On the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust, Alex Kleytman took to social media to remember his mother, who was a prisoner of the Pechora camp in Ukraine when she was just 16 years old.
“The purpose of this camp was not to kill, but to make people die of hunger and hard labor,” he wrote in January 2020. “She managed to survive. Her memories can be heard in Yad Vashem [the Holocaust memorial in Israel].”
Kleytman, too, survived the Holocaust, going on to have two children and 11 grandchildren, settling in Sydney and always tightly preserving his Jewish heritage.
“Each year,” he wrote, “there is fewer of those who were released from the camps [who remain alive].
“Against the backdrop of love and memory, more and more photos and messages about desecrated cemeteries, painted swastikas on the walls of synagogues and attacks on synagogues appear.
“We must be strong and be able to stand for ourselves … not to forget about those Jews who fought back the enemy in the distant years of the WWII.”
Eight decades after the war, at the age of 87, Kleytman was fatally shot at Bondi beach while celebrating Hanukah and his Jewish faith.
Speaking to reporters after the terror attack on Sunday, his wife, Larisa Kleytman, said Hanukah had always been a “very, very good celebration” for the couple, having celebrated the tradition every year since immigrating to Australia.
“Today in the middle of the celebrations [there were] shots and unfortunately my husband was killed,” she said.
“We were standing and suddenly came the ‘boom boom’, and everybody fell down. At this moment he was behind me and at one moment he decided to go close to me. He pushed his body up because he wanted to stay near me.”
Kleytman’s daughter, Sabina, told the Washington Post that her father had died “doing what he loved most”.
“Protecting my mother – he probably saved her life – and standing up and being a proud Jew,” she said. “Lighting the light, bringing the light to this world.”
Kleytman was born in 1938 in the Ukrainian city of Odesa. Two years after the war broke out, his family fled and endured an arduous journey to Siberia with other evacuees, finally reaching the Russian city of Prokopyevsk. They later moved to Lviv after the war, as their home in Odesa was bombed.
Two decades later, his family applied for emigration to Israel but were rejected, and the family fell into the ranks of “refuseniks”, an unofficial term for Soviet Jews who were unable to leave the bloc, and were badly mistreated.
Their second attempt at emigration was successful and the family landed in Sydney in 1992. Soon after, Kleytman began working in the commercial departments of large construction companies, where he remained for more than 20 years.
In his retirement, Kleytman turned to writing. In 2020, his first book, Memory Relay: Known and Unknown Jewish Heroes, was published with the assistance of a crowdfunding campaign.
Translated into Russian and English, the book was the result of years of research about the role of Jewish soldiers and stories of Jewish resistance in the Soviet Union during the second world war.
Last year, he finished his second book on the life of Jews in the Soviet Union from 1948 until the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.
Friends and community pay tribute
Georg Abendlich, who lives in Osnabrück, Germany, got to know Kleytman through his wife Larisa Kleytman, who is Abendlich’s cousin. He said through their conversations, “he became much more than a family connection”.
“He was someone who cared deeply about Jewish memory and about telling the truth of Jewish lives, especially where history has tried to reduce Jews to silence or to numbers,” he said.
“He described himself as a humble Jewish man, and that description felt accurate. He had a quiet strength and a sincerity that came through even in simple exchanges.”
Abendlich had prepared to film a video interview with Kleytman to record his Holocaust story, which will now never be conducted, “not because time ran out, but because history has repeated itself”.
“He understood something many people only learn too late: if you do not record testimony and memory, time will take it from you,” he said. “He told me that he had not asked his parents enough about the important details of their lives, and that he regretted how much had gone unspoken.
“That reflection was not just personal. It was a warning about how easily stories disappear if we do not take responsibility for them.”
The aged care provider JewishCare, which cared for the Kleytman couple for many years, said in its 2023 annual report that they were “remarkable individuals” whose “resilience, strength, and adaptability serve as a testament to the enduring nature of the human spirit”.
“Alex’s memories are particularly harrowing; recalling the dreadful conditions in Siberia where he, along with his mother and younger brother, struggled for survival,” JewishCare said.
Kleytman dedicated his first book to all the Jewish war heroes who defended their Soviet homeland from the Nazis, and to his children and grandchildren.
His dedication came with one hope, humble in its simplicity: “That they will pass the knowledge to their future children.”
