By Carolyn Webb
When you turn 104, it makes sense to have a big birthday party.
Berysz Aurbach, of Caulfield, had a suitably large black forest cake with “Happy 104th Birthday” inscribed on it in Hebrew.
Full of life: Berysz Aurbach flanked by granddaughters Tali (left) and Dani Jackson at his 104th birthday party.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Family and friends visited all day on Sunday. There were enough sponge cakes, biscuits and pastries to shock a cardiologist.
Guests toasted Aurbach, whose actual birthday was Saturday, with whisky and said “l’chaim” (to life). There was much to be thankful for: Aurbach has three children, four grandchildren and a lovely home.
More than 80 years ago, he survived the Warsaw Ghetto, in Nazi-occupied Poland. Some 90,000 Jews in the ghetto died of starvation and disease. More than 300,000 were shot or killed in extermination camps.
Aurbach says his brother Mordechai (pictured) was a hero who saved his life.
Thousands more died in the ghetto uprising of April 1943, in which Nazis burnt and blew up buildings.
Now, as always, Aurbach thinks of his late brother, Mordechai, who he says saved his life, many times.
Their father, oldest brother Leibl, a sister-in-law and her two children died during the uprising. Aurbach, Mordechai and Mordechai’s girlfriend watched the fires from an apartment outside the ghetto.
Aurbach’s birthday cake inscribed with “Happy 104th Birthday” in Hebrew.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“You must understand, I felt terrible,” he said. “I still see the fire, in my eyes.”
Shortly before the ghetto uprising, Mordechai, part of the anti-Nazi underground resistance movement, gave Aurbach a fake ID and organised a Polish police uniform, which Aurbach wore to slip out of the ghetto, unnoticed.
Aurbach spent the rest of the war in safe houses run by the underground.
But Mordechai and his girlfriend, who had been posing as gentiles, were dobbed in to the Gestapo. Mordechai was shot dead and his girlfriend was shot in the leg and later died.
Believed to be a passport photo of a young Berysz Aurbach on entry to Australia in 1947.
“Mordechai saved my life. Of course, he is my hero,” Aurbach says.
If not for Mordechai, “either one or the other, I would have burned in the [ghetto] fire or burned in the ovens [in concentration camps].
“Of course, I often think of him now. For much of my life, I thought of him, wherever I was.”
In the ghetto, Aurbach, whose mother had died of illness when he was a baby, survived round-ups of Jews, in which Nazis chose those to be deported to camps and those allowed to stay.
If someone strayed out of formation or the guards didn’t like their face, or for fun, they would “shoot a few people”. While hiding in Warsaw and elsewhere after the ghetto, Aurbach was in constant fear.
“If the Germans had found me, they would have shot me on the spot. Like my brother.”
Aurbach keeps memories of brother Mordechai close.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Just one sibling, Esther, out of the five he grew up with in Biala Podlaska, eastern Poland, survived the Holocaust.
Aurbach migrated to Melbourne in 1947 and ran a successful knitting business. In 1955, he met his wife, Tova, in Israel. Tova died of cancer 12 years ago.
Relatives say Aurbach is resilient and loves life. He goes to synagogue, reads books and goes shopping.
“He believes himself to be much younger than 104,” says granddaughter Dani Jackson.
His faith is important.
“You need to hold on to something. You can’t be empty altogether,” Aurbach says.
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