Force for good

Born in 1930s Austria, Inge Woolf devoted much of her later life to fostering tolerance in her adopted country of New Zealand.

- CHERYL SUCHER

These days, “resilience” has become a somewhat hackneyed word. But not for Inge Woolf. The Holocaust survivor, who found love, prosperity, acceptance and influence as an émigré to New Zealand, once declared that resilience was “the hope to see there is light besides all the darkness”. It is apt yet bittersweet, therefore, that the posthumous publication of her memoir is entitled Resilience: A story of persecution, escape, survival and triumph.

In the wake of current global tensions, Woolf’s call to “respect people no matter how different they are from us” requires the resilience to never give up the fight, and to heed her warning to “be careful who you elect”. She never forgot that Adolf Hitler was the legitimately elected leader of Germany.

Born in Vienna in 1934 to parents Evzen and Grete, Ingeborg Ponger would joke in later years that her “timing was all off” because anti-Semitism was sweeping through Europe, and the Nazis were in control of Germany at the time of her birth. Her assimilated prosperous Jewish family celebrated religious holidays and festivals but saw themselves first as cultured Viennese citizens.

Her paternal grandparents came from the small town of Krajné in present-day Slovakia, and her maternal grandparents, David Stiassny and Rosalia Landesmann, came from neighbouring towns in what is now the Czech Republic. They were drawn to the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for work opportunities, as Stiassny was entrepreneurial and not afraid to take chances on new products. When sewing machines came onto the market, he and his sons took them into the villages, where they taught large groups of women to use them, helping to change their lives. When motorbikes became popular, the family sold them as well.