✨ Full of Stars in Our Eyes ✨
August 2026
Łódź Ghetto Commemoration 2026
Last month I received a call from Mel, the granddaughter of Łódź Ghetto survivor Tuvia Lipson. She was organising this year’s Łódź Ghetto commemoration.
She told me that six Lodz ghetto survivors living in Melbourne had died this past year and, for the first time, there weren’t enough survivors left to light the memorial candles, a yearly tradition.
As a tribute to the six survivors, she asked a family member of each to make a short recording accompanied by photos. She also sent some questions as prompts
What impact did your mother have on your family?
What values did she pass down?
What do you think she would want future generations to remember?
These questions reminded me of a speech mum gave at her grandson Anton’s bar mitzvah nearly forty years ago.
All the answers were there in that speech.
Anton had praised his nanna for her great cooking. Mum responded:
My dearest General Anton.
Yesterday was your bar mitzvah. When you were born, I gave you a profession – a military one. I wanted you to become a general.
It was a half-buried joke with a hidden emotion that would sometimes burst out like a storm. It was a protest against our past, when we were helpless and stripped of all dignity. I had become a lethargic creature, afraid of my own shadow.
In you, my grandson, I want to create my revenge – for my father, mother and all the nameless victims. You should be the example of a newborn Maccabean, standing up boldly to the tyrant who victimises the weak ones in this world.
I’d also like to make a small correction to your thoughtful address to me. I would like not just to be remembered as a grandmother preparing your favourite food. I would like to be remembered as a grandmother who, above all, fought for justice and a quality of life for all.
With time, you'll understand that material gains are very handy, very useful – a life lived well — but they are second in importance. The main thing is to aim to better yourself as a true human being.
I also want to be remembered as one of the lucky ones - a remnant of a people who survived the Holocaust.
We came to Australia in January 1949. Grandpa and I were then 24 and 27 years old, with a one-and-a-half-year-old baby, your mother Celina. We were penniless, homeless, but full of stars in our eyes, with eager hearts, and hands to build our lives from ashes, blood, and tears left behind in Poland.
My message to you is not to forgive, not to forget - but to give a hand to each other and build a better world for everybody.
Let me give you an example. The little cakes we enjoyed today were baked by my German girlfriend. We met straight after the war and her help had lifted me up in so many ways.
Our long friendship bridged the hatred and bitterness of our shared past and stood as a testament to the possibility of for a better tomorrow.
God bless you, my grandson.
Yours for ever,
Nanna Marysia
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