Early Life
Burchett was born in Melbourne in 1911 to George and Mary Burchett. He spent his youth in the south Gippsland town of Poowong. Poverty forced him to drop out of school at an early age and work at various odd jobs, including as a vacuum cleaner salesman and an agricultural labourer. In his free time he studied foreign languages.
In 1936 Burchett left Australia for London. There he found work in travel agency which resettled Jews from Nazi Germany in British Palestine and the United States. It was in this job that he met his first wife Erna Hammer, a German Jewish refugee, in 1938.
Burchett was the uncle of chef and cookbook writer Stephanie Alexander.
Read more about this topic: Wilfred Burchett
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