Queenslanders share their extraordinary Holocaust survival stories

Watch our exclusive video of six Queenslanders sharing their extraordinary Holocaust survival stories, including parents forced to explain the persecution of jews to their children to tales of death lists.

The extraordinary stories of six Queenslanders who survived the Holocaust have been shared as they describe their experiences in haunting detail.

A glimpse of what will be displayed at the yet-to-be-completed Queensland Holocaust Museum can be shared by The Courier-Mail, which was produced in partnership with Griffith University.

Peter Baruch recollects his memory of Poland as a child at the beginning of the German invasion when all the nation’s flags were torn down and replaced with Nazi swastikas.

“Then they changed the name of the main street to Adolf Hitler Strasse — Adolf Hitler Street,” he said.

“And then started the persecution of the Jews.”

Peter Baruch recollects his memory of Poland.

Edgar Gold describes his innocent perspective of the early stages of the Holocaust when he told his dad he wanted to join the Hitler youth, based purely on the appeal of the trendy black uniforms.

His father responded to the request by taking Mr Gold on to a lake and explaining the horror of the Nazi movement, who were persecuting against people who were not of Aryan race — fair skinned Europeans.

Recollecting the conversation, he said his father told him: “I have to explain something to you”.

“I have to explain to you the difference between Aryan and not Aryan,” he said.

“Some people are Aryan and some people are not Aryan.

“At the moment the Aryan people are in charge and the non-Aryans are not in charge.

“We are non-Aryan, so this is not our time — we must keep our head down at the moment and it will not be very good.”

Suzi Smeed said she still struggles to comprehend the horror.

Suzi Smeed, another survivor, explains the horror she is still confronted with.

“It’s very hard to describe how you feel when you think you almost didn’t make it,” she said.

“And people kept a list of people they were going to send to their death. I mean, that to me is almost incomprehensible.”

Film maker and Griffith University academic Peter Hegedus’s own grandmother was placed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust but survived the horrors.

He said her story motivated him to produce the video, along with other highly acclaimed films featuring children from atrocities across the world.

“What we don’t want is for the Holocaust to become a page in a history book,” the film maker said.

“It could happen again, potentially, and we need to remember what happened and do what we can do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Queensland Holocaust Museum and Education Centre chair Jason Steinberg said it was crucial the stories of survivors are shared and displayed to pass their message on to future generations.

“We know that the impact of a person hearing from a Holocaust survivor is profound,” he said.

“When someone hears a Holocaust survivor explain their experiences and their survival, it makes a lifelong impression on those people.

“To educate people about the Holocaust, hearing the voices and stories from those survivors is just so important.”