Canon Emeritus Dr Paul Oestreicher and his wife, Prof
Barbara Einhorn, visit one of his childhood haunts, St
Kilda beach. Photo by Gerard O'Brien.
After living abroad for almost 55 years, retired
Anglican priest Dr Paul Oestreicher has returned to his home
town of Dunedin for the best of reasons - to receive an
honorary doctor of divinity degree today from his alma mater,
the University of Otago.
Reporter Allison Rudd
talks to a man who overcame the persecution of his childhood
and rejected a lifetime of resentment in favour of the Biblical
principle of loving his neighbours - and his enemies.
Some might say Paul Oestreicher is a dreamer.
In a world torn apart by military aggression, nuclear
threats, poverty and religious intolerance, his philosophy
might seem an overly simple one: treat others as you would
like to be treated yourself.
But the man who has devoted his life to peace and social
justice is quite sincere about his belief that love will
conquer all.
"I have a deep feeling there is something, for want of a
better word, called love, that sustains us and can make a
real difference. So however terrible the world is, every act
of love can make it better. Even in the darkest situations
there is hope."
Dr Oestreicher's view is all the more surprising because of
his background.
Born in Germany to a non-Jewish mother and a Christian father
with Jewish parents, he experienced the persecution of the
Jewish race under Hitler's anti-Semitic regime.
As a 6-year-old out walking with his mother, Emma, he watched
the start of the orgy of destruction against synagogues and
Jewish-owned shops which become immortalised as
Kristallnacht.
His father, also called Paul, a paediatric specialist, was a
patriotic German who had served as an officer in the German
army in World War 1.
By the time Kristallnacht occurred in November 1938, he and
other doctors deemed to be Jewish had been barred from
practising and became unemployable.
Jews' bank accounts had been confiscated and life was
becoming more and more restrictive for them.
The Oestreicher family had fled from a provincial town to
Berlin where young Paul was hidden by sympathetic non-Jewish
friends while his parents laid low and tried to stay one step
ahead of the authorities.
After Kristallnacht, the Oestreichers knew they had to leave.
However, with most countries closing their doors, the choice
of new home country narrowed down to New Zealand or
Venezuela.
The Oestreichers were accepted into New Zealand in 1939,
borrowing the required 2000 bond from a French friend of a
distant relative, and obtaining a guarantee of support from
the Anglican Church.
While they were now free to live and work, life was far from
easy.
The medical qualifications Dr Oestreicher had held for more
than 20 years were not recognised here and the family came to
Dunedin so he could undertake another three years of clinical
studies at the University of Otago medical school.
Dr Oestreicher jun remembers being the object of attention
and ridicule at Musselburgh School where children would chase
him around the playground calling him a Hun and a Jew.
His escape when sad or reflective was to escape to St Kilda
beach.
"To sit on the rocks at Lawyers Head and listen to the waves
crash and the seagulls cry was emotionally tremendously
important to me."
He says while he was a happy child, he always felt an
outsider.
"Dunedin was a very monocultural society. The only
non-indigenous children I was aware of were Chinese children
. . . some of whom were my friends. They were outsiders too,
but in my family's case it was even more extreme.
"We were were a family hunted out of Germany - expelled. But
we arrived with German passports and within two months we
were legally termed enemy aliens."
New Zealand was "relatively kind" to its aliens, he says.
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