Global honour for Eva Fischl

Communal figure Eva Fischl has been honoured with the international Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)’s Ma’asim Tovim (Good Deeds) Award, bestowed on members of its executive who have offered exceptional service and devotion to Jewish and humanitarian causes.

Speaking to The AJN from New York, where she was presented with the prestigious award on May 20, Fischl, Sydney-based founding president of The Joint Australia, said she was thrilled that the Australian organisation, launched in 2012, has been lauded at the international level. The rarely bestowed award has had only one other recipient this century, US philanthropist and JDC board member Marshall Weinberg.

The Joint Australia “has done really well, we’ve made huge strides and we have big ambitions”, said Fischl, detailing Australian involvement in missions around the globe, aiding small Jewish communities in Georgia, Morocco, Cuba, India, Greece, the Former Soviet Union and Hungary. Historically JDC funded the resettlement of Shoah survivors in Australia and other countries.

“I feel moved, humbled and deeply grateful. I’m very committed to pursuing the major goals that Joint Australia has in assisting the most vulnerable of our fellow Jews, globally and in Israel.”

While in New York, Fischl met with Omer Shem Tov, a former Hamas hostage, who was in the US campaigning for the release of the remaining hostages. She described Shem Tov, who was released in a staged Hamas ceremony in February after 505 days of captivity, as “a young man with so much faith”.

Fischl’s diverse career in the Jewish community includes positions and memberships on the board of governors of Jewish Communal Appeal, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Federal Executive of National WIZO and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. She was president of Jewish Care NSW and is now a patron.

Born in a Nazi holding camp in Hungary in 1944, where she and her parents were set to be transported to their deaths, she was given to a Jewish woman posing as a Gentile, who took her into hiding in Budapest with her father’s family until liberation.

“My father never survived … My mother, thank God, did survive the camps and came back to find me in Budapest, but by then, I was over two years old, and in fact, did not realise she was my mother, and apparently refused to call her ‘mummy’ until a long time later,” she related on Facebook.

Fischl has made numerous visits to Israel since the 2023 Hamas terror attacks. The global JDC organisation has taken a major role among Diaspora organisations aiding rehabilitation efforts.