In a Caulfield synagogue hall on Sunday, four Holocaust survivors aged in their 90s and more than 100 of 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.
Before the ball, they held a memorial service in a Jewish prayer hall at Springvale cemetery, and placed stones on the Buchenwald memorial outside.
Sandi Rapoport, daughter of Buchenwald Boy Szaja Chaskiel, said the ball, held at the Caulfield Shule (synagogue) after the service, was a symbol of Nazi failure.
“It’s [us saying] ‘see, we survived’,” Ms Rapoport said. “‘[The Nazis] didn’t get the job done. Look at us, we’re dancing, we have children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren’.”
Read the article by Carolyn Webb in The Age.