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
The story of a Czech family persecuted for being born Jewish. The Torsh family from Prague and Brno was forced to emigrate to Sydney, Australia in 1948. A communist government in Prague was as anti-semitic as the Nazis who took over during World War 2. Mimi, an artist and Pavel a banker from Vienna and their two-year-old daughter Daniela left Czechia for Australia thanks to the Sanders family who sponsored them. Mimi and Pavel met in the Terezín concentration camp in 1945 and survived. They were too frightened to practise Judaism and didn’t reveal their religion to their child in an attempt to protect her. But the advent of communism meant their future was bleak in Europe. Daniela aged 11 found out she was Jewish when her father died in Sydney. She was 11 years old.