In conversation with the ABC
Holocaust survivor and Sydney Jewish Museum guide Ruth Leiser is Monday’s guest on “Conversations with Richard Fidler” on ABC local radio.
Ruth Leiser
Leiser is no stranger to radio and is a regular broadcaster on SBS radio.
She was six years old in 1941 when she fled from her home in Vilno. Her family hid for three years before being confronted by the Red Army who spared her family’s lives…but her entire extended family did not survive the war.
Leiser told J-Wire that the conversation she had with Fidler focuses on her childhood in Vilna. She said: “In June 1941, the Germans arrived and by December of the same years 60,000 of the 80,000 Jews who lived in the city had been slaughtered. I could not tell the story of what happened to my family in a day let alone the hour the conversation takes. For three years, I was hidden in a thousand places.”
Leiser’s family owned an estate 28kms from the Lithuanian capital. She said that her father was given tipped off about the advancing Germans and the family went into hiding.
No doubt, she will go into much more detail with Richard Fidler when the program airs at 11a.m. on Monday.
Great. I don’t suppose many hear BBC World News on overnight radio, there’s an interview coming up with another Holocaust survuvor. There have be a couple of others recently, Warsaw Ghetto and Wannsee Conference, still available online.
They come under the Witness segment: Stories of our time, by people who were there.