, sure. He was one of the young crowd but kept a bit to himself.

He said; I believe you're a doctor.

I said; yes.

He said; well then you know what I am.

I said; what?

Being a doctor, you know what I am.

No,what are you?

I'm a homosexual, I thought all doctors could tell.

Not as far as I know.

You're not, by any chance?

Sorry. No.

He told me his story. He was about 22 or 23. His family was Melbourne establishment, his father a director of a well-known shipping line. His grandfather or great grandfather had been one of the founders of the line. His homosexuality was known to his family and he was being sent to England as a reverse remittance man, with a subsidy to stay away from Australia for fear of family embarrassment or disgrace. He was very unhappy. He said he had sexual urges normal for his age but they were directed exclusively towards males and he had to keep them to himself; the thought of sexual contact with females was repugnant to him. He didn't know what to do.

I said ,well surely the stewards on the ship ( who were overt ''queens" although I hope I didn't use the term.)

He got annoyed and asked if I would be interested in relations with an obvious frowsy tart? And if not why would I think he would interested in one of them?

I asked him when he became aware of his sexual difference. He thought a little before puberty when his friends became interested in girls and he recognised in himself a growing difference and the need to keep that difference to himself. And to pretend otherwise.

I didn't see much of him after that. I think he avoided me.

Some weeks later in London I ran into one of the chaps from the ship and we got talking. I asked if he knew what my homosexual friend was doing.

He said he had been told he had committed suicide.

Whenever anyone refers to homosexual "preferences", I think of my shipboard friend. His homosexuality was no preference . He would have preferred otherwise. But he was given no choice. He was naturally homosexual. And he was not allowed to live with it.

***

I saw Doug Joseph in Edinburgh in 1952. He was one of a group of friends from Sydney University days. We had been in the same year at Sydney Grammar but he and the rest of us really got to know each other over a cadaver in the dissecting room in first year at the Old Medical School in 1942.

Doug was doing anaesthetics and had gone as a surgeon on a cargo ship to England, via the Cape, in 1951.

The ship stopped at Capetown to exchange cargo. An accident occurred and a crane load dropped onto and crushed a black wharf labourer. Doug did what he could and called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, the officers walked past the badly injured man and asked Doug where the patient was. Doug pointed to him. The men looked at Doug, abused him for a false alarm, walked back to their car with an over the shoulder "call a kaffir ambulance" and drove off.

Doug assumed the man died.

***

We met Rolf in Surinam, which used to be Dutch Guyana, and again in French Guyana and yet again in Manaus in 1977.

He was from Holland, about 6 foot 4 and as Aryan as could be in appearance. He worked for a Dutch milk company, selling milk powder in South America.

As a child, at the beginning of the war, he lived in Amsterdam in what was predominantly a Jewish quarter. Although he was not aware of it then, most of his friends were Jewish.

One day during the war, all his friends were wearing yellow badges on their clothes. He was terribly ashamed because he didn't have one so he went around with an arm over his chest to hide the fact that he hadn't been given one.

Some time later he was in a friend's house having a meal with the family when some rude men came into the house and everyone had to get up and go outside. But he was not allowed to, so he sat there at the table with all the half eaten food and waited for them to come back.

But they never did.

***

I heard a story on ABC radio some years ago.

It went like this:

A white farmer, his wife and infant daughter lived on a property in an isolated area of South Africa.

They had a number of black workers on the farm including a woman with a little boy called Johnny. Johnny used to stay in the house as company for the little girl while his mother worked in the fields or in the house. The little girl grew attached to Johnny who was a year or two older. When she woke in the morning she wanted Johnny. All day long she followed Johnny around and when she went to bed - "where's Johnny?" She loved Johnny.

Some years went by and the time came when the little girl was six and had to go to the little school down the road. She insisted that Johnny went too and so her mother made them sandwiches and they went, hand in hand as usual, down the road to the little school.

In the afternoon the little girl came back. Alone.

Her mother looked out the door."where's Johnny?"

Little girl: Lips compressed. No reply.

"Is Johnny coming in soon for a glass of milk and some cake?"

Little girl: Lips still compressed. No reply.

Mother: Laughing. "What's the matter? Don't you like Johnny any more?"

Little girl: I HATE him.

Mother: Shocked. You hate Johnny???!!!. Why?

Little girl: cos cos he never TOLD me he was black.

***

A typical Jewish dish, usually served as an entree with red horseradish, is gefillte fish; literally "filled fish" but in my time it was always a round ball of compressed fish meat.

I was talking to an Israeli emissary at my father's house one evening several years ago. We were at the dinner table and he referred to the gefillte fish which brought back memories:

He was born in a little village - a " shtetl"* - in Poland before the war. Like many such shtetls in Eastern Europe the population was predominantly Jewish and very poor.

The local fishmonger sold fish meat which few Jews could afford. The fish skins were thrown out or given to those who asked for them. Gefillte fish at the Sabbath table on Friday nights consisted of fish skin wrapped around whatever filling the family could afford; usually old bread crumbs with, perhaps in a good week, a little fish meal added. A significant proportion of actual fish was almost unheard of. Most times it was moistened bread crumbs only.

He used to go with his mother to the fishmonger's on Friday mornings; not to buy fish but to ask for fish skins and fish bones which his mother used to dry and keep in Jars at home.

He often asked his mother: Why do you get fish bones to keep in jars? You can't eat them. The reply was always the same:You never know when they might come in useful. You never know.

He grew older, the war came, he was in the army, the unit was taken prisoner in the Soviet occupied zone and transported east of the Urals; Germany invaded the Soviet, Polish prisoners were released to re-join the Polish army in Egypt, he survived the war, his family had disappeared, he went to Palestine and joined the Jewish army.

He met a colleague in the Israeli army who had also come from Poland. During the war he had escaped from a German "Aktion" - a rounding up of Jews - in his home shtetl. He was on the run and had been given over-night refuge in, of all places, my Israeli friend's family home. He was exhausted and starving, had knocked on the door at night, was let in and given a meal.

At that time little food was available particularly in the herded off Jewish areas and he was amazed to be given gefillte fish containing real fish meat.

My friend: "I doubt that it would have contained real fish".

"It did. It was real fish."

"It couldn't have been. You were starving. You couldn't taste properly. How do know it was real fish?"

"It was I tell you. How do I know? Because of the bones. I had to take fish bones out of my mouth."

* Shtetl. A Yiddish version of the German, stadt, a town. Hence, shtetl, a small town or village.

***

I forget the details of this story but it received world headlines in 1952 and the documentation can presumably be looked up.

It went like this, perhaps with some change of detail.

During the war, as the family was being rounded up for "transportation", a Jewish woman in Poland gave her infant son to a friendly neighbour, a woman, for safe keeping until the family returned.

The mother and the father did not return and the only family survivor was the mother's brother who returned 2 or 3 years later to retrieve the child and migrate to Palestine.

The neighbour would not give the child back. She had had him baptised a Catholic and, if he was to be given back and presumably become Jewish, it would be a sin.

The uncle took legal action and the woman gave the child to church authorities for safe keeping. Legal action was pursued across Europe as the child was transferred, from convent to convent, westward.

In France, the court (again?) gave custody to the uncle but the child was again transferred, across the border to Spain; beyond reach under Franco's regime.

The child grew up and became a priest.

The case had achieved world headlines in 1952 when the matter was before the French court. I was a Clinical Assistant in the Radiology Department of University College Hospital in London at the time and a group of us discussed the matter. One of the group was Conway Don, an academically inclined man of strong Catholic belief.

We were generally appalled but Conway disagreed. "You don't understand" he said. "It may seem questionable in some human terms but you have to look beyond that. It is a matter of the child's eternal soul. If he stays a Catholic his eternal soul will be saved. If he doesn't it will be lost. It's as simple as that."

Is it?

***

A few years ago I was on a train going from Como, a Sydney suburb, to the Town Hall.

A young woman of Chinese origin was in the seat beside me.

On the wall immediately in front of us was graffiti.

PROTECT YOUR HERITAGE KILL AN ASIAN A DAY NATIONAL ACTION.

It was difficult for either of us to avoid looking at it.

The journey took about half an hour.

It seemed much longer.

***

I was in medical practice as a diagnostic radiologist in Wollongong, NSW for many years, from 1957 to 1972 as one of the early partners in what became a large practice and from 1972 to 1992 as a retired partner one or two days a week.

I was a member of the Wollongong Club as were a large number of my medical collegues and I would often go to the club after work to socialise and to discuss the diagnostic outcomes on patients of referring doctors. One of these, with whom I was very friendly, was originally a meidcal graduate form Ulster.

We were in the club one night in the 1960's and the conversation turned to increasing inter-ethnic violence in Northern Ireland. My friend voiced extreme anti-Catholic sentiments. I was incredulous and voiced my incredulity. An argument developed. Finally he turned away with "you dont understand. You dont know them like I do. You haven't lived with them."

***

Valmae and I lived in an apartment in Potts Point, Sydney for many years form 1968 to 1983. We became very friendly with other couples in the building, one of whom were retired publicans. They were originally form a township in the far west of New South Wales but had managed hotels in Sydney for many years and were retired when we knew them. They were a decent open couple; among other things we shared a fondness for wine. When they retired from their hotel they took with them I dont know how many cases of Grange Hermitage. This was in the early 1970's when Grange Hermitage was for drinking, not collecting, and we had many a bottle over the years at many a barbeque. We agreed on many things despite our religious backgrounds. We were Jewish they were Catholic.

We did not agree on pur attituted to Aborigines. theywere contemptuous of Aborigines and expressed open antipathy. if we tried to remonstrate the reply was "you dont understand. You dont know them like we do. You havent lived with them."

I doubt that in either of the above cases they "knew them" in any sense of mutual understanding or acceptance. Tehy existed in proximity in a manner guaranteed to bring out hte worst on both sides. they kept their distance: with the stronger community making sure that the weaker knew its place.

Until an explosion occurs.