Scienceיהושע רוברט ביכלר

Yehoshua Robert Büchler

Yehoshua Robert Büchler was a Slovak-Israeli historian who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald and directed the Moreshet Archive in Israel.

1929 to 2009Surviving Auschwitz and BuchenwaldDirecting the Moreshet ArchiveDocumenting Buchenwald's Block 66

Born: 1 January 1929, Topoľčany
Died: 14 August 2009, Lehavot Haviva
Occupation: historian, writer

Yehoshua Robert Büchler was born in 1929 in Topoľčany

Büchler was born in 1929 to a Jewish family in Topoľčany, in western Slovakia. In 1942, 57 of his relatives were deported to Auschwitz and murdered there. In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz with his parents and sister.

On January 23, 1945, he reached Buchenwald on a death march and was held in Block 66 with 900 other children and teenagers. Shortly before American forces freed the camp, he was sent on another death march and escaped near Eisenberg in Thuringia.

Back in Topoľčany, he learned that only one aunt and one uncle from his wider family had survived. In 1949 he moved to Israel and, with other camp survivors, founded Kibbutz Lahavot Haviva.

As a historian and archive director at Moreshet in Givat Haviva, he studied and documented the Holocaust. He wrote articles about his experiences and on the history of European Jewry, and was among the first to document the history of Block 66. He was a member of the International Buchenwald-Dora Prisoners Committee and received the Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia.