Warsaw, Poland

Lvov, Poland

Henry Buch

I was born in the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1941. My family had a large textile business. When the round-ups occurred, we hid behind a false wall - my mouth was taped shut. My father was picked up outside our apartment and sent to Lublin slave labour camp and eventually perished. He lies in a mass grave in Madjanek. My uncle was responsible for saving our family. I was feed through the Ghetto gates and given to a Polish family. After the war, my mother walked 800 kilometers from Leipzig where she found me in an orphanage. I was a bewildered five-year old unwilling to leave with a strange woman - she assured me she was my mother. We arrived in Melbourne with my grandmother and aunt in 1945 with papers declaring we were Catholic.