Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I would like to briefly acknowledge the role and lifetime of a wonderful woman called Hilde Hines, who would be well known to the member for Melbourne Ports. She passed away not last week but the week before and was buried last Sunday. She was born in Nuremberg on 14 September 1917, and she left Germany in the late thirties. She lived near a beer hall, where she had occasion to overhear some of Adolf Hitler’s early speeches. Recognising the coming tide she and her husband, Gus, left Germany and eventually ended up in Australia. Hilde and her husband were the backbone of the Jewish community in Adelaide. In fact, the hall at the synagogue of the Adelaide Hebrew congregation is called Hines Hall, at Massada College, in memory of Hilde and Gus Hines. Hilde had an incredible role in Adelaide, promoting especially the role of survivors of the holocaust and attending schools. Right up until about a month before her death she was still attending schools and telling them about the holocaust and the survival of those Jews who fled Europe and who have gone on to make fantastic lives for themselves in other parts of the world.

She always said that her great victory over Adolf Hitler was her family, her children and grandchildren, her nephews and nieces, and her great nephews and nieces—it proved that the Jews had not been defeated by one of the world’s most evil people in history. She was patron and a former President of the Australian Council of Christians and Jews. She was former president of the United Israel Appeal. She was a life member of WIZO, the Women’s International Zionist Organisation, and she held offices in that organisation at the federal, international and state levels.

Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have spoken to them a few times.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I have spoken to them on a regular basis. She was also a regular visitor to Israel. Her contribution to the Jewish community in Adelaide will be sorely missed. While she was a great friend and supporter of mine, she maintained a bipartisan role in politics in South Australia, always promoting unity, reconciliation and moderation and, in recent years, working very hard to bring the Muslim community, the Jewish community and the Christian community together in a way that was positive for Adelaide and for the nation. I will miss her very much personally. I know that I speak for many people in Adelaide when I say that Hilde Hines will leave a large hole in our community, both Jewish and non-Jewish.