Look there are countless moments that make up the story of Australia.
But every now and then there's a special moment, a defining moment.
I'm Mikey Robins and I'm here at the National Museum of Australia
to check out their project ... Defining moments in Australian history.
Look what we're going to do is we're going to go behind the scenes;
we're going to check out some objects that tell the stories about these moments, about who we are.
For this defining moment I'm joined by Michelle Hetherington. Hello.
Nice to see you, and a very small but very poignant piece of cloth.
Michelle, could you describe what we're looking at here?
So this is an armband from Auschwitz worn by a Polish political prisoner.
She wasn't Jewish; she was Roman Catholic.
And she was sent to Auschwitz in about 1941,
and was on the death march to Bergen-Belsen early in 1945 ... and she survived.
She survived. It is phenomenal to think that people did survive the horrors of those camps.
and, once again looking at this, it sends chills.
Where does this sit as defining moment?
it is an object that relates to the life of a woman
who came to Australia in about 1946-47 as part of the post-war displaced persons immigration.
How did post-war migration change Australia?
Australia benefited enormously from the arrival of so many people
from around the world who chose to make Australia their new home
after their old homes had been destroyed.
Their contribution to the nation has been extraordinary.
It's made us the country we are,also too, we are looking at people
who only a few years before were actually fighting each other
Well, Regina Sprada, the woman who wore this armband,
and who preserved it for future generations,
I don't think she was fighting against anybody.
She was a primary school teacher in Poland.
Her husband Sigmund Kajewski had been arrested as an intellectual
and probably executed at Mauthausen.
Regina was just randomly sort of rounded up when she was on a train
but, because she was a teacher,
she would have been considered somebody to be put out of the way.
When the invasion of Poland happened
Because we weren't isolated from Europe.
Indeed. One of the things that really struck me when I was doing the work to bring this object into the National Museum's collections
was I was looking at Australia's post-war immigration policy.
Amongst the Labor Party in particular and in the wake of John Curtin's death,
the Acting Prime Minister said, 'One day it will be known how close Australia was to being overrun.'
Yes. They felt very strongly that one of our problems was the lack of population.
We didn't have enough people to defend such a huge land mass.
Out of all the things that I've seen on this journey,
there is so much emotion in this tiny piece of cloth.
How does it make you feel personally?
Yes. Regina's personal story was really very difficult.
In Auschwitz, she never expected to survive.
And she credits her survival with the fact that she had a very black sense of humour
and could find something to laugh at in the ridiculous position she was in.
She also had a friend in the kitchens who would give her any small amount of food that could be handed out.
She was subjected to experiments by the Hygiene Institute
And suffered disease after disease ... all the diseases of poverty and lack of care.
In 1992, after her husband died, she wrote her autobiography
because she wanted people to know.
The photograph taken of her in her striped prison uniform with her head shaved,
and she's smiling.
So there was that sort of sense of a strong personality.
When she finally was released in 1945,
she met and fell in love with a Polish officer
who was responsible for helping to process Polish refugees.
She said we just decided ... get on with it.
we'll marry and they did.
But of course he couldn't return to Poland,
because the Russian invasion of Poland had put a different group of people in charge
and her husband risked possible death if he went back.
That was certainly what he felt.
Because this object comes with so much family history,
does it have extra responsibility when you curate it?
We take extraordinary care of everything we acquire
but I feel that, when you're dealing with people's treasured possessions,
even if they're difficult treasured possessions,
you do have an enormous responsibility.
We're fully aware of our responsibilities as a result.