Lovers and Others

Tom Lowenstein

• Publisher: Melbourne Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781925556711
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

This candidly written memoir, enlivened by the author's impish sense of humour, narrates the way in which, by chance and circumstance, Tom Lowenstein placed his career at the service of the Australian art world. The book describes Lowenstein's numerous David and Goliath battles with the Australian Government and the Australian Tax Office for a greater understanding and fairer treatment of the unique set of circumstances and numerous challenges faced by the country's creative sectors.
Lowenstein's interactions with his colourful and gregarious clients took him frequently out of the comfort of the corporate environment into the artists' homes and studios. The personalities of Charles Blackman, Colin Lanceley, Margaret Olley, John Olsen, Garry Shead, Tim Storrier, and many other luminaries of the art world are vividly brought out with unique insights and unexpected angles.
The book is richly illustrated with photographs from Lowenstein's personal archives documenting his long-standing friendships and reflecting its heady mixture of accounting, art, and wine.

CHAPTER I:

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY ACCOUNTANCY CAREER

GALÁNTA

I was born in Galánta in 1936, a small village on the Czech-Hungarian border not far from Bratislava. I was given an ancient Hungarian name of Zoltán. My father, Joseph, was a kosher butcher and smallgoods manufacturer. Sadly, I do not remember my mother, Anna, who died in childbirth when I was less than two years old. A year after her death my father married Edith Pollak, and two years later my sister Emmy was born. I only became aware that Edith was my stepmother when I was twenty. I recall sitting in the kitchen and listening to Edith telling me that she had just been diagnosed with cancer. She felt the need to tell me that she was not my biological mother. I can still remember my immediate response: ‘As far as I am concerned, you have always been, and always will be my mother.’ Sadly, she only lived for another year after that.

I lived in Galánta until I was eight. The German invasion in March 1944 put an end to my formal schooling. A ghetto was established on the outskirts of Galánta, and all the Jews were confined within it. Most were eventually taken from there to extermination camps. Luckily for us, my mother’s brother, Ferry Pollak, worked as a chauffeur to Valdemar Langlet, an official at the Swedish Embassy in Budapest. Langlet was instrumental in saving many Jews during this terrible period. When Ferry discovered that a ghetto was to be established in Galánta, he arranged for Langlet’s personal secretary to pick me up by train. The Nazis had decreed that all Jews had to wear the Yellow Star. One of my few clear recollections of that time was that, as Langlet’s secretary was taking me through the fields to the Budapest-bound train, she tore off my star and threw it away with the words, ‘I hope we will never see these again.’

Langlet had also arranged to bring my mother and sister from Galánta to Budapest in his private car (by this stage my father had been already taken to a labour camp). We resumed our lives as best we could under false identity papers. I lived at Langlet’s secretary’s place and had to pretend to be her nephew. To keep our identities secret, I was not allowed to refer to my mother as ‘Mother’. Every time I forgot, I received a whack across the ears!

It was also Ferry who organised our escape from Budapest. He secured passage on a train which was organised by the journalist and lawyer Rudolf Kastner, who was one of the leaders of the Jewish Council in Budapest. Kastner negotiated with the Germans to allow about 1700 Jews to leave Hungary for Palestine, via Switzerland, in exchange for trucks and money. We were fortunate to be part of this group, and I believe my uncle paid a large sum to get us onto that train.

Despite Kastner’s negotiations with the German authorities, our train was diverted to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I was too young to grasp the full reality of my surroundings. To some extent the adults shielded me from the awful facts they themselves were aware of. I can still vividly remember to this day rows upon rows of barracks on each side of us. New people were filed in continuously only to be moved out a few weeks later and replaced by new faces. I learned only much later that those leaving mostly ended up in the gas chambers.

Although we spent six months at Bergen-Belsen, we were not harmed. The ‘Kastner’s Jews’ (as we were known) were kept together; men and women were housed in separate blocks. At first I was placed in the women’s section with my mother and sister. However, on the first night I became disoriented and lost my sense of direction. Instead of the toilets I started urinating on some poor old lady who shrieked, ‘Jemand pischt auf mir!’ [somebody is pissing on me]. Not surprisingly I was then moved to the men’s barracks, where I was looked after by my uncle. The food was rationed, but we were given enough to survive. I realised only later that we were still under some form of Kastner’s protection. It was not until December 1944 that we were eventually transported from Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland. Two weeks before we were put back on the train, my aunt Yoli gave birth to her son, Peter. Had we not left Bergen-Belsen at that time I do not think he would have survived.

I believe that I have repressed most of my memories from this time. I am sure subconsciously some events have left their mark. For example, watching certain scenes from Holocaust movies and documentaries, especially railway carriages carrying deportees, or seeing refugees behind barbed wire fences, stir up deep emotions within me.

An interesting aspect of this saga was that in 1953, nine years after the war was finished Rudolf Kastner, who by that time was living in Israel, and had become a government official, was accused in a pamphlet by Israeli writer Malchiel Gruenwald of collaborating with the Germans. These allegations emanated partly from Kastner’s relationship with senior Nazi officers Adolf Eichman and Kurt Becher for whom Kastner provided favourable character references during the post-war trials.

The Israeli government, on behalf of Kastner, sued Gruenwald for libel. A court case ensued, lasting two years, which turned political, divided the country, and resulted in the dissolution of the Israeli cabinet. The judge dismissed the libel case, accepting that ‘Kastner had sold his soul to the devil’. The Israeli government appealed the decision and Kastner’s name was eventually cleared, but not before he was assassinated by Zeev Eckstein, a Holocaust survivor who lost his family in the Holocaust. Kastner had always maintained that his actions had saved many thousands of Jews from being exterminated and during his trial he had given our transport as an example.

It is extremely difficult for me to be objective about Kastner. So many of our fellow Jews in Czechoslovakia and Hungary were rounded up, taken to concentration camps, and slaughtered. However, without Kastner’s intervention, I may not be alive today.

I am amazed at the number of coincidences that have manifested themselves in my life. In the late 1970s, Sylvia and I were dining in a Jerusalem restaurant, and began chatting to an American couple sitting at the table next to us. The conversation turned to our war-time experiences. When I mentioned that I was a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, the American mentioned that that he was also interned there, and that he had also survived only because he was also one of the ‘Kastner’s Jews’. To add to coincidences, he mentioned that a few weeks before we were taken to Switzerland, he was hospitalised with some minor ailment and, being a curious fourteen-year-old, he was interested in finding out what was happening around him. He discovered to his surprise that in a bed next to his, a woman was giving birth, and, yes, it was to my cousin Peter.

Although Sylvia and I had been travelling to Europe annually for the past twenty-five years, I had never felt the desire to visit Germany. Deep down, I was apprehensive about my reactions and how I would deal with being confronted by the past. Finally, in 2014, Sylvia and I decided to spend four days in Berlin, mainly to look at the art scene, about which I have read and heard a great deal. At the same time, we also felt compelled to see the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial.

The concrete blocks of the Holocaust Memorial look like a field of tombstones, without a tree in sight, without any break in the monotonous cold stone. It was a powerful statement, but emotionally it did not affect me as strongly as the Jewish Museum. When Sylvia and I saw amongst the names of the extermination camps the name Bergen-Belsen, certain unclear images appeared. Both Sylvia and I burst into tears. We could not bear to read any of the materials in the accompanying display cases, and had to go outside for a breath of fresh air.

We both also had the same reaction when we saw Menashe Kadishman’s installation, Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves). It comprised of 10,000 round iron castings, looking like human faces, but to us each one of them looked like a crying, screaming child. The intention was for people to walk over the castings, but we could not bring ourselves to do this. It felt like walking over the bodies of dead, innocent screaming children.

It is and has been one of the most horrific images that we have ever faced.

In December 1944, we were transported from Bergen-Belsen to Switzerland, and were placed in a refugee centre in Caux, an Alpine village near Montreux on Lake Geneva. I befriended a soldier, stood as a guard next to him, and enjoyed the snow and the cold for a few weeks.

About two months later, Ferry arranged for me to be taken in by distant cousins, the Luftschitz family, who lived in Küssnacht, just a few miles from Zurich. The Luftschitzs accepted me into their home and treated me like their son. They also had two charming daughters, so I remember feeling myself very lucky to have gained surrogate sisters, too! I started attending a local school, where I learned to speak German quite fluently. I also learned a bit of Schweizerdeutsch, a local Swiss-German dialect. However, I excelled especially, and portentously, in maths, and was dubbed ‘der Rechenkönig’ [the king of arithmetic]. My reward from the Luftschitz family for bringing excellent marks from school was a soft-boiled egg. As most food items were still rationed, even a humble egg was considered a great luxury at the time.

The war ended in May 1945, but my family was still scattered around Europe. My sister Emmy was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was sent to a sanatorium to recuperate. My aunt Yoli and uncle Ferry were living in Zurich. My mother discovered that my father had survived the labour camps. She left for Czechoslovakia and eventually found him quite ill and weighing only forty-five kilos. She spent the next three years nursing him back to health and helping him to rebuild his smallgoods business. In May 1948, they loaded all their possessions, including smallgoods manufacturing equipment, into a container in order to take it all out of Czechoslovakia and start a new life. Alas, the Slovak government confiscated their possessions and they arrived in Switzerland with very few belongings. I cannot possibly describe the joy of Emmy and myself seeing our parents after nearly four years and actually finding our father alive.

Even though we were safe in Switzerland, we still did not feel settled. Our parents’ wish was to get as far away from Europe as possible. Uncle Ferry had some relatives in Tasmania, who guaranteed our migrant visas. To our parents, Australia seemed far enough from Europe. In June 1948, we boarded one of the earliest chartered flights to Australia, which was operated by the Belgian airline company Sabena. After a rather prolonged maintenance and refuelling stop in Delhi, we reached Australia ten days later.

EARLY AUSTRALIAN LIFE

My parents, Emmy and I travelled together with my uncle Ferry and his wife, aunt Yoli, their son Peter, and Yoli’s mother, aunt Bertha, whom we affectionately called Berthaneni. Whilst the rest of us could not put two English words together, Berthaneni knew the language reasonably well. She taught me a child’s poem on the trip, which I still recall to this day:

If all the trees were one tree,

What a big tree it would be.

And, if all the seas were one sea,

What a big sea it would be.

And, if all the men were one man

What a big man he would be.

And, if all the axes were one axe,

What a big axe that would be.

And, if the big man picked up the big axe,

And chopped down the big tree,

And threw it into the big sea,

What a big splash that would be.

This poem was the extent of my English vocabulary upon my arrival in Australia, though I must admit it was difficult to work it into an everyday conversation!

When we arrived in Australia, we stayed for a few weeks at the George Hotel in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. Whilst my father remained in Melbourne to look for work, the rest of the family went to Launceston where my mother’s uncle and his family, who helped us obtain entry papers to Australia, owned a farming property. We spent about four weeks there. I learned a little bit about farm life and was even taught how to trap rabbits. It was enough to realise that I was not cut out for the rural lifestyle. In the meantime, my father found a job with kosher butchers Batagol Brothers, in Lygon Street, Carlton. We returned to Melbourne and, after staying at a boarding house in Nightingale Street, St. Kilda, we moved to a flat in Cyril Street, Elwood.

It was my great-aunt Berthaneni who decided to ‘anglicise’ my name. I remember her saying to me: ‘You can’t go to an Australian school with a name like Zoltan Lowenstein!’ I was thus enrolled at the nearby Elwood Central as Tom Lownston (the nickname ‘Lone Stone’ followed shortly afterwards). It was the name that appeared in school reports, the annuals, and matriculation papers. When I enrolled at the University of Melbourne and was asked for my naturalisation papers or a birth certificate, I can still recall the question: ‘We have Zoltan Lowenstein on this birth certificate; Tom Lownston with Matriculation results … Who the bloody hell are you?’ I decided it would be prudent to change my surname back to Lowenstein, though ‘Tom’ had stuck and was changed later by Deed Poll (this was just as well because my future wife, Sylvia, later told me that if I had met her as ‘Zoltan’ she may not have married me).

I was one of the very few migrant kids at Elwood Central at the time, and I quickly integrated with my Australian classmates. It took me no time to learn the rules of cricket and football, and after the first week I even appeared destined to be the new cricket star at Elwood Central. I was selected in the House Thirds as a bowler and told to bowl at the batsman at the other end. On a few occasions I heard the expression ‘goodonyatom’, which I only understood much later on. It would suffice to say we won the game and I was told that I had taken five wickets. My reward was an elevation to the House Seconds.

The following week, I was selected in the House Seconds as an opening batsman. I took a hefty swing at the first ball, missed it, but managed to hit the stumps behind me with my bat. A medical assistant in a white jacket raised his finger, and said I was ‘out’, thus ending my potential to become one of Australia’s great cricketers. Despite my cricketing failure, I became rather popular with many of my scho...