Reb Berish Aurbach davened for the Amud at Caulfield Beis Medrash in Melbourne Australia for his mother’s 101st Yartzheit.

Berish turned 101 this year and lost his mother, Rivka Aurbach (nee Blass), in Biala, Poland when he was just a few months old. She had been stricken with typhus and never recovered.

Reb Berish is himself 101 years old, bli ayin hara. For his 100th birthday last year, he received a letter from the Queen of Australia (part of the British Commonwealth).

Born in 1920, Berish comes from a chasidic family which had lived in the Polish town of Biala Podlaska for hundreds of years, which is known for its connection to the Gerrer chasidus.

Berish had three elder brothers and a sister, as well as a half-brother from his father’s second marriage. His family life was comfortable, and to this day he can recall the Torah that he learned as a youth in his local Polish Talmud Torah.

He was one of the last people to be smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto just prior to Pesach 1943 and shortly before the uprising which led to its extermination at the hands of the Nazis. Aside from his sister who had immigrated to Palestine before the war, all of Berish’s family members were killed in the Holocaust.

Realizing he had nobody left in Poland, Berish contacted an uncle who lived in Australia, who sponsored his visa, allowing him to start a new life on safe shores.

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