Former Wollongong councillor, Michael Samaras, has been honoured with a bronze Kristallnacht-themed medallion by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Mr Samaras was presented with the award at the annual commemoration event of Kristallnacht – the anti-Jewish pogrom by the Nazis on November 9, 1938.
The medallion from the Israeli Mint was awarded to Mr Samaras for his work in ensuring the horrors of the Shoah, the Jewish Genocide, are never forgotten.
Mr Samaras is the grandson of survivors of the Greek Genocide. His paternal grandparents were from the Kars district of north-eastern Anatolia, settling in the Kozani area of western Macedonia.
The Federation of Pontian Associations of Australia has congratulated Mr Samaras on his recognition in a press release.
“As the descendants of genocide survivors, our Federation congratulates Michael Samaras on his efforts and support of justice for another community which has experienced genocide,” the press release read.
Mr Samaras spent nearly four years to April 2022 investigating the cloudy past of an instrumental benefactor to Wollongong Art Gallery, uncovering that Lithuanian-born Bronius ‘Bob’ Sredersas was a Nazi collaborator.
The investigation into Sredersas revealed that in 1942 and 1943 he worked in the intelligence unit of the Nazi Security Office (SD) in his native Lithuania, volunteering for active duty in the Waffen-SS in 1943, after being granted German citizenship by the Third Reich. He migrated to Australia in 1950.
Sredersas, who died in 1982, donated around 100 art works by revered Australian artists including Grace Cossington-Smith and Arthur Streeton. Until June this year, Sredersas had a room named after him at the gallery.
