Miryam “Mimi” Wise was just a child when she and her family went into hiding to avoid Nazi persecution, but the memories are still vivid and she will be sharing her story in Wollongong this October.
“The Holocaust was the ultimate in bullying,” the survivor said. “I realise that this [speaking publicly] is important because my stories are going to die with me.”
Mimi will speak openly on Wednesday October 4 at Wollongong Art Gallery as part of a new exhibition Courage To Care, which showcases the inspiring stories of individuals who had the courage to stand up to injustice to help save persecuted Jews during WWII.
“I didn’t consider that anything I had to say was particularly important – not compared to people who had been in concentration camps and suffered enormously … but I want to make people aware,” the humble woman said.
She and her family came from the “big city” of Strasbourg in north-eastern France, but began moving around the country between 1939 and 1943 fearing a German invasion.
For the last thirty years Mimi has recounted what then happened many times as part of the travelling exhibition, because she likes Australia and never wants to see this type of “distrust and hatred and bullying” like she saw as a young girl.
November 4, 1943 was the night her family fled after learning they were on a Gestapo list, and if found then their fate could turn to death like that of six million other Jewish people murdered during the Holocaust.
Read the article by Desiree Savage in the Illawarra Mercury.