Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a re-enactment of a Jewish boy being bullied by two other boys in the quadrangle of a primary school in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton in the period just after the Second World War. The bullies scurry away when the boy’s mother appears and runs to the boy. Over this is heard the voice of Jewish writer and immigrant Serge Liberman describing a similar episode on his first day of school in Australia.

Educational value points

• The clip provides evidence of Jewish immigration to Australia. Between 1933 and 1961 the Jewish population in Australia increased from 23,000 to 60,000. Many came from Europe, particularly Nazi Germany, and were escaping persecution. The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people during the Second World War also resulted in an influx of Jewish immigrants after the War.

• Jewish immigrants in Australia faced discrimination after the War. The press and Returned Services League (RSL) led an anti-Jewish refugee campaign, which resulted in property belonging to Jewish people being graffitied and damaged. Jewish people were stereotyped as grasping, physically undesirable, morally corrupt and criminal. The RSL argued that Jews would take jobs and housing away from ex-servicemen and their families. The Australian Government then introduced a number of measures to limit Jewish immigration.

• Bullying at school was often an aspect of the migrant experience in this period. Many child migrants who came to Australia from Europe after the Second World War report being bullied by their Australian peers because of cultural and racial differences. The Australian Government did not embrace multiculturalism until the 1970s and instead pursued a policy of assimilation. This policy may have fostered discrimination against those who were seen as 'other’.

• The clip depicts Jewish immigrants in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton in this period. While Jewish immigrants began settling in Carlton during the 1800s, the suburb’s Jewish population peaked in the period prior to, and directly after, the Second World War. Most of these new migrants were from eastern Europe and they fought to maintain their Jewish identity by retaining their language, religion, culture and traditions. However, this made them highly visible and subject to abuse and discrimination.

• Jewish refugees, some of whom were survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps, and most of whom had lost everything of material value, arrived in Australia hoping to make a better life, but were often confronted by racial prejudice and xenophobia. Like most other post-Second World War immigrants, on arrival in Australia these refugees were placed in migrant camps that were extremely basic, highly regimented and often provided a brutal introduction to life in a new country.

• Russian-born Serge Liberman (1942–) is a doctor and writer. Displaced by the Second World War, he and his family immigrated to Australia in 1951 and settled in Carlton. He attended primary and secondary school in Melbourne and then studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. He has published five collections of short stories, the most recent of which is Voices from the Corner (1999), as well as compiling A Bibliography of Australasian Judaica (1987).

• Like the incident in this clip, bullying usually involves one or more students teasing, taunting, threatening and even hitting another student. It can also include the social isolation of the victim through exclusion. Students who are victims of bullying often fear school and consider it to be an unsafe and unhappy place. They are typically anxious, insecure and suffer from low self-esteem and, like the boy shown here, they rarely defend themselves or retaliate when confronted by bullies. In this case the boy’s difference made him a target.

• The clip is an example of the use of re-enactment in a documentary. Re-enactments of events are sometimes used in documentaries for dramatic effect or in the absence of archival footage. Re-enactments can provide an alternative to the conventional elements of documentaries, such as narration, static visuals, archival footage and talking-head interviews. In this clip the voice-over is used in place of an omniscient narrator, dialogue or interviews.

A vignette of a boy who is taking a drink at a bubbler in the school playground. It looks 1950s. Two boys enter and start to pick a fight with him. They steal his bag and knocking him to the ground. A woman sees the boys fighting and runs to the scene. The two boys run away and the woman tends to the boy on the ground hugging him.

Serge Liberman New boy, Jew boy. ‘Get him’ says the fat one. Once again, turning to his fellows, he crooks a finger and winks. (Inaudible) has come to Carlton. The fat one, then the horseman and last, the farter read my arms more tightly still. Burn my wrists with Chinese twists and have me squat and kneel and bow, pressing my face towards the farter’s spittle show. They all the while laughing, hissing, snorting with some brutal friends of passion as over and over they shriek ‘lick it’, ‘lick it’, ‘lick it’. Never mind that humiliation has nearly reduced me to burning tears. Never mind that for me what began as expectation and adventure has crumbled into hateful chaos. Never mind anything as mother, snorting venom, grabs my hand and hissing, seething, even here? For this we have come? For this we have bleed? For this? For this? Everything for this?