Photograph collection related to Bernard Slawik and Alma Slawik

Group portrait of young adults, possibly Polish architecture students, taken at the border ['granica'] between Poland and Lithuania in 1933. Bernard Slawik is seated in the front row with hat, possibly sitting next to his brother Henry. From a collection related to Bernard Slawik and Alma Slawik. The Slawiks were Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, then moved to Australia in 1948, where Bernard continued a successful career in architecture. Bernard was imprisoned in Janowska concentration camp in 1942. Alma took on a false identity and worked as a servant in Warsaw, and their daughter Eva (born in 1942), was given to Alma’s mother Gina, and hidden with a Catholic family. Bernard used his knowledge of the local area to escape the camp, hiding successfully from the German guards and their dogs due to a fortuitous snowfall. He rejoined Alma, they retrieved their daughter, and spent the remainder of the war in Poland under assumed identities. Following the war the family resided for a short period in Gavle, Sweden, before migrating to Australia.