Phillip Maisel OAM was born in August 1922, in Vilna, Lithuania. When the Germans arrived in Vilna in 1941, Phillip's life changed dramatically. He survived two years in a squalid, overcrowded Jewish ghetto, before enduring multiple Nazi labour and concentration camps. Phillip was liberated in 1945 while on a Death March. He moved to Australia in 1949.

For over 30 years, Phillip has worked at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne, recording on video over a thousand testimonies of other survivors and their descendants, the custodian of their stories.