MHM Social Club: Viv Parry

Guest Speaker: Viv Parry, Volunteer Community Worker on “Aboriginal People and the Holocaust”.

Viv Parry, who has served as a volunteer community worker for over 30 years, realised from a very early age that the world is not a ‘perfect’ place. Her mother’s family fled from Berlin in 1938, while her father experienced the horrors of war in New Guinea during the Second World War.  These experiences dominated her family’s everyday life.

To make the world a better place, Viv has provided support to the homeless in St. Kilda, to asylum seekers through the Brigidine Convent Asylum Seeker Project, and to Aboriginal men and women and their families.

Ten years as Vice-President of the Child Survivors of the Holocaust organisation, and now Chairperson has given Viv a deep insight into the lives of Holocaust survivors and their trauma. Having become involved through Art therapy with the men in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and understanding the traumatic history of the Aboriginal people, Viv brings each group of men to the Holocaust Centre to show them they were not the only ones who have suffered as a minority.

Viv will speak about the experiences of these special occasions, the effects of a visit to the Melbourne Holocaust Museum on the men, and in turn what the Aboriginal men have given back to us.