Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

period that Jews in Israel began to exterminate more Palestinians. Their
Holocaust narrative, of untold suffering and victimhood, was to be matched
with the suffering of the bushfire victims – and perhaps Victorians could learn
something from the miraculous Jewish Holocaust survival when the Germans
spared no effort in exterminating European Jewry during World War Two.
Students from all surrounding schools in the Wimmera were pushed through
the exhibit, a guilt-trip show if ever there was one. The exhibit showed how
some non-Jews saved a number of Jews because they had the courage to care.
It was not mentioned in any of the panels telling a story of Jewish grief and
suffering that about 150 000 Jews served in the German Army under Hitler.
But such facts do not fit the Holocaust narrative. I personally know
individuals who still had Jewish neighbours after the war ended.
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Seated behind the journalists, and away from trusted friends – as he usually
does whenever we seek clarification at public meetings – is former Adelaide
Institute associate David Brockschmidt. It seems he does not realise that
the perceived enemy knows him very well and that, in any case, guilt by
association – were it to grip in his case – is rejected outright by anyone in
the honest media. If we let ourselves be publicly intimidated by this
principle of guilt by association, then we may as well give up any sort of
public engagement because our free expression is thereby totally
compromised. If we lose our freedom to think and to express our opinions
on matters that any concerned citizen must express in order to function
properly within our society, then we may as well be dead.
Heinrich Brockschmidt, David’s father, was instrumental in placing his
trucks at the disposal of Oskar Schindler, and transported the ‘Schindler
Jews’ from Poland to Czechoslovakia, where they continued to work in
Schindler’s armaments factory. Australian author Thomas Keneally
obtained the story from Leopold Pfefferberg living in Los Angeles, then in
1982 wrote Schindler’s Ark about it. Hollywood film producer, Steven
Spielberg, in 1993 turned the novel – which initially was categorised as a
true story– into Schindler’s List. In 2009 Penguin Books has produced a
book and a DVD of the same name and is aiming it at the school market.
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