Richard is a survivor of the holocaust.

Born in Radom, Poland, e was six years old when he hid with his parents in a cupboard for 13 months before eventually being forced to move to the Lubin Ghetto when their money ran out. Destined for the Treblinka Extermination Camp, the Rozencwajg family as smuggled to the safety of a Polish village where Richard spent several months disguised as a girl using the name Marisa Ulecki.

He eventually joined his doctor father, Pincus, in the partisans and survived there for 18 months until liberation.His father was not so fortunate. He was captured by the Germans in 1944 and never seen gain.

After liberation, Richard rejoined his mother and spent three months in a sanatorium in Otwock, then three months in Lodz. He then spent one year in a displaced persons camp in Stuttgart, Germany, and then four and a half years in a French orphanage.