ECU Mt Lawley redevelopment: Jewish society seeks permanent home as council rejects precinct development plan

A call to create a permanent home for WA’s Jewish history has emerged as part of the contentious ECU Mt Lawley redevelopment, with a local historical society hoping to secure space in the former university campus. The request came as the City of Stirling rejected Development WA’s proposed precinct structure plan for the area at its July council meeting, which would eventually pave the way for more than 1000 homes, a primary school and open public spaces. Part of the plans also include the adaptive reuse of several heritage buildings on the site. At Stirling’s meeting, Ray Levin from the Jewish Historical and Genealogical Society of WA, based in Yokine, said the society’s request was “simple”. “We seek a permanent home for the preservation of a unique part of WA’s history,” he said. “Due to the high percentage of Jewish community living in the City of Stirling, this will also preserve some of the city’s history.” About half of WA’s Jewish population lives in the City of Stirling — about 3200 people. “The Jewish community, like many communities that helped build WA, came here from all parts of the world,” Mr Levin said. “Many arrived seeking safety, freedom from persecution and the opportunity to raise their families in peace. “In doing so, they became part of the story of WA itself.” Mr Levin said much of the community’s history had never been systematically collected, with records often stored in garages, spare rooms or private homes, resulting in family stories, photographs and organisational records being lost over time. “For nearly three decades, our society has worked to prevent that loss by collecting and storing archival records and memorabilia, not only for ourselves but for all the other Jewish organisations in the State,” he said. He said they had built a “substantial” archive and specialist library of more than a thousand volumes. “We receive research inquiries from across Australia and beyond,” he said. “We hold regular meetings, educational events and guest presentations and we make our resources available not only to the Jewish community but to also to the wider community.” He said the material they had collected was currently spread across four locations because they did not have a permanent premises. “The risk of losing this material is not theoretical,” he said. “Last year documents that have been carefully professionally sorted and identified as historical significance were sent into State for archiving. During the transit they were destroyed by fire. Those records were irreplaceable.” He said the society envisioned creating a small museum and exhibition space where visitors could learn about the Jewish community’s migration, resilience and contribution to WA. Viv Levin, also from JHGSWA, told PerthNow after the meeting the society needed more than just storage. “We’re looking to see if we can get some sort of space in what’s going to be left of that ECU building,” she said. “We need a meeting space, we need a storage space. We’ve got archive stuff to the gunwales at the moment.” She said their library of 1500 books was currently in temporary accommodation which would soon be demolished. “We’re just at the moment emptying out what has been a free storage facility for the last few years ... they’re going to pull down the property that we had stuff stored in, so we’re going to have to find a home for that,” Ms Levin said. Ms Levin said the long-term vision expanded far beyond storing documents. “It will become a bit of an education centre for both the Jewish and the outside community as well,” she said. “It’s got to be a place that people can come to where you can borrow a book, where volunteers can help people research genealogy, and where our history is accessible.” She said the society regularly received donations of historical material from families across the nation. “It’s remarkable how many gems are discovered,” she said. “There’s been a tremendous contribution to the State by a lot of Jewish people whose names are remembered, but the public would not necessarily know that they were actually Jewish.” The city’s refusal of the precinct plans will go to the WA Planning Commission, which is the final decision maker.