Grocher, Mietek, 1926-2017

Mietek Grocher (1926–2017), was a Swedish author and public speaker who survived the Holocaust in Poland. Grocher recounted the events in his 1996 memoir Jag överlevde (English translation: I survived). Grocher was born in 1926 in Warsaw, Poland. As a teenager during World War II he resided with his family in the Warsaw Ghetto. Grocher claims to have survived nine different Nazi concentration camps during World War II including Buchenwald and Majdanek. He also wrote that he survived the Majdanek gas chambers. When he realized he was led to gassing by the guards, he began walking backwards. The SS man guarding the door to the gas chambers was in conversation with another guard and so Grocher escaped unnoticed, to join his father. He was the only member of his family to survive the Final Solution. Since the end of the war Grocher lived in Västerås, Sweden and traveled around Swedish schools giving speeches about the events of the Holocaust. He died in December 2017.