Holocaust survivor Berysz Aurbach, 104, recalls his brother’s fight in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the price of resistance

The 104-year-old Berysz Aurbach is one of the last survivors of the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis during the Holocaust. Aurbach who was born the Polish town Biala Podlaska and lives in the Australian city Melbourne, offered a unique first-hand testimony of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. His memory is still vivid despite his advanced age. 

“I can talk for six months and I wouldn’t tell you everything I want to tell you,” Aurbach said in an interview with The Times of Israel. He is one of 35,000 Holocaust survivors who after the war relocated to Australia. He was smuggled out from the Warsaw Ghetto on Passover 1943, just before the uprising started. 

He revealed that his older brother Mordechai was part of the underground resistance and an active member of HaNaor Hatzioni, a Zionist youth movement. 

“My elder brother Mordechai, together with other ghetto leaders, went to rich people in Warsaw to obtain money for arms. Rich people gave him and other leaders money after my brother convinced them to fund resistance in the ghetto,” Aurbach recalled. 

“My brother had arranged for himself a place… but he couldn’t arrange a place for [the rest of the family]. He didn’t have all the say; it was a committee. After a lot of arguments they managed to find a place for me, [but] the committee said they did too much for his brother,” he continued. 

His brother survived the initial phase of the ghetto uprising. However he was later executed by the Gestapo after being betrayed by Polish informants. 

“I don’t know where he is buried,” Aurbach said. 

Esther, Aurbach’s only surviving sister, decided after the war to move to the British Mandate Palestine and the emerging State of Israel. In contrast, Aurbach decided to move to Australia. 

“Australia wanted immigrants. I knew I had an uncle in Australia, so I came,” Aurbach explained.

His survivor story is part of a current exhibition at Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum, which specifically focuses on Warsaw Ghetto survivors.

Dr. Simon Holloway, manager of community and corporate programs at Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum, stressed that Aurbach’s testimony is unique. 

“Berysz Aurbach is one of those, given that he was in hiding on the Aryan side,” Holloway said. There are reportedly only 43 firsthand testimonies of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

More than 80,000 Jews died in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. In April 2023, Israeli President Isaac Herzog headed a ceremony that marked the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Israeli president hailed the uprising as “the emblem of heroism during humanity’s darkest hour.” 

Aurbach who has spent most of his life in Australia, commented on the recent rise of antisemitism in Australian society. 

“My private opinion is most Australian people are not antisemitic,” he assessed. “They are meshuggah [crazy] regarding football. I don’t personally think they are thinking much about antisemitism,” he added. 

Antisemitic incidents in Australia increased by a whopping 400% since the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, according to a report that was published in December 2024 by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).

ECAJ Research Director Julie Nathan who compiled the report, expressed concerns about the dramatic rise of Jew hated in Australia. 

“If anything, the raw numbers understate the seriousness of the surge in antisemitism that has occurred. There have been many new forms and expressions of anti-Jewish racism that would once have been considered alien to Australia, but which have become commonplace,” Nathan assessed.

Radicalized individuals with a Muslim immigrant background have played a disproportionate role in the rise of antisemitism in Australia and other Western societies.