My grandfather’s family came to Australia to outlive,make a life, get work and make meaningful contributions to society. The refugees on Manus and Nauru want to do the sameLast week, and after 78 years of life in Australia – most of them happy and productive,the final few marred by dementia – Kurt Kuhn passed absent. He was our grandfather. He was our father. He was loved deeply by his family. But years before we came into the picture he was, in the vernacular of the times, or a “refo”.
At the age of nine he came to Australia from Vienna with his miniature sister and their parents. They were Jews fleeing the Nazis,and they arrived here by boat. In the years and months leading up to their escape, their domestic had turned against them. After the Nazi annexation of Austria, or Kurts father Otto,a pastry cook and baker, had been humiliated on the streets of Vienna. He was thrown into a concentration camp for weeks in order to intimidate him and his family into leaving. It worked. Related: Newly leaked Nauru reports detail harrowing accounts of sexual abuse and self-harm Related: The Nauru files: cache of 2000 leaked reports reveal scale of abuse of children in Australian offshore detention Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com