Born Anna Entenberg to Jewish parents in 1939 in Krakow, just prior to Germany’s invasion of Poland, she endured the Nazi reign of terror during her first three years. Anne survived due to her parent’s bravery. They smuggled her out of the cramped Jewish ghetto in a rucksack into the care of a local Catholic woman. Anne lived with her foster mother in ‘plain sight’ and was reunited with her real mother following liberation but never saw her father or other close family members again who all perished in the Holocaust. Three years were then spent with her aunt’s family in Italy, while recuperating with her mother and organising emigration. In 1948, nine-year-old Anne and her mother began their new life in Melbourne. Here Anne rediscovered her Jewish heritage and started to comprehend her family’s tragic past. Following graduation from Melbourne University, Anne studied for a master’s in clinical psychology in Israel where she married academic Rodney Gouttman in 1971. They lived in Adelaide for over 25 years where Rodney was a lecturer and they raised their only daughter Sonia. In 1984, Anne organised for her Polish rescuer Mrs Josefa Dadak to be recognised as a Righteous Amongst Nations.
Anne was born to Jewish parents Chaskiel and Manya Entenberg in the beautiful Polish city of Krakow on 19 July 1939, just six weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland on 1 September that marked the start of World War II. Located in the historic Kazimierz quarter, the thriving centre of Jewish life since the 15th century, they lived in a small flat within a well-respected Jewish boys’ orphanage, the Bursa dla Sierot at 6 Podbrzezie Street, where Anne’s father was educational director. Here the orphans were cared for and taught a trade. Chaskiel came from Przemysl in southeastern Poland where he had trained in agricultural science at its Hachsharah, a training farm that prepared Jewish youth for emigration to British Mandated Palestine. Chaskiel and Manya had met through the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. As life in Poland became more difficult, they planned to move to Palestine where Chaskiel’s four sisters had already migrated. However, by this time, Manya was heavily pregnant with Anne which prevented overseas travel.
In Krakow, Anne’s parents had little but lived rich and active lives, enjoying music, poetry and the theatre, as well as hiking and skiing. Anne’s maternal grandparents also lived in the Jewish quarter at 5 Krakowska Street. Her grandfather, Moses Przeworski, was a tailor. During the summer, her grandmother, Rozalia ran a rented kosher restaurant in the holiday resort of Zakopane. They were not wealthy but ensured their three daughters received a good education. Anne’s mother, Manya had trained in Warsaw as a kindergarten teacher at the institute of the famous educationalist, Dr Janusz Korczak. Her sister Regina had gone to a commercial college which enabled her to work and pay for Manya’s education. Youngest sister Ida had won a scholarship to study medicine in Italy at the University of Florence during the 1930s when Polish medical schools did not accept Jewish students.
Soon the family experienced the reign of Nazi terror unleashed against the Jewish community. There were random arrests, shootings and beatings. By 18 November, every Jewish person over 12 years old had to wear a white armband with a blue star of David. Worse came. By 20 May 1941, the Jewish community were forcibly relocated to a ghetto across the river in Podgórze, a poorer part of Krakow. Anne and her parents shared one room. Her father was made a locksmith and was sent out daily with a group who organised the classification and storage of looted Jewish property in assigned city-wide warehouses.
Twice the family were called to the square where Jews were lined up for deportation, but twice miraculously they were spared and sent home. However, Anne’s parents realized that they might not be so lucky a third time and courageously, planned to their little girl’s escape with help from her father’s orphan boys who were also in the ghetto and in the Polish Resistance. One night in 1942, three-year old Anne was smuggled into a rucksack and carried on the back of one of the boys through the sewers. She remembers: “We emerged into cold clear air and a brilliant sky full of stars. There was a doroszka (horse-drawn cab) waiting, its coachman in a top hat. This is my earliest childhood memory”. She was taken to the home of a divorced and childless, Polish Christian social worker, Mrs Jozefa Dadak. Anne survived the war years in her care at 21 Felicjanek Street, under the eyes of the Gestapo. At home she played with other children in the coal cellar; or she went to kindergarten at the local convent where she attended her First Communion. In preparation, Anne’s real mother had already taught her the major Catholic prayers. She was such a good student she was selected to give a bouquet of flowers to a visiting bishop. Despite wartime conditions, Anne’s foster mother cared for her the best she could. Anne remembers being force-fed cod-liver oil, eating bread and jam, and drinking just-boiled water, but she grew to love Jozefa and forget her former life.
Anne with her rescuer Mrs Jozefa Dadak, Krakow,1942. Courtesy Gouttman family
Anne (3rd from left, front row), kindergarten at the convent, Krakow, c1944. Courtesy Gouttman family
Anne’s parents were deported but she was oblivious to their fate at the time. Her mother survived numerous camps, including Ravensbrück and Buchenwald, eventually walking back to Poland after liberation, ‘damaged in body and spirit, with a number tattooed on her arm’. Miraculously, she was reunited with Anne in Krakow. Twenty-five-year-old Pola Frankel, friend and fellow survivor acted as mediator to help mother and daughter renew their relationship.
Eventually Manya organised exit papers and all three left Poland by train. Now six years old, Anne remembers ‘sitting on suitcases in railway stations, clutching my doll’, her mother removing lice from her hair, and watching children from the train window playing amongst the rubble in war-torn landscapes.
Anne and her mother arrived in the Italian city of Florence on Christmas Eve 1945 where, for three years, they stayed at Viale Petrarca 120, the home of Manya’s sister Ida, a qualified medico and her husband, Achille Florenzano, a non-Jewish Italian doctor. Luckily, they had married before 1938 when fascist Italy passed their own racial laws preventing Jews from marrying Italians or being public servants. Ida had worked in a small psychiatric hospital in southern Italy living in fear of arrest but eventually returned to Florence where her son, Francesco was born in 1941. Achille risked his life many times, treating partisans. Ida and Achille nursed their Polish family back to health. Anne was malnourished and had tuberculosis while her mother required a risky hysterectomy, involving a lengthy recovery. Manya was both physically and emotionally fragile. Making major future decisions was challenging and her attempts to emigrate to Israel and USA were unsuccessful. Finally visas for Australia were acquired through Pola Frankel who had reached Melbourne. Sponsored by her relative, Rosa Zerfas, a successful Jewish businesswoman, Pola persuaded her to support Manya and Anne.
Anne had lived a carefree, privileged life in Italy, with a live-in maid and close companionship with her cousin Francesco. She was fluent in Italian, attended a good school, had piano lessons, visited Florence’s cultural spots, and enjoyed Sunday bike rides and holidays by the sea. When preparing for their new life overseas, they packed some special items that were ‘a little bit of Italy ‘ including an Espresso coffee machine and a pair of silk embroidered black suede gloves, bought from a Florentine market still in its original paper bag.
Anne with her mother Maria in Italy, c1947. Courtesy Gouttman family
In October 1948, nine-year-old Anne and her mother Manya, (now Maria) arrived in Australia from Genoa on the SS Napoli, along with 600 immigrants, a third being Jewish refugees. It was the first time Anne encountered the word ‘Jewish’. Still a devout Catholic, Anne wore the silver Madonna medallion that her foster mother had given her but within weeks of landing in Melbourne, Anne unexpectedly learnt that she was Jewish. Quizzing her sponsor about how Christmas was celebrated in Australia, Aunty Rosa (as she called her) replied, ‘But Jewish people don’t celebrate Christmas’ and despite Anne questioning this statement as she wasn’t Jewish, Rosa and then her mother confirmed the contrary.
Home was with Aunty Rosa in Martin Street, in the southeastern Melbourne suburb of Brighton. At first, Anne went to St Kilda Park State School where she attended English classes for immigrants. Her mother worked as a machinist in a hat factory at one of Rosa’s Melbourne businesses, Grosvenor Hats at 109 Russell Street. Finding this tiring, Maria learnt the craft of pearl threading so she could work from home and sell to city jewellers. In 1952, she remarried Jack (Jacob) Frisch, also from Krakow who had emigrated on the same ship as herself and Anne. They moved to 11 Wenden Grove, East St Kilda which remained the family home until 1980. Jack sold textiles for a living. He had survived Soviet labour camps but had lost his first wife and small daughter in the Holocaust.
Anne was bullied for being Jewish at her new school but after transferring to Elwood Central School she settled down and thrived. She continued playing the piano, won competitions and even auditioned for the part of the young Australian pianist, Eileen Joyce, in a biopic being made by Ealing Studios. Anne won a scholarship to high school and gradually returned to her Jewish faith, becoming an active leader in Melbourne’s Betar, the worldwide Zionist Jewish youth movement. She began learning about the Holocaust, eager to understand her family’s experiences, including reading the 1954 international best seller, The Scourge of the Swastika: A Short History of Nazi War Crimes, by Edward Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool, which was life changing.
Graduating in psychology at Melbourne university, Anne went to Israel in 1962, where she stayed nine years. She studied for a master’s in clinical psychology and also met academic Australian-born Rodney Gouttman. They were married on the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem in 1971 with her mother in attendance.
Returning to Australia, they lived in Adelaide for over 25 years. Rodney took up a position as lecturer at SA College of Advanced Education on Kintore Avenue. He also studied for his doctorate and later lectured at UniSA. In 1987, he was on the founding committee of the new Australian Association for Jewish Studies (AAJS).
Their only daughter Sonia was born in 1973. Determined Sonia would have a stable childhood, Anne remained a stay-at-home mum for some years although later worked as an Italian interpreter. Sonia attended Norwood High School in Magill and then RMIT and La Trobe universities in Melbourne. In 1985 she was one of six who lit candles at the close of the groundbreaking ‘Children of the Holocaust’ exhibition at Adelaide’s Constitutional Museum.
The family moved back to Melbourne in 1999 where Rodney was a research analyst for the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission. Prior to leaving Adelaide, Anne was interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation. Her testimony is part of their Visual Video Archive (ID ID44141). In Melbourne, she became a keen advocate for the Child Survivors of the Holocaust (CSH), an ‘identity’ group giving these survivors much needed support and to have their voices heard. Her story ‘The Kindness of Strangers’ became a Teaching & Learning Resource in the Courage to Care (VIC), Upstander Program created by the global Jewish service organisation, B’nai B’rith.
Anne and her mother never forgot her rescuer Mrs Jozefa Dadak who was still living in Poland, tolerating shortages and hardships under Soviet rule. Maria sent her money and dress materials from Jack’s business. After Maria’s death in 1976, Anne continued to support Jozefa, with the help of a Polish interpreter. Although Jozefa passed away before this was finalised, Anne organized her recognition as a Righteous Amongst Nations in 1984 at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem.
Anne died aged 80 on 25 February 2020. Her husband Rodney now lives with daughter Sonia in Israel where she works as a paralegal in an intellectual property firm and he continues to write articles for AAJS.
Anne’s maternal grandparents, Moses and Rozalia and her Aunt Regina disappeared before the Krakow ghetto was created. They were likely shot in the street. Anne never saw her father again after she went into hiding. He was deported to and perished at Mauthausen concentration camp, near Linz in Austria.