A remarkable present from the past
Pure chance, timing and the magic of social media came together this week to dramatically solve NSW woman Heidi Blackwell's 15-year-old mystery about the owner of a box full of items documenting a Jewish couple's escape from Nazi Germany to Australia via Shanghai.
PURE chance, timing and the magic of social media came together this week to dramatically solve NSW woman Heidi Blackwell’s 15-year-old mystery about the owner of a box full of items documenting a Jewish couple’s escape from Nazi Germany to Australia via Shanghai.
And tears are bound to flow today (January 18) when Sydney’s Janine Levy and her family make the hour’s drive south to Helensburgh to meet Blackwell and inspect and collect the files, letters and photographs that feature her late grandparents Necha and Werner Fink.
“I was absolutely blown away that it has found its way to the family after so long,” Blackwell told The AJN.
“It’s a wonderful ending, because it is such a significant and sacred set of possessions that have found their home.”
The two families connected when Janine’s 25-year-old daughter, Eliza, spotted a message posted by Blackwell called ‘Mystery needs solving’ on the Bondi Local Loop Facebook site on Monday, which revealed how the items randomly turned up in a box left on Blackwell’s doorstep when she was renting a Bondi home in 2003.
Blackwell described the box’s contents as “a veritable treasure trove” that contains photos, birth certificates, school reports, bank statements and other Fink family files dating back to the late 1800s.
Her post included pictures of Necha and Werner as young adults, letters posted to them in Berlin and Shanghai, and forms with their names on them that were issued by the Nazi authorities, indicated by swastika stamps.
Eliza told The AJN on Monday afternoon the post “popped up on my [Facebook] news feed because so many people I knew had been viewing and commenting on it”.
“When I started reading it and then saw the photos posted [of Necha and Werner], I recognised them and sent it to my parents, who said that’s definitely them”.
“I messaged Heidi and after a little while she responded and said she was so happy I contacted her.
“My heart was beating so fast.
“This is so special, and we’re incredibly thankful.”
Blackwell told The AJN that when she discovered the box, she was a busy single mother “and the internet was just beginning, there was no Facebook, and it was a different world”.
“I had no idea where it [the box] had turned up from.
“I did attempt to look up the name Fink, with the initials N and W, in the [Sydney] White Pages directory but couldn’t find anything, and I then kind of forgot about it.
“It was only because my son, Jack, was having his 18th birthday party last Saturday, that I began looking around my home for old school and baby photographs of him, and stumbled across these treasured items [again].
“The timing was amazing too, because we are about to move to Tasmania, so that would have made it much harder to arrange meeting up.”
Janine said her family never realised the box had been missing, but revealed she had “vague memories” of helping move everything from a garage of a home in Bondi that her grandparents had sold about 15 years ago, adjacent to the property that Blackwell was renting.
“It’s possible we may have overlooked that box, and someone saw it and decided to leave it in front,” she said.
“My grandparents never really talked about their past, and I was probably too young to feel like asking them about it.
“I’m so excited, but also a little apprehensive too, about what’s going to be in that box.
“I’m pretty sure it is all legitimate – but we won’t know for sure until we see it ourselves.”
Janine described the solved mystery as “incredible” and said its timing could not be better.
“We happen to be planning to go on a family holiday this year to Israel, via Shanghai,” she said.
SHANE DESIATNIK
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