A Life Full of Mazal

The Gucia and Szlamek Melnik Story

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 there that they were taken, in 1944, to separate concentration camps – and there that they last saw their two-year-old son, Moshe. Despite these harsh beginnings, the Melniks’ life was one of perseverance, happiness and joy. Through sheer willpower, determination and optimism, they began their lives anew in Melbourne, Australia, where they raised their two daughters, Ray and Betty, and built a small knitwear empire. This is their story.