Published: 12 April 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
In a Caulfield synagogue hall on Sunday, four Holocaust survivors aged in their 90s and their relatives and friends gathered to eat, sing and dance
THE QUARTET RAISED shots of whisky and made a toast, “L’Chaim” — to life. Welcome to the Buchenwald Ball, a little-known annual Melbourne tradition for more than 65 years.
They were celebrating their liberation, in 1945, from the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. After the war, more than 60 former youth inmates of Buchenwald settled in Australia.
Some had no family left alive, but they counted their fellow “Buchenwald Boys” as brothers.
In about 1955, they created the Buchenwald Ball. They would dress up to the nines, and have a big night out.
It’s now a lunch event. There are now a handful of remaining Buchenwald Boys, but their descendants continue the tradition.
FULL STORY ‘And then they dance’: The Holocaust survivors still celebrating life (Age)
Photo: The Buchenwald Boys, (left to right) Salek Roth, Joe Szwarcberg, Szaja Chaskiel and Jack Unikoski, at the Caulfield Shule (Aaron Francis)
