Daniela Torsh
AUSTRALIA
Daniela was born in Prague in 1946 and left with her parents on the Italian ship, Toscana to emigrate to Australia in 1948. After obtaining a first class Honours degree in Psychology from the University of Sydney, Dany worked as News Ltd’s national education writer for The Australian Newspaper in Sydney. Later, while she was studying for a PhD in sociology at UNSW, she was recruited by the Australian Schools Commission to work on a national report on the education of women and girls (Girls, School and Society). In 1975 School’s Out and Good Morning Boys and Girls, A women’s Education Catalogue, was published by Greenhouse. Crying in the Archives, the story of her family, was finally published this year by the Sydney Jewish Museum.
SESSION INFO
SUNDAY 10.10-11.10am
Crying in the Archives
Daniela's writing journey began as a young girl collecting Tarzan comics and reading The Iliad, triggering a love of narrative. When she was 11, she found out that she was Jewish after the death of her father. Curiosity about her own story led her to undergo a 40 year process of research and writing about the Torsh family's journey of persecution from Prague and Brno to Sydney in 1948. Join Daniela to hear about the result of this process, her book Crying in the Archives, which she hopes will both show the impact of migrants on Australia, and aid the process of multiculturalism into the future.