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Category: Interviews »

Subject: Cultural Studies »

Moss Cass reflects on his Jewish identity as a young man

Moss Cass and Mara Moustafine.

Moss Cass reflects on his Jewish identity as a young man

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

30 March 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

4.9 MB

Length:

01min53sec

Transcript


00:05
Cass: I’d always felt an outsider, I remember being chased around the school and called a Kike and “go back to Jerusalem.” And then during the war, I remember when France fell and I remember the old headmaster saying, “But we’ll still win.” And I didn’t feel it at all, I mean France had been overrun by the Nazis, I remember feeling terrified, that you know, as a Jew I’d had it. The Germans were going to win.

00:35
So in that sense, my Judaism, it’s not because I had any belief in it, I didn’t believe in – I still don’t – I’m an atheist if you look at it in terms of my beliefs. But my cultural background and all that stuff, well yeah, Jewish and I felt terrified. And yeah. That probably did influence me in that way. And of course, the fact that you know, I had to acknowledge my parents were refugees, my parents, my father, Stanley came out because of the Pogrom they all got nervous because the Cossacks had entered the – part of the town where they were and one of the kids was at school and I’m told that’s when my grandmother looked out the door, noticed some Cossacks coming down the road and they suddenly stopped and knelt down and raised their rifles, she looked and saw her son coming around the corner, and the fired and they were near her so she just had to shut the door.

01:35
They didn’t know what had happened to him for three days or so. Fortunately he’d seen the soldiers and he’d ducked round the corner and scrambled into a Jewish shop where they were pulling down the shutter because they heard the noise and so the grandmother said, “We’re getting out.” And within a year they were in Perth.
01:52
End transcript