Hear a Witness: Judy Kolt

Join us at the Melbourne Holocaust Museum for a rare opportunity to hear first-hand from Holocaust survivor Judy Kolt

Judy was born in Lodz, Poland in September 1936. She was 3 years old when the Nazis marched into town in 1939. They came to arrest her father, but luckily, he was not home. Judy's father then decided it was time for the family to leave. They went to Warsaw with the hope of not being recognized, but were forced into ghetto when arrived before being moved to the Otwock ghetto. Judy's father managed to smuggle her sister and Judy out of the ghetto and spent the remainder of the war hiding in a convent, a school for the blind and many other places. At the end of the war Judy and her sister were reunited with their mother, but Judy's father who had helped save many by placing them in hiding, never returned.

Judy, her mother, and sister arrived in Australia in 1952, the day before her 16th birthday.

Image | Judy, Father Ussas and Tosia at the convent on Kazimierzowska Street, Warsaw Poland. June 1943

Photo taken from Judy’s memoir “Tell it to the Squirrels”

Please note this event may be recorded for our institutional archive, and photos may be used for marketing purposes.