Join us at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for the rare opportunity to hear first-hand from Holocaust survivor Joe Szwarcberg. 

Joe was born in 1930 in Kozienice, Poland, the youngest of six children. The Germans invaded in 1939 when Joe was nine years old and incarcerated the Jewish population in a ghetto.

Joe risked his life by leaving the ghetto to get food, but nonetheless his mother died due to the poor conditions there. He was deported to a harsh labour camp where he witnessed the murder of one of his brothers. In 1944 he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp.

After his liberation in 1945 at the age of 15 Joe was reunited with his sisters. His father had died in a death march from Auschwitz and neither of his brothers survived.