Published: 14 June 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
NOMI KALTMAN reflects on her choice to become a citizen of the country that rejected her grandfather
I was born into an Australian Jewish family. On my mum’s side, we can trace our lineage back to the Victorian goldrush, where my ancestors are buried in the Jewish section of the Ballarat cemetery. On my dad’s side, my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor, and my grandmother was born in Shepparton.
I love being Australian. I feel very connected to this country and its culture. I have never experienced antisemitism and it is a nice place to live and raise my kids.
I think Jewish people here have the best of both worlds: the opportunity to live in peace and security in a multicultural society that provides space for every person’s religious and cultural practices alongside their Australian identity.
A few months ago, I was filled with mixed emotions as my husband and I decided to apply for Austrian citizenship and become dual citizens.
It felt like a form of poetic justic to claim citizenship of a country that had forced my great great-grandparents to flee.
My great, great-grandmother, Tzipporah (Josephine) Trebitsch, was born in the late 1800s in the Austrian town of Mattersdorf. Her husband, my great, great-grandfather, was Rabbi Yehoshua Tzvi Trebitsch. They had children and lived comfortable lives in Austria.
However, in 1938, when the Anschluss occurred, Austria was annexed by Adolf Hitler who created a political union between Austria and Germany.
Life for Austrian Jews became unbearably difficult. Antisemitism surged and it was common for synagogues, Jewish shops and apartments to be targeted. Nazism crept into daily living, which culminated in Kristallnacht.
My great great-grandparents decided to leave Austria and because my great great-grandfather was a rabbi, he was granted one of 500 special visas for rabbis and their spouses to emigrate to British Mandate Palestine. They left in 1939 and never returned.
At the time of the Anschluss the population of Austrian Jewry was approximately 192,000 and it is estimated that about 125,000 Jews fled the country between 1938 and 1939.
In 2019, after a push spearheaded by then chancellor Sebastian Kurz, the Austrian government passed a law that allowed descendants of Jewish refugees to apply for Austrian citizenship. Its aim was to deliver a measure of historic justice for their ancestors’ expulsions under Nazi rule.
I knew my dad had copies of the family documents and it would be simple to apply and prove my eligibility.
However, did I really want to become a citizen of a country that had persecuted my ancestors? If not for the appalling Austrian antisemitism and the Holocaust, my family would probably still be living in Austria. Did taking Austrian citizenship signal that we had forgiven the Austrians for persecuting our ancestors?
However, on the other hand, it felt like a form of poetic justice to claim citizenship of a country that had forced my great great-grandparents to flee.
My husband’s family was also Austrian, which meant both of us could claim Austrian citizenship and make our children and all future generations dual citizens of both Austria and Australia.
And so, after we thought about it some more, we lodged our applications at the Austrian embassy in Canberra.
We heard back almost immediately. In fact, anytime I called the embassy to check on the progress of our applications, they knew exactly who I was.
In January, after waiting for about six months, we were all granted Austrian citizenship.
It felt a little strange to receive the documentation when thinking of my great great-grandparents’ experiences of persecution and antisemitism, but it also made citizenship feel even more real and triumphant.
My grandfather passed away a few months after our wedding. He was a joyful man, full of energy, chutzpah and sass. He lost his entire family in the Holocaust. His parents, a brother, a sister, and his entire extended family bar a few cousins.
After the war, before emigrating to Australia, he spent a few years living in Israel. He went to the home of his grandfather, Rabbi Yehoshua Tzvi, who had escaped from Austria with my great great-grandmother Tziporah all those years earlier.
It must have been dreadful for Rabbi Yehoshua Tzvi to know that my grandfather was the only survivor of the rich life he and his wife had been forced to leave behind.
And yet, as I sit here looking at my Austrian citizenship certificate, I cannot help but wonder what he would have thought? Would he have wanted to reclaim his citizenship if he was still alive? I doubt it.
But, perhaps, he would have been happy for our family to have citizenship of a country he had once proudly called home before it had rejected him. I hope so.
Photo: Austrian passports (Creative Commons)
