On this day, I didn’t just bury a man.
I buried a miracle. And I walked away changed.
I had the honour, one of the greatest honours of my life, to bury a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor. A man who survived Radom. Auschwitz. Flossenbürg. Buchenwald. A man whose number, B-488, was meant to erase his humanity and yet somehow, he lived the most human life imaginable. He laughed. Loved. Built. Taught. Raised a family. Shared his story. And refused to let darkness define him.
As the shovels of earth fell, each sound echoed with the weight of a century.
A century that he lived not as a victim, but as a warrior of resilience.
When we filled the grave, I stood beside it and someone took a picture of me. In the photo I look small, humbled, almost overwhelmed. And that’s exactly how I felt.
Because today wasn’t about a funeral.
It was a witnessing.
I was witnessing the end of a life that defied every statistic.
I was witnessing the final chapter of a story that should have ended in 1944 — but didn’t.
I was witnessing what it means for a single Jewish life to push back against the greatest darkness the world has ever seen.
And I realised something standing there, still holding the shovel:
His entire life was a victory.
Every breath. Every Shabbat. Every grandchild. Every laugh.
Every bridge game. Every memory. Every word he shared at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
All of it – a victory.
The Nazis tried to reduce him to a number.
Instead, he lived to 97 and received an OAM for teaching generations what “Never Again” truly means.
How often in life do we stand in the presence of extraordinary people without fully realising it?
Today, at the edge of that grave, I felt the holiness of what it means to honour someone who carried the Jewish story on his back — and passed it forward with gentleness and love.
When I recited the final prayers, I felt the weight of representing all those who could not be there:
His parents. His brother Israel. The millions whose lives were cut short.
I said Kaddish with them in mind too.
As I left the cemetery, I kept thinking:
What a privilege it is to bury greatness.
What a responsibility it is to carry his message forward.
What a blessing it is to simply stand beside a life fully lived.
May Jack’s memory be a blessing.
And may we never forget the sacred responsibility of bearing witness — not only to the horrors of the past, but to the strength, beauty, and light of those who survived them.
