A Stitch In Time
PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT: Monday, 23 February , 2004

GES D’SOUZA: Hello - I'm Ges D'Souza, one of the backroom team working on the '7.30 Report' here at the ABC. Tonight's Australian Story is about a so-called ordinary man who's one of the most extraordinary people I think I've ever met. His life has taken him through some of the great turning points of the last century and even now, he could still be said to be walking with history and with the history-makers. This is his story.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: I've always been extremely proud of my father. I'm proud that he's a survivor. I'm proud that he survives well.
The will to live in my father is extremely strong and I think he would have done anything to survive. His drive to live is his whole life story and I've always nicknamed him the 'Cat' 'cause he's got nine lives.

FRANCIS DOUGLAS QC: For a person who's seen so much suffering - suffering that many of us just couldn't believe or accept - he seems to hold no ill will towards anyone. I think, in that respect, he's a truly remarkable person.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: He's very proud of what he achieved and we're very proud of what he achieved. But he's too shy to... tell everybody. He just told us everything and we are...telling everybody about it.

FRANCIS DOUGLAS QC: What's down on the street doesn't look too imposing, and when you get upstairs it's even less imposing.
I think some tailors probably like to surround themselves with pomp and ceremony. He has none of that. He's a very simple and humble man, and that's, I think, evidenced by the nature of the premises he carries on his business from.

BOB HAWKE – FORMER PRIME MINISTER: You go up the stairs and you wonder what you're coming to, and you come to this very, very nondescript couple of rooms packed out with swathes of cloth. And this very, very small man with glasses and quizzical eyes - he always, sort of, got these screwed-up eyes, full of interest.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: Dad doesn't like to upgrade things or spend money on things, so his workshop was built 45 years ago and nothing's changed in there ever since.

JENO KIRSH: Why should I modernise it? They are all good. Everything - the machine is working like it worked 50 years ago. Everything is... Why should I change it? Like, my wife - I didn't change her ... for the last 55 years. When I was a young boy, I wanted to be what my father was - industrial engineering. When I was a bit older my father said: you are going to be a tailor because a war is coming, and you see my friend here, the tailor, he used to sit in a warm room and make for the officers uniforms, and I was catching the bullets. You're not going to catch the bullets. You are going to be a tailor. And I was crying for months. I became a tailor when I was 17. I learned very fast - I was a fast learner.

FRANCIC DOUGLAS QC: Whenever I'm wearing one of Kirschenbaum's suits, my wife says to me: you look so good in that suit. If my wife thinks I look good in it, there's an implicit assumption that without it I don't. I think that's what makes a good suit.

BOB HAWKE – FORMER PRIME MINISTER: He is the tailor par excellence. And also, a charming ... unique human being.

JENO KIRSH: I love to see something that somebody is very, very satisfied with my work. And that gives me the pleasure of being a tailor.

FRANCIS DOUGLAS QC: Well, my first impression of him was that he was about half my size. I liked him very much. I can't recall whether it was early or not, but he looked me up and down and said: Mr Douglas, men of your size didn't survive in the concentration camps. You had to be small like me.

JENO KIRSH: In 1939 I went to Budapest. And I was first working for a tailor there. Then, in 1942, they took me away to a forced labour camp.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: My father was taken away from the house by the Hungarian Nazis and he never came back. My mother had two sisters, my father had eight brothers and sisters and their children and wives -nobody came back. So, I had my brother and my mother alone. Close to a hundred… close family… only the three of us left.

DR TOM KIRSH - SON: My father's wartime experiences are something that he's recounted bits and pieces of for as long as I can remember. I mean, every now and again something will come up that I was not aware of before. And I guess when you put it all together, it must have been a horrific experience.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: Then he'd tell us the stories of him in the concentration camps, and on trains going from camp to camp, and how they treated him. He'd show us the holes in the back of his head where they hit him with the back of a rifle.

JENO KIRSH: In those days, you become an animal. You're like an animal. You're just trying to live. You're just trying to be, you know? And try...when we were going down from Buchenwald, down the mountain, you know, eight in a row. And then, the SS were going on the side, and whoever fall out half a metre from the road, you know, they got the machine gun. Finished. And whole...the whole road down from the mountain was full of bodies on the side of the mountain.

DR TOM KIRSH - SON: There are two things that he said helped him survive. One was that he was able to make and repair uniforms for the Germans. That gave him a certain amount of favours that I s'pose allowed him to stay in better condition, maybe, than his fellow prisoners. And also, the fact, he said, that he was willing to eat anything, even, uh, grass roots, and he would dig up the grass roots and eat those, whereas other people would stop at the grass and not eat the roots.

JENO KIRSH: I said: if a cow can live on it, so can I. And I used to...and I think that that kept me alive.

DR TOM KIRSH - SON: Friday night dinner is something that I didn't really experience when I was small, because my parents lost a lot of their Jewishness after the war because, I think, they felt it got them into so much trouble. When my parents first came to Australia, there was three of us. There wasn't much to hold together. Whereas now, it's being used as a method of bringing an extended family together on a regular basis.

JENO KIRSH: Friday nights are important to me because you have to take your religion to your children to know that they are Jews, and they have something to live for. To me, it is important because I was born a Jew and I will die a Jew. To me, everybody is a human being and everybody is a man, if he is Jewish or Christian or Muslim or anything. If he is a man. If he is a good man, he is a good man.

VERA - WIFE: He has many stories of Germany and one of them, where he was working and two train collided and broke his arm.

JENO KIRSH: I was screaming. I was... it was very, very painful.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: Everybody said that if they find out you've got a broken arm, you're dead - they'll just throw you into the incinerators like that. You can't work. And he got his underwear and whatever he could, and he wrapped up that arm and hid it from them, and he kept working and kept going with a broken arm.

JENO KIRSH: I was healing very fast. I healed - somehow, I don't know how it happened - but I healed in a few weeks time. And then, when I went in back to that hospital, they started to empty the camp because the English were coming. They were so close to Buchenwald, already you could hear the machine-gun fire.
We were put in coal wagons - they put in 10,000 people into 83 wagons, standing like timber. No food, no water, no nothing. The people were dying like flies.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: You couldn't understand what it was like. When people died, some people were happy because they could lay the bodies down and there'd be more room for them because they were packed into these wagons like sardines. And he said: when people died, they laid them down and they used them as seats to sit on.

JENO KIRSH: Every day we had to take out the bodies and make a pyramid - one on top of the other - and we made a high pyramid, and from the 10,000, in eight days we stayed 60 alive. The 10,000 were dead.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: He talks about it during the night and I can hear him at night. He's dreaming about it and he's screaming or talking or crying or... It's...it will never leave him. It will be with him as long as he's alive.

JENO KIRSH: I lost consciousness and I don't remember a thing. They told me only later that I was 16 days out - completely out - and when I woke up, I was in the hospital and there was a nurse, and she said to me: it's alright, it's alright. We are free. We are free. You know, I looked at her and I thought: am I crazy? Or is she crazy? Or what happened here?
I went back to Budapest and I got a place, and I worked there.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: My first impression was that he was lonely. He had friends in Budapest, but he was lonely for his own family, who he lost during the Holocaust. He was a very nice-looking man, lot of hair, and very elegant. Always dressed spotless. Very fast courtship. I was very young - well, eight years... he's eight years older than me. He didn't wait that long to ask to marry him. It was fast.

JENO KIRSH: It was just a small wedding, and I had very high-ranking customers in Budapest. And they were all invited - they all come to my wedding.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: My parents have been married for over 50 years now and I think they've got a good relationship. They're loving each other and, most importantly, the number one thing in both their lives was their four children. And they worked very hard and made sure that their four children got whatever was needed

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: First, and the best, is the family. To him, work was very important, but the family always came first. Children was everything - always.

BOB HAWKE – FORMER PRIME MINISTER: The thing which fired him up most was not talking about suits or jackets or...anything other than his family. His family was absolutely number one with him. He lives for his family and his children he loves, and if anything, more loves his grandchildren.

JENO KIRSH: When my grandchildren and my children are here, around me, I smile, I'm happy. I love my whole family, and they love me too.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: My father's most important thing was to have an education. He always...I'll never forget the words, you know: study, study, study. He even bought me a little plaque that said, "Don't do as I do, do as I say. Study every day."

JENO KIRSH: I never wanted to be a tailor and I became a tailor, so I wanted my children to go a little bit up higher than what I am. I think every father would do that.

DR TOM KIRSH - SON: My experience of growing up was that my parents felt it was important to be a lawyer, a doctor or an engineer. And... because you needed that to be successful or to be happy, or to be ...safe.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: We came to Australia to find freedom. Freedom for our children, because we were not free. Either we had the Nazis or had the Communism, so we had enough of all this. We wanted to have peace and freedom.

JENO KIRSH: It was beautiful, perfect in Budapest. It was...you know, I had everything. I had a good business, I was making very, very good money. I had everything -whatever I wanted I had. Then Communism started, I had to run away.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: We left Hungary illegally, and so we couldn't carry much. We had a beach bag and we put in two shirts, and his big scissors and his thimble, which was always in his pocket. And ...underwear - one of each. That's all what we took.

JENO KIRSH: We had to pay a lot of money to get through the border at night-time. And we went across the border first to Czechoslovakia.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: If they catch you, they put you in jail. A lot of people...it happened with a lot of people. But we had no children, so we didn't...we were not afraid. Whatever will happen, will happen.

JENO KIRSH: I started very quickly and I became well known in Vienna, I had customers that I had two workers, and I was working day and night because I lost everything.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: And then the Korean War came out, he said: we're going.

JENO KIRSH: And I thought, here we are - there is a world war already coming. I have to go away from Europe because I can't do it again.

DAVID KIRSH – SON: He came from Europe to Australia to make sure that that didn't happen again. He told us that, you know, he witnessed them throwing babies straight into the fire alive. And he said they weren't gonna do that to his family.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: He said: end of the world is better than close. That was the reason to picking Australia, and everybody said: it's a good country, it's a new country, and you can develop with the country. I worried about the future, of course, but he said: don't worry, I have two hands and we will be alright. And that's what happened.

DR TOM KIRSH - SON: When we first came to Australia, he had a full-time day job, he had a full-time afternoon job, and then he had work that he brought home to do at home in his spare time.

JENO KIRSH: It was very hard. I was working, I'm telling you, 16 hours a day.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: Never went to bed before twelve o’clock at night and early morning rise and back to work.

RON WALKER – FORMER LORD MAYOR OF MELBOURNE: He's a typical example of a lot of people that wanted to make good in Australia. Even though they probably wanted to be home amongst all their relations, but they came here not knowing what they were in for. And he decided, through sheer determination, to reinvent his craft and to produce a product that would be worthy of all Australians.

JENO KIRSH: When I came to Australia I was like a dummkopf - I couldn't speak a word of English.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: When I asked my father: did you go to an English school when you arrived here, or something? He said: no, I listened to the radio. Who had time for school? He had to go to work to earn some money to pay the rent.

JENO KIRSH: I was listening - I didn't understand what they were saying, but I was listening - and I tried to pick up those words. Slowly, slowly, in a few months time I started to speak English. I learned very quickly. But I'm still not 100% English.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: My father keeps all his clients' details in these big, old black books that he's had since he started working in Australia. When we were younger, we used to go and flick through them and look at all the names that were in there. And I always joke with him now, because if you buy the 'BRW Top 200' we always count up out of the 200 how many of those names are in those black books. And it's quite a good percentage of them.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: He had very nice customers - Sir Peter Abeles, George Rockey, doctors, surgeons, and the Honorary Bob Hawke, Ron Walker.

RON WALKER – FORMER LORD MAYOR OF MELBOURNE: This is the original suit that he made for me when I went to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. And would you believe, I stood out in the rain during all the speeches? Got sopping wet and then had to sit there for four hours in my wet suit. I went back to the hotel, and hung it up, had it dry-cleaned, and I've been wearing it since. So, it's a very resilient, well-made suit, you might say.

DAVID KIRSH - SON: I'll never forget one day when I was at his business and Bob Hawke arrived, and he was the prime minister at that stage. And my father's business has a front window where he talks to the customers, and things, and across the road, there was a block of units. And Bob Hawke wasn't a shy man, he never went behind the curtain to get changed, he'd pull down his pants in front of my father and get changed, and somebody from across the road called out: Bob, we caught you with your pants down. I'll never forget that day. It was a very funny day.

BOB HAWKE – FORMER PRIME MINISTER: I guess... it could have happened. Just shows what a relaxed country we are.

FRANCIS DOUGLAS QC: Unlike some of his customers, I usually only get one suit a year. A few years ago, I asked for another suit, that's two suits in one year. He looked at me a little concerned and said why did I want to have two suits? And I said to him: nobody lives forever. He seems to have taken offence about this, but he's forgiven me for it, I think.

VERA KIRSH - WIFE: We often talk about retirement, and he doesn't want to hear about it.

JENO KIRSH - Why would I...what would I do when I get up in the morning if I can't go to work? I would get...I...go crazy, I don't know. I wouldn't be able to live. I would die.

DR TOM KIRSH - SON: I think he can only make one suit a week these days and he still worries that somebody else is gonna steal his business. So he has to go to work every day. My father used to relax by going out on the water in a boat, fishing.

JENO KIRSH: I used to love the sea, you know? I used to go out outside the heads and go and catch fish. We always had in the freezer plenty of fish. I love fishing and I love fish, but now I'm too old for it. It's finished. All gone. I say I made the best choice in the world to come to Australia. I like it. I liked it from the beginning, from the first time, because it was peaceful, it was quiet.

BOB HAWKE – FORMER PRIME MINISTER: Well, I think he is a marvellous illustration of how fortunate this country has been. This man suffered the awful terror and privations of being a Jew in Europe under the Germans. Escaped from that, came here, dedicated to making a new life, and in the process, has also made a lot of bloody good suits for a lot of people.

FRANCIS DOUGLAS QC: He's more than a tailor to me. I wouldn't even suggest that I'm a personal friend of his, it's just that when we do meet I'm always so pleased to see him and I suspect that he's pleased to see me.

JENO KIRSH: I don't think my personality is such that you could talk about it. I'm just a little tailor, nothing, really.

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