Garry migrated to South Australia from the UK with his family in 1964. He changed his name to Garry Rogers as an adult when he joined the British Army. In 1945 his regiment entered the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen where he witnessed what he had escaped due to the sacrifice of his parents and the humanity of Great Britain in allowing thousands of Jewish children from Europe to find a home amongst compassionate strangers.
Born Guenther Joachim Baumgart into a Jewish family in 1923 in Breslau, East Germany, (now Wrocław, Poland) 15-year-old Garry left Germany for Great Britain as part of the Kindertransport (Children’s Transport). He was one of the 10,000 refugee Jewish children under the age of 17 that the British government agreed to accept as temporary residents. He never saw his parents again. Garry’s grandparents, uncles, and aunts also all perished in the Holocaust.