Silver Yad
Object numberM2022/018:005
TitleSilver Yad
DescriptionSilver yad (Torah pointer), tapering to feature a hand with extended index finger. A matching collar at the central section of the shaft features a repeated design at the top. The yad ends with a metal ring and chain.
Collection of silver Judaica beloging to the Handelsmann family. These objects tell a story of a lost religious world, surviving the Holocaust and living in a post-war communist country where religion was tolerated but not encouraged.
Frida Dün was born in Krakow, Poland in 1915. She had six brothers. She was deported to Auschwitz and was liberated in Bergen-Belsen. After the war, Frida went to Budapest where she found Joseph, one of her only two surviving brothers. Their parents did not survive the Holocaust. While in Hungary, she met Jeno Handelsmann, a survivor of Hungarian forced labour camps and sole survivor of his family. They married in 1946, had a son, Robert, in 1947, and Maria and Zsuzsanna, their twin daughters, in 1952.
Joseph ended up in Vienna, but often travelled in the Communist Bloc countries, collecting items of Judaica for his sister from antique stores. These items made their way to Australia in the 1980s when Frida and Jen? travelled back and forth between Hungary and Australia, visiting their son, smuggling the Judaica out of the country, one by one.
Robert describes his mother, who was brought up in a traditional Polish religious Jewish household, as "one flavour, Orthodox. You were either Orthodox or you were not Jewish," according to her worldview. She was severely traumatised from her experiences during the war, yet despite what she went through, she clung to her religion. She was filled with ambivalence between grappling with how God could allow such a thing as the Holocaust to happen, and, on the flip side, she thought that there must have been a God who looked after her.
There are no family artefacts from before the war. Thus, these items of Judaica, acquired post-war, became "instruments of survival" for Frida and Jeno, and a reminder of their childhoods.
Collection of silver Judaica beloging to the Handelsmann family. These objects tell a story of a lost religious world, surviving the Holocaust and living in a post-war communist country where religion was tolerated but not encouraged.
Frida Dün was born in Krakow, Poland in 1915. She had six brothers. She was deported to Auschwitz and was liberated in Bergen-Belsen. After the war, Frida went to Budapest where she found Joseph, one of her only two surviving brothers. Their parents did not survive the Holocaust. While in Hungary, she met Jeno Handelsmann, a survivor of Hungarian forced labour camps and sole survivor of his family. They married in 1946, had a son, Robert, in 1947, and Maria and Zsuzsanna, their twin daughters, in 1952.
Joseph ended up in Vienna, but often travelled in the Communist Bloc countries, collecting items of Judaica for his sister from antique stores. These items made their way to Australia in the 1980s when Frida and Jen? travelled back and forth between Hungary and Australia, visiting their son, smuggling the Judaica out of the country, one by one.
Robert describes his mother, who was brought up in a traditional Polish religious Jewish household, as "one flavour, Orthodox. You were either Orthodox or you were not Jewish," according to her worldview. She was severely traumatised from her experiences during the war, yet despite what she went through, she clung to her religion. She was filled with ambivalence between grappling with how God could allow such a thing as the Holocaust to happen, and, on the flip side, she thought that there must have been a God who looked after her.
There are no family artefacts from before the war. Thus, these items of Judaica, acquired post-war, became "instruments of survival" for Frida and Jeno, and a reminder of their childhoods.
Object nameyad
Materialmetal
Dimensions
- width: 295.00 mm
height: 25.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by the Handelsmann family