Mr Nathan Fink
Family Background
I am speaking on behalf of my sister Freda, my brother-in-law Martin, wife Elly and the grandchildren, as well as myself. They may contribute some additional memories later this evening.
I have been asked to speak about Mina as a person. I found it very difficult to compartmentalise her various qualities. With her pre-computer-era computerized mind, Mina would have been able to file everything in order. We are not all as tidy-minded as she was.
Mina Waks was born in Bialystok. When she was eight years old she lost both parents. Her father died in a typhus epidemic; her mother through desperation suicided soon after. The three orphans, Mina and her two brothers, were separated - the elder boy (Lolek) was adopted by the Waks grandparents; the younger two (Mina and Jack) by her mother's family, the Kaplans.
Her grandfather Kaplan lost all his money in World War One. The family was poor but proud. They struggled to keep up appearances, to be respectable and well dressed in public but there was no money for the household expenses. Education was however valued.
Mina matriculated and was thinking of going to university in Warsaw. But just then Leo Fink came on a visit to Bialystok to see his mother and buy machinery, after being in Australia for 4 years. His frum mother Masha thought it was time he married and asked if he had a shidach. He answered, 'No, I don't have time. Will you find me one?'
Grandmother found three candidates: one had yichas (that is breeding); one had education; and the third one was an orphan. Leo asked his mother to choose. Being frum she naturally chose the orphan (that is a mitzvah ). They were married in Bialystok. The marriage lasted 40 years to the day.
They arrived in Kew in 1932 to a rented house at 99 Walpole Street. For mum it was a cultural shock. Mina spoke no English and so could not communicate with her Anglo-Australian neighbours. (All her life she felt her English was inadequate, not good enough.) Before long she was looking after all four Fink brothers. Freda was born when she was 19 and I was born when she was 21. Not much later her two brothers joined her.
In 1938 Freda and I were left in the care of Jack and Sadie Fink, while Mina and Leo visited Poland. This visit left them greatly disturbed. Mina encouraged all family members to come to Australia. It continued to haunt her that she did not try hard enough to get more of them out. This was one of the driving forces of her life.
Community
The war changed Mina and Leo. Working together they focused on overseas relief. Immediately post-war Mina took on the role of social worker. Meeting the boats, taking hampers of food for those in transit to Sydney, making beds for those who stayed in Melbourne at the migrant hostels. She really cared about those who she continually tried to help.
As an orphan herself, and a recent migrant to these shores who only just missed being caught up in the Holocaust, she identified with the war orphans in particular. We have heard about her connection with the Buchenwald boys. She found Jewish homes for them to board at in order to integrate them in the community. She found jobs for them and encouraged them to obtain qualifications. She was unterfirer at their weddings.
Mina used to say to me: 'Why are you so badly mannered and rude Nathan?' I replied: 'You spent all your time with your boys; you didn't bring me up properly.' She responded: 'No, Nathan, I really loved you too.'
When the Welfare Society started employing professional social workers, and she felt no longer useful there, she shifted her energies to the National Council of Jewish Women. Whatever her commitment, it was always wholehearted. She was determined to build up the status of the NCJW and worked hard to conscript women with skills at writing, public speaking and organizing. She was very proud of her young professional proteges, Sylvia Gelman, Geulah Solomon and Malvina Malinek.
She also conscripted all her female relatives and friends and former fellow-workers in the UJORF to work for Council. Sadie Fink, Anya Castan and Eva Joel (long-time stalwarts of NCJW) have all attested to being motivated by her to join and contribute their efforts to Council.
NCJW connections led her for example to the Lady Mayoress' Committee; for her this had STATUS. She wanted to help others. But she also wanted respect. Respectability was very important to the Kaplans and the Wakses. It was in her genes. She liked to be invited to Government House, to the Royal Ball, to be introduced to Prime Ministers, Ambassadors and Governors. The Finks thought that was all nonsense ; but to her it spelt recognition.
For the last ten years of her life, her passion was the Holocaust Museum, where she brought together and reconciled different factions who would otherwise have been at loggerheads. She promoted the educational programme and helped develop the training of survivors as guides.
In the early 1960s, she lived in Israel with Leo, who was establishing a wool top plant in Ashdod. She learnt Hebrew, attended an ulpan, and spent time with relatives and friends, but also made new friends. She made many trips to Israel later, and remained a passionate supporter of Israel all her life. Late in her life, she attended the weddings of four of her grandchildren in Israel and wouldn't have missed them for the world. In Israel she spent some of the happiest times of her life.
Family
Our home was always full of people. Visitors were always welcome and well fed. Mina extended hospitality to the extended family, to her community colleagues, to all our friends and to all kinds of overseas visitors - representatives of the HIAS, the Joint, the ORT, the OSE, Dr Steinberg (the old Menshevik who wanted to set up a Jewish colony in the Kimberleys); Dr. Shoskes, remote relatives from the four corners of the globe; and researchers working on books on remote Jewish communities (we were considered one).
Freda could invite truckloads of kids from the Hachshara farm in Shepparton or half a dozen friends from university, and know that her mother would feed them all royally and receive them warmly. She provided a home away from home for my friends at university who came from country towns. At the time, we thought this open house, this level of hospitality was normal and natural.
Mina also loved to travel. Her NCJW conferences and connections sent her far and wide. But she also liked touring new places (her last trip was to Alaska) and discovering new members of the extended family. She would travel for an extra 3 days to meet a distant cousin somewhere (in Argentina, South Africa, Israel, London, Paris, or New Jersey...) She once sent me to Los Angeles to visit a Kaplan cousin who she thought might be in need (I instinctively had a $100 hand-out ready in my pocket). We both had a laugh when I found out that he was running a multi-million dollar company.
Mina became known as Auntie Mina to all the Fink, Waks, Glickfeld and Teller children. She was very attached to them all. When her nieces in Sydney decided to study or work in Melbourne, they were housed and fed at her place, sometimes for months on end. When the Sydney String Quartet came to Melbourne to perform, she would not only attend every concert but also make dinner for the entire quartet (which included her nephew, Nathan Waks) plus their partners at 11 p.m. after the concert at her place.
To her grandchildren, Debbie, Lilly, Mark, Alex, Michael and Naomi, she was Grandma MBE, and in the end we all started calling her Grandma. She had a close personal relationship with all her grandchildren and was enthusiastically supportive of all their activities and proud of their achievements. She was shattered by our daughter Naomi's sudden death. Typically she could be seen sitting at the Kadimah box-office selling tickets for the premiere of a play written by her grandson-in-law, Colin Golvan.
She was a meticulous person in grooming, dress, house-keeping, record-keeping, and sweeping paths (which seemed to many of us to be her favourite occupation). Every drawer was kept moth-free, neat and tidy, in utterly perfect condition. When she visited her grandson Alex in a remote kibbutz north of Eilat in the middle of the desert, she immediately picked up a broom and swept the sand off the porch.
Despite her own high standards, she was very tolerant of others. She found the good qualities in most people and would reprimand us if we expressed criticism of them.
Health & Fitness
In the 1950s my father Leo had a false-alarm heart attack. She immediately changed her methods of cooking and thereafter became a health food freak, addicted to the virtues of carrot juice and fresh salads. She habituated health resorts in Europe and Australia, and sang the praises of the vegetarian life style and the outdoor life. In her younger years, she enjoyed skiing, fishing and hiking. Incidentally, the three communal leaders Arnold Bloch, Maurice Ashkanazy and Mina Fink all loved fishing in Frankston. In her later years, she religiously and energetically undertook a daily hike around the Botanical Gardens with selected friends.
Anecdotes
A man was buried in an unmarked grave at Springvale. She noticed there was no tombstone. She fought with the authorities to have a tombstone erected in his name. She had not known him. She won the battle; the tombstone was erected.
In the last days before her death she was in a cardiac ward with three men, all healthier than her as it happened. She spent her time counselling them. She served others to the end.
We were proud of our Mother.