A child survivor of the Holocaust, Serge Liberman practised as a Melbourne GP while producing a series of award-winning short stories and many other publications in an outstanding literary career.
Dr Serge Liberman, author, editor, scholar, bibliographer and medical practitioner, has died in Melbourne at the age of 75. For more than 40 years he was a leading light in Australian Jewish literary and multicultural spheres.
Serge Israel Liberman was born on November 14, 1942 in Fergana, Uzbekistan (USSR), to Abram Jacob and Regina Liberman (nee Minski), Polish-born parents made refugees by the war in Europe. A daughter, also born in Fergana, died there in infancy before Serge was born.
After spending time in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany (1946-7) and then in Paris (1947-51), the family of three arrived by ship in Melbourne in 1951. Serge learnt English, continued his education, graduated in medicine in 1967 and (after a period in Israel with his first wife Eva Matzner, where the eldest of their three children was born) began work in Melbourne in 1974 as a general practitioner, continuing until his retirement in 2013.
Read the full obituary by Alex Skovron at The Sydney Morning Herald.