Survivor’s legacy will live on

The Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) and broader NSW Jewish community has expressed sadness at the passing of Holocaust survivor and long-time museum volunteer Tom Fleming, whose funeral was held on May 5 at Macquarie Park Cemetery.

Fleming was born in 1938 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.

With a life-long twinkle in his eye and a mischievous grin on his face, he was independent, confident, brave – and a little naughty.

These characteristics became more pronounced once he was imprisoned in Theresienstadt.

When just six, he took up a dare to ‘pin a tail’ on an SS officer.

During talks at the SJM and for Courage to Care, Fleming would often recount the oppressive rules, the changing cast of prisoners, the brutality of the camp guards and most vividly, the time when he was forced into a burial pit and ordered to spread lime over corpses.

He awoke on the morning of February 16, 1945, to discover that his mother, Lolli – his source of comfort and protection – had vanished.

He was too young to know that his mother was pregnant and had been taken to the hospital to deliver another son, Peter.

Of the 350 children born in Theresienstadt, Peter would be one of only 25 to survive.

Towards the end of May 1945, a few weeks after liberation, Fleming returned to Bratislava with his mother and brother to wait for the return of his father, who had been deported.

A few months later, it was confirmed that his father and many other family members, had been murdered in Auschwitz.

Fleming arrived in Australia in 1948, aged 10 – with the assistance of The Joint – learned English at school, studied at Sydney University, and later became a businessman, a father of eight and a grandfather of 16.

SJM’s head of volunteers, Rony Bognar, said: “You could always see the mischievous boy in him.

“Etched into Tom’s personality was a spirit of adventure and playfulness, despite the pain and sadness he bore from the past.

“He learned at a tender age about the precariousness of life and he made the most of it.”

Fleming’s stepdaughter, Nicola Barrett, recalled how he and her mother Caroline, told his story to school students across Australia and how he documented it in his book, Lolli’s Apple.

“Hopefully his legacy is etched in the minds of all of those children and his story will never be forgotten,” Barrett said.