People Australia

Judah Waten, by Noel Counihan, 1950s-60s

National Galllery of Victoria, P158-1991

Judah Waten (1911-1985) author and Communist intellectual

Birth: 29 July 1911 at Odessa, Ukraine, then in the Russian empire, son of Romanian-born Solomon Waten (1884-1946), optician and merchant, and Nehemia, née Press (1881-1938) born at Minsk, Byelorussia (Belarus). Marriage: 19 September 1945 at the office of the government statist, Melbourne, to native-born Hyrrell McKinnon Ross (1917-1988), a schoolteacher. They had one daughter. Death: 29 July 1985 at Heidelberg, Melbourne.; usual residence Byron Street, Box Hill. Religion: Jewish. 

• Arrived in Australia, aged four, in 1915. Educated at Christian Brothers College Perth, Western Australia, and University High School (Melbourne, Victoria).
• As author and critic he published twelve books, ten of which were fiction in social realist form, and was one of the first Australian writers to deal with the migrant experience.
• Waten was a long term member of the Communist Party of Australia and part of Brian Fitzpatrick’s coterie at Swanston Family Hotel in the 1930s.
• From 1949 to 1952 he was secretary of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism. He was the subject of expulsion and resignations from the CPA, in 1935 for ‘petty bourgeois irresponsibilities’. A hard-minded Stalinist, he was ultimately a member of the Socialist Party of Australia in 1975-1985.
• In the 1940s he was chair of the Australasian Book Society which promoted literature in left democratic tradition, and was subject to Cold War surveillance.
• In 1973-1974 Waten served on the first Literature Board of Australia Council, later receiving two grants and one fellowship from that source. Awarded AM, 1979.
• Andrew Clark has recalled Waten’s "smile of welcome, jokes, anecdotes, winning repartee". Judah could tell a story like no other. He had wonderfully expressive hand movements as he spoke, and a chuckle that was wickedly infectious. He was also a courtly man, capable of great generosity, particularly to young writers. And Judah was a writer, a person who respected the worth of his calling.
• Among his many works is Alien Son, a collection of stories that explore the immigrant experience. It has been described as one of the "greatest of all Australian books."
• He wrote one article for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, on his colleague Pinchas Goldhar.
• Cause of death: septicemia (4 days), peripheral vascular disease (1 year), renal failure (1 year) and ischemic heart disease (1 year). 

Sources
John Playford, Doctrinal and strategic problems of the Communist Party of Australia, 1945-1962, PhD thesis, ANU, 1962; Recorder, August 1985; Tribune, 7 August 1985; Stuart Macintyre, The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from origins to illegality (Sydney, 1998).