Sharing wise words on Yom Hashoah

As a two-minute siren wailed throughout Israel last week on Yom Hashoah, Sydney grandmother and Holocaust survivor Mimi Wise, during a visit to Israel, stood side by side with students at the Boys Town Jerusalem (BTJ) high school in silent contemplation.

She then shared with them her childhood memories of fleeing the Nazis, hiding in small villages in the French countryside, and at one point being separated from her parents.

Visibly moved, the students gave a round of applause for Wise, who has been very active for six decades in Holocaust education and communal activities in Sydney, and whose daughter, Ilana Kaplan, is the school’s Australian development coordinator.

“Born in Italy in 1937, my family moved to Strasbourg, France in 1938, and when France capitulated, we were living in the unoccupied zone, where we remained for the duration of the war,” Wise told the students, before describing her parents’ desperate attempts to enable her, and her little brother, to survive.

Mimi Wise speaking to the students during her visit to the Boys Town Jerusalem school.

Living on false identity papers, the children were eventually hidden on a pig farm, where Mimi, then aged six, cared for her five-year-old brother until they were reported to the authorities by a neighbour.

Fortunately they were not found, but had to be returned to their parents.

“We had to relocate a number of times to avoid round-ups, but were very fortunate to survive as a family intact,” Wise said.

“Returning to Strasbourg at war’s end, my parents were once again confronted by antisemitism.

“Realising there was no future in Europe for their children, we applied for, and received, visas to Australia in 1947.”

Noting that BTJ “started from the ashes of the Holocaust”, Kaplan said, “Miraculously, my mother and father survived the Holocaust to build a family, and now I’m privileged to involve Australians in the critical work of preparing young Israelis to build a strong future, through BTJ.”

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