The Testimony (16 page)
Authors: Halina Wagowska
It was seemingly idle chatter with friends that led to Homeplus Living Inc: a project to help homeless students in Year 11 and 12 who wished to complete their secondary education. Like me, several of these friends had retired recently, while others still worked. Between us we offered expertise in teaching, social work, business management, psychology and general medicine—and a lot of parenting.
After months of door-knocking in the labyrinths of bureaucracy we emerged as an incorporated, not-for-profit community organisation, an income-tax exempt charity and a tax-deductible gift recipient. We were now the Committee of Management of Homeplus Living Inc.
Friends, relatives and philanthropic trusts donated money and goods, and we were off and running. The Department of Human Services lent us one of their houses, and we rented another large house. We scrounged furniture, bedding, chattels and kitchen utensils.
Most of the students were referred to us by welfare officers from nearby schools. Each house had a ‘lead tenant’, usually a social worker or teacher who kept an eye on the students after working hours. They were remunerated with free rent and board. We wrote a charter of rights and responsibilities for the students, which gave them the right to privacy, confidentiality, a fair hearing with regard to complaints, tuition in difficult school subjects, help with expenses, and counselling. Their responsibilities included taking turns at the various housekeeping tasks, such as cleaning, shopping and preparing meals, in order to develop living skills. Some students settled in quickly, but some were apprehensive and suspicious of us for a while.
Quite a lot of time and effort went into running this project. We helped with transport and provided for the additional needs of the house and the students, such as shopping for school books, meeting bureaucratic requirements and attending ‘problems and grizzles’ sessions each week. We also dealt with various emergencies.
Newcomers in our care often asked, ‘Why are you doing it?’ or, ‘What’s in it for you?’ when they found out we were not paid for our work. The first time this happened I was taken aback and said that when I came to this country I needed a lot of help and got it from total strangers. In return I was now offering help to others.
A bemused look and my own senses told me it was the wrong answer: I was polishing my halo as a do-gooder and was on the defensive. On subsequent occasions I asked gently, ‘Is it really possible that you have never met people who do useful things for nothing? How come, when this country is so well known for its many volunteers? I trip over them wherever I go. Where have you been?’ I then waited for an answer. The sheepish expressions gave me hope that my point had been made.
There were some attempts to shock us, the polite oldies, but we neither blinked nor raised an eyebrow. I even tried to capitalise on these efforts. At the time it was popular to wear a T-shirt with the words ‘Shit happens’ on the front. When one of the kids wore one, I looked at it approvingly and said that, yes, shit did happen, but I told them that I would add, underneath, in large red letters: ‘BUT DON’T BECOME ITS VICTIM’ or ‘DON’T LET IT SCREW UP YOUR LIFE!’ These rough pearls of wisdom spoiled attempts to shock or embarrass me, though whether the message had its desired effect was not so clear.
I think homelessness is not just the lack of an abode. The sort of homelessness I experienced after the war was as one of many thousands rendered homeless by events far beyond their control. There was no stigma, no guilt or sense of failure attached to that situation. But here in peaceful, undamaged Australia the homeless person stands alone in a street filled with people walking to or from their homes. Here, homelessness results mostly from personal failures such as gambling, alcoholism, drug addiction, domestic violence or other reckless behaviour. Therefore it carries a stigma, a label of failure. In these circumstances the young can be damaged for life.
There are exceptions. Occasionally, physical or mental illness causes a home to disintegrate. Among homeless teenagers there are many who have had to leave home because of clashes with, or rejection by, a new step-parent. Several of our students came from such situations. They had a history of many a brief stay with various relatives and in emergency accommodation—all short-term arrangements. The school became the only stable and constant element in their lives.
We organised birthday and Christmas parties to enhance a sense of belonging, and most of the kids seemed to enjoy these. However, a few had a very jaundiced view of the world and there was no way of pleasing them.
Mary (not her real name) was a remarkable person. Wise and mature beyond her years, she wanted to study social sciences and become a social worker. Even back then she had the makings for it: she noticed other people’s needs and problems, and offered help. Others confided in her and sought her friendship, and she was a great and stabilising influence in an otherwise somewhat brittle setting.
One day Mary told me about herself and her childhood from hell. Her alcoholic father became violent when drunk, and her battered mother lived on tranquillisers and cried most of the time. Her brother, who was some years older, had left home after a fight with his father and, although he was reported missing as a fifteen-year-old, was never seen again.
The family living next door encouraged Mary to play with their children and to stay at their place whenever it was not safe for her to be at home. That family was in complete contrast to her own. They were sober, dependable, caring and never violent. They gave Mary a surprise party for her tenth birthday, and she told me that it was just after that party when she decided to live her life the way they did next door, not like they did at her house. ‘Wasn’t I lucky to have that next door?’ she said.
Her father went to jail, the next-door family moved interstate and Mary’s mother was put into supervised care after another suicide attempt. For some years Mary lived with her grandmother, a loving but ailing lady. When she died the school referred Mary to Homeplus.
‘Mum gets very upset when I visit her, and begs my forgiveness,’ Mary told me, ‘so the nurse said it would be better for her if I did not visit. I don’t want to see my father, and the police are still advertising for my brother, though now he would look very different from the photo we gave them eight years ago.’ I said to her, ‘Mary, I salute you for the way you cope with life. It is very good to know you.’
We then talked about current problems in the house. Kate (not her real name), who had arrived recently, was aggressive, disruptive and out to annoy everyone. We wondered if she would ever settle down in Homeplus. I asked Mary if she had any ideas about how we could help Kate. Mary, who was then seventeen years old and could have been my granddaughter, said, ‘Halina, you can only help those who want to help themselves. If they don’t want to do that, then there is nothing you can do.’
Kate soon announced she was sick of this stupid place and the school as well, and was going to live with her boyfriend. A gangly youth arrived on a motorbike and, with Kate’s suitcase wedged between them, they drove off. The school’s welfare officer was not surprised.
The project ran for six years and housed twenty-five students for varying lengths of time. At the very least they were kept off the streets, but they must also have gained some benefit from being treated with dignity, respect and care. To some of them this was obviously a new experience, and perhaps it lifted their expectations of life.
Twelve of those students finished their secondary education, which opened doors to further studies, apprenticeships and employment. Several left Homeplus to return to their wayward families, for better or for worse. Some dropped out of school and went back to live in squats and on the streets. One went to prison. We, the ‘do-gooders’, were gratified by the successes, frustrated by the intransigence of some of the kids and saddened by the failures. Were our efforts inadequate or inexpert? Or was it, as Mary had said, that you can only help those who want to help themselves?
One student wrote to us. After describing other accommodation that he had experienced, the letter ended thus:
With you I gained friends and a responsible attitude towards life. I know I have somewhere to go at the end of the day. Thank you Homeplus (you crazy oldies), regards GB.
Mr Sid Spindler was a nodding acquaintance of mine for some years. We used to meet at lectures, symposia and other events run by groups such as the Rationalists, the Fabians, the Jewish Democratic Society and the United Nations Association. Occasionally, we exchanged comments about the subject or the speaker. I observed that he was well known and respected and seemed to know of and be involved in many activities.
In 1996, while he served as a senator for Victoria, I approached him as his constituent and asked if he would table some papers in the Senate on my behalf. In the covering letter I expressed my concerns about the sale of swastikas, other Nazi paraphernalia and race-hate propaganda at the gun shows held regularly in Melbourne.
Senator Spindler agreed. He helped select the most significant examples from my collection, and took them to Canberra. On the day of the tabling he rang to tell me the time and radio frequency on which I could listen to the procedure. I heard him preface my case briefly, then read the letter and officially table the papers. I was chuffed, and recall thinking that Senator Spindler was the ‘cat’s pyjamas’.
I was aware of Premier Jeff Kennett’s allegation that Senator Sid Spindler had been a member of the Nazi Party in Germany, and of Kennett’s apology when told that Sid was seven years old when the war started. Several months later, in 1996, the Jewish anti-defamation organisation B’nai B’rith invited Sid to speak at one of their functions, as a forum for his right of reply to Kennett’s slanders. I went to this function and it became a memorable occasion.
Sid told us he was born to German parents in the Polish city of Lodz. They were part of an enclave of experts involved in running the German-owned knitting mills. Soon after the invasion of Poland, a suburb of Lodz was surrounded by barbed wire and became the infamous slave-labour camp known as the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.
A tramline traversing this camp along one of its streets had barbed-wire fences on both sides of its route. Sid, with his mother, travelled this way to the Lutheran cemetery. All his questions about the people behind these fences, who and why, met with evasive answers. (I remember thinking, when I heard this, that I too would protect my eight-year-old from the gruesome reality.) Sid went on to say that one day the place was suddenly empty of people. His mother was distressed and said this was terrible, but did not comment further. Sid described how, after the war, when these events and the enormity of the Holocaust were revealed, he was greatly disturbed by realising that, just a few streets away from his sheltered childhood, horrifying atrocities were being committed.
The second part of his talk dealt with the reason he entered politics: the imperative to protect human rights and dignity. But I could not focus on that. I sat stunned by the coincidence I had just discovered. I spent four years and three months behind that barbed wire in Lodz, herded in there with some 170,000 others in early 1940. And I lived on the tramline street. I watched the trams each day, often tried to imagine what the passengers thought of us, and occasionally spat on those trams from the wooden footbridge above.
I rushed to talk to Sid after his speech. He introduced me to his wife, Julia, and after a quick ‘how do you do,’ I said to Sid, ‘Hey, here is looking at you again! I was there and often watched the trams going through the ghetto, so I might have seen you!’ Sid looked at me for what seemed a long time before he asked, ‘You were in that terrible place?’ I said that I had lived in No. 80 Limanowski Strasse, near the footbridge, and had been ten years old at the time. I babbled on until I became aware of Sid’s distress. He took a step back and looked shocked, as if expecting to be attacked. Julia put a protective arm on his shoulder. Then the thought struck me that Sid expected resentment or blame from me. But how could I, or anyone, blame a seven-year-old? To resolve this very awkward moment I gave him a long bear hug. Sensing his relief I planted a noisy kiss on his cheek for good measure. Others waited to speak to the Spindlers, and I went home.