Published: 29 July 2025
Last updated: 29 July 2025
Standing on the polished wooden floorboards of St Kilda Town Hall’s grand auditorium, 94-year-old Buchenwald concentration camp survivor, Joe Szwarcberg, is at the centre of concentric horra circles made up of around 200 family and friends.
As the last remaining survivor from a contingency of about 65 men known as the ‘Buchenwald Boys’, he was, so to speak, the belle of Melbourne’s 65th ‘Buchenwald Ball’. And this year’s Ball, held on 6 April 2025, was particularly momentous as it marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald.
While there was a certain poignancy with only one enduring survivor, the atmosphere remained electric.
A klezmer band played the usual songs sung at the Ball: Tumbala Laika, the Football Song, the Buchenwald Song, the Partisan’s Song. Australian-Israeli diplomat Mark Regev delivered a speech on the importance of Holocaust remembrance in these trying times. Shots of whiskey were passed around for the staple L’Chaim.
The day delivered on what the Buchenwald Ball is renowned for: a celebration of survival replete with raucous dancing, rowdy singing and plenty of booze.
One of the Ball’s organisers, Sandi Rapoport, daughter of Buchenwald Boy Szaja Chaskiel, said this year’s event was a return to the joyous party that momentarily lapsed after October 7.
“The last one was a really hard one, after October 7... it was more of a sombre event,” Rapoport explained.
“This year, the realisation that there's just one survivor left, we felt we just really had to celebrate him and let him know how special he is to all of us. The vibe was really positive and strong. Everyone just came with excitement in their blood. It was just palpable.
“The Boys have been such an important part of all our lives. And to see the numbers dwindling every event is quite sobering."
The legendary Buchenwald Ball began in Melbourne in 1949, after the teenage survivors travelled from orphanages and processing camps in Europe to settle across Melbourne and Sydney.
While there are elements of commemoration – the day always starts with recitation of the Kaddish at Springvale Cemetery’s shtibel – the Ball resembles more of a birthday party. And for many of the Boys it is just that, as they elected April 11 – the date of their liberation – as their ‘rebirth’ in place of their unknown birthdates, further cementing their brotherly bond.
For photographer Andrew Harris, the question of how the community should continue to honour the Boys’ legacy, despite the diminishing number of survivors, is central to his exhibition at the Jewish Museum of Australia (JMA).
“The exhibition asks the question, what do we do now? What do we do in the future? What do we do when Joe can no longer attend?” Harris said.
“It's a question that I think is more poignant than ever before at this time of rampant antisemitism and Melbourne feeling unfamiliar to so many of us. How do we take this message of rebirth, celebration, community, multiculturalism, contribution, and use it to tell our story into the future without the cohort of survivors who have told the story until now?”
The exhibition also includes early photographs, poetry and other items connected to both the Balls and the Buchenwald Boys themselves.
Harris remembers attending his first event in 2015 at Szaja Chaskiel’s house, the night before the formal commemoration.
“It really struck me how youthful and vibrant they were. They were in their 80s, [but] it was like a group of teenagers getting together,” he continued.
“It was really extraordinary, the energy and gusto with which they lived. They were drinking and singing, carrying on. I couldn't keep up with them. I think I left them at midnight and they kept going till the wee hours. And then the next morning they were all at the cemetery bright and early for the formal commemoration.”
Anita Frayman, co-curator of the JMA's Buchenwald Ball – 80 years Dancing in Freedom exhibition and daughter of Buchenwald Boy Joe Kaufman, believes the Boys’ legacy can help guide the Jewish community to navigate the recent rise in antisemitism.
“When we realise that we're living in a time of violence in our neighbourhoods against us as Jews, I draw a lot of comfort and inspiration from the Buchenwald Boys who came here after the worst of the violence against Jews,” said Frayman.
“They found their strength in their friendships that they made together, in their families and in the community that they've built here in Melbourne.”
Lana Ross, granddaughter of Buchenwald Boy Bernie Kaufmann, echoed this sentiment: “Remembering and retelling these stories feels more urgent than ever".
Many of the Boys met their wives at the Balls, and through their adopted Buchenwald community, created a large extended family as a way of rebuilding the families they lost in the Holocaust.
Recalling her first Buchenwald Ball in 1953, 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Rachel ‘Ray’ Spicer and wife of Buchenwald Boy Charlie Spicer remembered the night being filled with bawdy Yiddish and Polish songs and too much drinking.
“They seemed like a bunch of vilde chayas [wild things]. But I realised later they were just a lovely bunch of guys who were just happy to be alive, happy to see each other and enjoy each other's company,” she said.
The Ball has had many iterations, from black-tie night galas, to family picnics at the Dandenong Ranges, and larger luncheons at synagogues and bowls clubs. But they have always retained the same characteristics – aptly mixing the grief, resilience and joy that marred the lives of the Buchenwald Boys.
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