Survivor’s ‘entire life was a victory’

For 30 years right up until two weeks before he passed away, Jack Meister was a dedicated, weekly speaker at the Sydney Jewish Museum. Standing in his same spot every Thursday, Meister’s inspiring testimony had a profound effect on the thousands who were privileged enough to hear his story.

In 2019 he was part of Australia’s March of the Living delegation, with former MOTL director Cedric Geffen paying tribute to Meister.

“It was a profound privilege for me to lead the 2019 March of the Living Australia delegation – and to be able to have Jack Meister as our accompanying Survivor share his story, as well as his enlightening and inspirational life lessons,” said Geffen.

“Jack endeared himself to all those privileged to share this journey with him and in the years following the trip he automatically became the adopted father and grandfather of every single participant. His memory will be a blessing to all of of us.”

Meister was born in Kielce, Poland in 1928 and enjoyed a simple traditional Jewish life until the Nazis came when he was just 11. In March 1941, his family was sent to the Kielce ghetto where he was made to do all manner of dirty and degrading, menial jobs. One day in 1943 he returned from forced labour to find the ghetto liquidated and his family gone. He never saw them or heard of them again. Transported to Radom work camp then Auschwitz, he was tattooed with the number B488 and transferred to the Buna concentration camp – part of the Auschwitz complex.

At the end of 1944 he began the infamous long march to Buchenwald and watched as many of his fellows fell.

On liberation in April 1945, one American soldier gave him chocolate, a change of clothes and took his picture. The soldier returned the next day to give Jack the print – which he kept all his life.

Meister spent two years in Switzerland, in his own words “learning again how to eat, how to live, how to trade”. In 1949 he emigrated alone to Australia.

For Meister, the building where the Sydney Jewish Museum now stands was an important space. The Maccabean Hall – or ‘The Macc’ as it was known – was a Jewish community centre, crucial to rehabilitating and integrating refugees in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Meister went dancing there every Sunday night and it was there he met his future wife, Nita. They married in the very space they met.

“She did not speak Polish, I did not speak a word of English, but we fell in love and married in the same hall,” Meister told The AJN in 2022.

“Thirty years later, I stand in the same spot in the museum and tell visitors my story of survival.”

Meister was a volunteer at the museum from the start, but in the early days he found it difficult to talk to young students.

“I couldn’t open my mouth to them,” he said.

“I was a kid myself and I couldn’t go to school – I missed out on that. Maybe I was jealous, but this museum pushed me to do it and then I was lucky. I could go home, I could eat, I could sleep – everything inside me came out.”

After his funeral Rabbi Yossi Friedman said Meister’s entire life was a victory.

“I was witnessing the end of a life that defied every statistic,” he said.

“I was witnessing the final chapter of a story that should have ended in 1944, but didn’t.”

Meister is survived by his daughter Leanna, grandchildren Mark and David, and great-grandchildren Iris, Isaac and Leon.