Alfred

Birthdate: 29 May 1929

Place: Berlin, Germany

Born, raised, and schooled in Berlin, Alfred experienced the Nazi regime as a child. His father was arrested shortly after witnessing the devastation carried out during the Reichskristallnacht when his department store was destroyed. He returned home, a broken man.

Fred himself was consigned to work as a servant in the house of SS officials in a luxury villa near the big Wannsee lake. Blonde and blue-eyed, he was often not taken to be Jewish but that did not stop his final arrest and deportation to Auschwitz in February 1943. Selected by the notorious Josef Mengele for medical experiments, he was spared the gas chamber but had to endure months of torture. Fellow prisoners saved him when on one occasion he was ready to give up and take his own life. Miraculously he then also survived the death marches that followed when the Auschwitz installations were disbanded.

After the war Alfred was reunited with his sister and together they emigrated to New Zealand and settled in Auckland. At first he worked as a carpenter but then he was able to enrol in a cooking course and pursue his dream career goal of becoming a chef.