Mark Lissauer
Author: Mark Lissauer
Publisher: Makor Jewish Community Library
Place of publication: Caulfield South, VIC.
Year of Publication: 2010
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, State Library of Victoria and National Library of Australia.
Cities/towns/camps: Germany: Hamburg, Bergen-Belsen; The Netherlands: Rotterdam, Lochem, ‘t Schut labour camp, Westerbork, Eindhoven; Argentina: Buenos Aires; Paraguay; Asuncion; Bolivia: La Paz; Chile: Arica; Venezuela: Puerto Ayacucho; Australia: Melbourne.
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: German-Jewish refugee; concentration camp; adolescent survivor.
A 20th Century Jewish Life is the story of Mark Lissauer, a German-Jewish survivor whose family ties to his country of birth can be traced to the mid-1600s. After the Nazi Party came to power, the Lissauer’s fled to Rotterdam, Holland. Mark and his mother were subsequently deported to Westerbork and, later, Bergen-Belsen. His entire immediate family miraculously survived the war and were reunited in Melbourne in 1946.
The memoir is 215 pages long. Pages 1-18 chart his family history with pages 19-44 recounting their life in Hamburg and the rise of Nazism leading to the family’s flight to Holland. Pages 45-63 cover Mark’s escape to Rotterdam with his mother in 1937 and eventually to Lochem after the onset of the war. Pages 64-86 recount Mark’s deportation to the Westerbork transit camp in October 1942, where his mother eventually joined him. They remained in Westerbork until September 1943. Pages 87-110 recount their time in Bergen-Belsen, where they endured hard labour, starvation, and illness until liberation by the British army. Pages 111-131 describe their return to Holland in June 1945 and eventual emigration to Australia in 1946 where they were reunited with Mark’s father and brother. Pages 132-69 recount their emigration to South America where they expected better economic prospects. Pages 170-215 recount the family’s return to Melbourne in 1958 and Mark’s life as an artefact collector in the West Pacific Islands and Asia.
Herman (Mark) Lissauer was born in Hamburg on 18 March 1923, the second son of Moritz and Pauline Lissauer. The same year, his Aunt and Uncle died, and the family adopted their young son, Hans, who was the same age as Mark’s three-year-old brother Adolf. Hans emigrated to England in 1934. The children were raised in a wealthy, religiously observant, though assimilated family. Mark’s father was highly educated and ran a family business importing animal hides.
In 1934, when Mark was eleven-years-old, his father travelled to Paris on a business trip. As an outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, the Gestapo came to arrest him for ‘offending’ Hitler. With warning from his wife, Mark’s father did not return but sought asylum in France and later Holland. The Gestapo began harassing the Lissauer’s, seizing goods from the family business and forcing its closure. In Holland, Mark’s father established a fur trading business. In 1936, Adolf emigrated to Rotterdam. As life in Hamburg became unbearable, on 17 March 1937, a day before Mark’s fourteenth birthday, he and his mother left for Rotterdam. In 1938, his grandfather joined them. In May 1940, when Germany invaded Holland, Mark’s father and brother were in England on business.
On 10 July 1940, Mark’s father, who had remained in England, was deported to Australia on the SS Dunera as an ‘enemy alien’. He was interned in the Tatura and Hay internment camps for three years. Adolf and Hans were deported to Canada. In September 1940 all German-Jewish refugees in Rotterdam were ordered to leave their homes. Now homeless, Mark, his mother and grandfather travelled to Lochem to stay with family friends. As antisemitic measures increased, the Lissauers lost their German citizenship and Jews were forbidden from possessing radios, bicycles and cars.
In October 1941, whilst Mark was in the village of Oss on vacation, the Jewish men of Lochem were rounded up and deported ‘to the east’. He went into hiding with farmers in the village of Terwolde but was forced to return to Lochem when the villagers grew suspicious. Mark was then sent to the ‘t Schut labour camp whilst his mother remained in Lochem. On 2 October 1942 all Jewish inmates at ‘t Schut were sent to Westerbork. In Westerbork, Mark was able to obtain life-saving work as a typist due to his fluency in Dutch and German, enabling him to delay his deportation to the camps.
Fearing his mother and grandfather would be sent to a brutal labour camp, in April 1943, Mark arranged for them to be sent to Westerbork were he was able to secure work for them. Though they were placed on several transport lists to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, the Lissauers were able to avoid deportation for a time. However, on 15 September 1943 their luck ran out and Mark and his mother were sent to Bergen-Belsen. His grandfather was sent to Theresienstadt where he died in late 1944. In Belsen, Mark was forced to perform hard labour whilst his mother worked in the camp hospital. They both endured disease and starvation until liberated by the British army in 1945, recovering for a brief time at an army-run hospital. On 13 June 1945, they were flown to hospital in Eindhoven, Southern Holland, for emergency medical care. On return to Lochem in October, Mark and his mother discovered they were the only survivors of a community of 800 people.
In Lochem with his mother, Mark worked at a restitution organisation whilst awaiting a permit to Australia, sponsored by his father. On 26 November 1946, Mark and his mother arrived in Sydney, to be reunited with his father. They moved to Melbourne where Mark’s father had established a business in imported goods. In Melbourne, Mark changed his name from Hermann to Mark to appear less Germanic. Adolf (now Archie) moved to Melbourne whilst Hans (Henry) was in Los Angeles. In the 1950s, the family moved to South America where they lived for seven years, dealing in forest products from the Orinoco River region. Mark went on to become a dealer in ethnographic artefacts from the West Pacific and Southeast Asia. In 1958, he returned to Melbourne with the family.
A 20th Century Jewish Life is a detailed account that covers the author’s pre-war, wartime and post-war experiences. More than a third of the memoir is devoted to the author’s post-war life, and particularly, his travels as an ethnographer. Interspersed throughout are 90 photographs of the author and his extended family as well as various historical sites and documents relevant to the narrative. The memoir was written as part of the Makor Jewish Community Library’s “Write Your Story” program, under the editorial assistance of Adele Hulse.