Just weeks ago, after he turned 100 with his twin sister Bella, holocaust survivor Phillip Maisel shared his secret of his miraculous life: “Just be positive,’ he said with a grin. “Always be positive.”
Now it‘s Australia’s turn to be positive and grateful for the priceless contribution Maisel gave to his adopted country after he passed away in Melbourne this week.
Earlier this month, as he and Bella celebrated their 100th birthday, Phillip told the Australian the extraordinary story of how both he and his sister survived the Holocaust in separate camps, without knowing the other had survived.
But it was when he and Bella migrated to Australia after the war that Phillip made his lasting contribution to his new home.
At the age of 70, Phillip chose to devote four days a week for the next 29 years to recording the testimonies of Holocaust survivors at Melbourne’s Jewish Holocaust Centre.
It was the culmination of a promise that he and two other concentration camp prisoners made amongst themselves during the war that if they survived they would help tell the world what jews suffered at the hands of the Nazis.
He recorded more than 1400 of them, a contribution that the Holocaust Centre said made him “a central figure in preserving the voices of the Holocaust for future generations.”
Read the article by Cameron Stewart in The Australian.