I Rest My Case

Mark Verstandig's compelling epic spans pre-Holocaust Jewish culture in Eastern Europe and its post-war reformation in Australia.His personal story interweaves the vast forces of politics and history with intimate details of the shtetl-from the pre-war intricacies of Galician society and the textures of a traditional Jewish religious education, to the agonizing contradictions of Polish-Jewish relations and the complexities of post-war Jewish politics.His account of the displaced persons camps where 'transit Jews' awaited their chance to emigrate is a significant contribution to a little-known aspect of post-war history.With his gift for observation and his acute powers of analysis, Mark Verstandig has achieved the rare feat of telling the story of his people through its own history. Part autobiography, part Holocaust literature, part sociological analysis, I Rest My Case is a fine achievement.

Mark Verstandig (1912-2002) was the youngest son of a traditional Hasidic family of landowners in western Galicia near Cracow, Poland. After graduating from the Jagellonian University in Cracow in 1936, he joined a flourishing legal firm in his home town of Mielec. A conspiracy by the entire legal profession of Mielec enabled him to continue practising law under the German Occupation until 1942, when the Jews of Mielec were deported. With the exception of his brother's family, who had escaped to Russia, he and his wife Frieda lost their entire families during the war. In 1946, after the Kielce pogrom, Mark and Frieda left Poland. They spent two years in Munich, where Mark was employed as an executive member of the Federation of Polish Jews. He set up a legal task force to advise refugees about restitution of their assets in Poland. He also joined the editorial board of Ibergang and Unzer Welt, two of the many Yiddish-language papers which flourished in the refugee camps. In 1948 he followed his brother to Paris, where he continued writing a weekly column for the Zionist Revisionist paper Unzer Welt. A few weeks after enrolling for training in one of the ORT trade schools in Paris, he and Frieda launched their own small business, manufacturing men's and ladies' trousers In 1952, the two families emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, where they began manufacturing high-quality leather coats and sportswear. After his arrival in Australia, Mark was much in demand as a speaker and writer on a wide range of political and cultural issues in the Jewish community. He was always active in community affairs, and became a well-known Yiddish broadcaster, public speaker and journalist