The Melbourne Holocaust Museum will be closed on Sunday 4 October (Simchat Torah).
Join us as we celebrate Jonathan Kanat’s debut book Miriam’s Light, drawing on family testimony to tell the story of his mother, Miriam Kanat, a child Holocaust survivor.
Miriam’s Light is a deeply personal memoir that tells the story of Miriam Kanat (née Mrocki), a child Holocaust survivor who rebuilt her life in Melbourne after the war. Born in Poland in 1939, Miriam was separated from her parents and hidden in a Catholic convent during the Holocaust. Her survival depended on silence, concealment of identity, and the courage of those who risked their lives to protect her.
Written by her son, Jonathan Kanat, brings together Miriam’s own words, family testimony, and historical context to explore not only her survival, but the lasting impact of what remained unspoken. It reflects on a life shaped by silence and watchfulness, carried long after the war had ended, yet one in which she found her own new possibility, grounded in the life, love, and family she went on to build.
At its heart, his work is guided by the values his mother lived by, a belief in the enduring power of love, not only as a force of survival, but in its capacity to heal, to forgive, and to be carried forward, shaping family, identity, and the possibility of renewal.
His writing explores memory, intergenerational trauma, and the transmission of lived experience.
Book signing and purchases will be available at the event. Secure your seats now.
Please join us in the book launch of Irmgard: The Girl from Dresden honouring Irma Hanner OAM’s legacy.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to hear why Fiona Kelmann felt compelled to tell Irma’s story, celebrate an extraordinary life, and support the work of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
Irma’s two decades at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum form a central part of this legacy. A story of survival, witness, and responsibility, this book is a profound testament to the enduring power of memory – and the courage of one woman who refused to be silenced.
Born in Dresden as Nazism tightened its grip, Irmgard witnessed the rapid dismantling of Jewish life in Germany. As discriminatory laws escalated into violence, Irma’s world collapsed during the terror of Kristallnacht. She navigated her own survival in a regime built on persecution and terror – one that punished Jewish lives and targeted non-Jewish people who dared to oppose it.
Irma recounts her story with astonishing clarity: her family’s fate, surviving Terezin, and her arrival to Australia as a refugee. Interwoven with Irma’s testimony is the voice of author Fiona Kelmann, who explores the powerful terrain of post memory, revealing how the past shapes the present and how stories are inherited across generations.
The book also shines a light on the unique strength of Melbourne Holocaust survivors, a community defined by resilience, generosity, and an unwavering commitment to education and remembrance.
Book signing and sales at the event. Book your seats now.
Click here to reserve your seats.
All proceeds from book sales at the event will be donated to the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
Fiona Kelmann is the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. Following a career in law, she joined the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, where she worked for over twelve years as an Education Officer and Assistant Curator. She is the editor of Spark of Hope, the 2024 autobiography of her grandmother, Luba Goldberg. Irmgard: The Girl from Dresden marks her debut as an author.
Available for the first time in English translation, this collection of songs is a powerful memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.
In June 1945, before the full devastation of the Holocaust had emerged, a team of researchers embarked on a remarkable project. While documenting the experiences of Jewish refugees, they began to collect songs composed and sung in the Nazi camps and ghettos. The resulting book, Mima’amakim (Out of the depths), was published in a short run of 500 copies. Today, only a handful survive.
Out of the depths: The first collection of Holocaust songs presents the contents of this extraordinary document for a new generation of readers. Based on a copy of Mima’amakim discovered in 2013, it contains not only the songs’ melodies and lyrics, the latter in a new translation by Joseph Toltz, but also short biographies of the composers, drawn from painstaking original research. Introductory essays provide historical and musicological background, deepening our knowledge of this terrible event and the creative means by which the Jewish people responded to and endured it.
Described by the original editor, Yehuda Eismann, as a ‘memorial stone for Polish Jewry’, the songbook is a timeless document of a people’s despair, hope and strength.
This program is co-presented by MHM, ACJC and Kadimah.
Dr Joseph Toltz is an ethnomusicologst and research manager at the University of Sydney. An expert on Jewish music and its migrations to Anglophone countries, his ethnographic work incorporates creative research (performance, composition, and arrangement), Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, and History. This is his first book.
Dr Anna Boucher is an Associate Professor in Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Sydney. An expert on migration and a solicitor, her work sits at the intersection of politics, law, migration studies and research methods. This is her fourth book.
Erica Frydenberg was born in the beautiful city of Budapest, just as the Hungarian regime was implementing Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’. Decades later, she went back in or to confront the mass murder and deliberate inhumanity, but also honour the courage of those who resisted – diplomats like Raoul Wallenberg and Carl Lutz, and the many lesser-known individuals who risked everything to save Jewish lives.
For Erica, this history is personal. Her uncle, the enigmatic Nandor Eichel, saved her life before she had even turned one. This “Budapesti Schindler,” protected only by a fragile diplomatic status, moved through the chaos rescuing countless others, whose stories only surface decades later in Sydney, Australia.
Yet Nandor refused to speak of the past. Piecing together his hidden story, Erica uncovers deeper truths about memory: its capacity to wound, to illuminate and to nurture empathy and healing across generations.
The Melbourne Holocaust Museum is proud to partner with Melbourne Jewish Book Week in launching this remarkable book.
Please note this event may be recorded for our institutional archive, and photos may be used for marketing purposes.
Tickets must be purchased prior to May 12th.
We are honoured to launch a new book by Carol Gordon and Gregoria Boursinos, which recounts the experiences of two sisters who survived the Holocaust under differing circumstances. Maria and Lola Seror were the sole survivors of their family, and their stories – told 70 years after the war – are a testament to their courage and resistance in the face of unendurable hardship. Carol and Gregoria will join Dr Simon Holloway in conversation, as they discuss the circumstances of Maria and Lola’s survival, and the Holocaust in Thessaloniki.
Carol Gordon is a Melbourne-based writer, filmmaker, and Holocaust educator.
Training as a film editor in South Africa and working in the film and television industry there for many years, Carol moved to Australia with her family in 1995. With a Degree in Teaching and an Honours Degree in Communication (Media Studies), Carol has completed several courses through the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Devoting more than twenty five years to the research of the history of Greece’s Jewish communities and their near-destruction during the Holocaust, Carol continues on her mission to present The Shira’s Journey Project to local and international audiences of all ages, and sharing the all too unknown history of these once vibrant and dynamic communities.
Carol has written a screenplay which has been self-published as a book. The book, Shira’s Journey, is fiction but based on fact and real events.
Another element of The Shira’s Journey Project is a photographic exhibition for which Carol has written all the accompanying text. Working as a volunteer guide and Holocaust educator at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Carol has also helped to transcribe Survivor testimonies for the museum.
Gregoria Boursinos is a Greek Australian and holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Diploma in Education from La Trobe University. Boursinos majored in World War II History and has always had a strong interest in Holocaust studies. She has completed a Holocaust course at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum and at the Yad Vashem School in Jerusalem. Gregoria met Maria and Lola at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum and knew immediately that she wanted to record their stories. Gregoria spent countless hours with the sisters, interviewing them, documenting their stories and doing research. When that was all done, Gregoria approached Carol Gordon to co-author the book with her.
Please join Linda Royal for the book launch of The Star on the Grave at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
In 1940, as the Nazis sweep toward Lithuania, Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara defies his government and secretly issues visas to fleeing Jewish refugees. After the war, Sugihara is dismissed and disappears into obscurity.
Three decades later, in Australia, Rachel Margol is shocked when her engagement reveals a long-held family secret: she is Jewish. As she grapples with this deception and the dysfunction it has caused, unspoken tragedies from the past begin to come to light. When an opportunity arrives to visit Chiune Sugihara, the man who risked his life to save the Margols during World War II, Rachel becomes determined to meet him. But will a journey to Japan, and the secrets it uncovers, heal the family or fracture them for good?
The Star on the Grave is a powerful and moving novel inspired by the true story of Chiune Sugihara, and the thousands of people – including the author – who owe him their lives.
The Star on the Grave is Linda’s first novel and will be available for purchase at the event.
Linda Margolin Royal was born in Sydney, forever thankful her father and grandparents received life-saving transit visas from Chiune Sugihara in 1940, which enabled them to enter Japan and escape the Holocaust; and ultimately meant they could find a permanent, safe home in Australia in 1941. The remainder of her family numbering in the hundreds were murdered in concentration camps. This work is therefore a labour of love to which she is now devoting her life.
She trained as a graphic designer and then copywriter, and spent 30 years in the advertising industry both in Australia and the US, writing TV, radio and press for major multinationals. Her first instinct was to write her family’s story as a film, which is currently in development; and the book grew organically from this screenplay.
Please join Rachelle Unreich for the book launch of A Brilliant Life at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum.
The powerful true story of a Holocaust survivor told by her daughter – a tale that reminds us of the resilience of the soul and the ability of the heart to heal.
A mother and daughter.
Love. Loss. Wonder.
The story of a brilliant life.
A Brilliant Life will be available for purchase at the event.
Please note due to capacity limit we have stopped sales, therefore please register your interest for an additional event which potentially be held early next year.
