Gucia Fried and Szlamek Melnik were born in 1918 in the Polish town of Pultusk. There they went to school, the shtiebel and local jewish youth groups, where they met and fell in love.
A few months after the Holocaust began, they were married in the Siauliai ghetto in Lithuania. It was from this unholy place that they were taken, in 1944, to separate concentration camps and it was there that they last saw their two year old son Moshe.
But despite their harsh beginnings the Melniks’ life was a life of perseverance, happiness and joy. Through sheer willpower, determination and optimism, the Melniks began their life anew in Melbourne Australia, where they raised their two daughters Ray and Betty, and built a small knitwear empire.
This is their story.