Words are not the only way to tell stories, however, and in this edition we also feature the MHM Memory Reconstruction Project.

Words are not the only way to tell stories, however, and in this edition we also feature the MHM Memory Reconstruction Project, which brought together Holocaust survivors and their families at the Centre to create personal collages to capture survivors’ stories. And, in another example of visual storytelling, Dr Anna Hirsh discusses some of the artworks housed in the Centre’s own wonderful collection of paintings, drawings and sculpture.The April 2016 pre-Pesach edition of the Melbourne Holocaust Museum’s bi-annual publication, Centre News, makes excellent reading. This issue features the text of a presentation by Holocaust survivor and Melbourne Holocaust Museum guide, 94-year old Moshe Fiszman, given in January at the UN Holocaust Memorial Day in which he focuses on the ‘sparks of human kindness, selflessness and compassion’ of one courageous non-Jewish woman who helped him to survive. As well as bringing you his moving testimony, we also feature the account of Saba Feniger’s liberation in May 1945, and Fred Antman’s recollections of life as a refugee in Shanghai.

Dr John Fox has written a thoughtful analysis of Theodore Adorno’s ideas about collective responsibility and their connection to the Holocaust, and Dr Avril Alba discusses the transmission of Holocaust memory to successive generations, and the role of Holocaust museums in doing so.

We hope you enjoy the articles.

Articles in our April 2015 edition of Centre News focus on Jews who survived the Second World War inside the Soviet Union.

Articles in our April 2015 edition of Centre News cover a broad canvas. Two articles – one historical and the other a personal narrative – focus on Jews who survived the Second World War inside the Soviet Union. Both pieces were written by seasoned academics, Dr John Goldlust and Dr Maria Tamarkin, and make fascinating reading.

The saga of the Jews who survived in Shanghai during World War Two, like the story of those who survived in the Soviet Union, has often been by-passed by historians of the Holocaust era, who tend to focus on Poland, the Balkans, Central and Western Europe. The Melbourne Holocaust Museum, however, has a keen interest in the stories of the ‘Shanghailanders’ and, against the background of the exhibition on Shanghai Jewry currently featured at the MHM, this period in Jewish history is highlighted by Horst Eisfelder who spent the war years as a youngster in Shanghai.

Centre News readers will ‘meet’ Tim Chan, an exceptional young man who, diagnosed with autism at the age of three, has written a ‘must read’ article.

And there is much more!

If you have not yet read and enjoyed the September 2015 edition of Centre News, please take the opportunity to do so.