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I was born in Zwickau, which is in Eastern Germany. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
There's quite a big mountain range which separates | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
Germany from the Czech Republic, | 0:00:30 | 0:00:32 | |
and these are called the Erzgebirge, the Copper Mountains. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:36 | |
My father took us all over | 0:00:36 | 0:00:38 | |
the mountains, leaving everything behind, and went to Prague. | 0:00:38 | 0:00:42 | |
Hitler marched into Prague in March 1939. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:46 | |
My father realised he's on a wanted list. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:48 | |
So he left my mother and went to Poland. | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
It was extremely difficult for my mother to be left alone with | 0:00:51 | 0:00:56 | |
two small children. | 0:00:56 | 0:00:58 | |
Street by street, Jews were cleared | 0:00:58 | 0:01:00 | |
and, any moment, it was probably our turn. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:04 | |
My mother, she must have had a will of iron and great courage. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
She went from one embassy to another, queued up all night. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:12 | |
And if she ever got to the desk, they said to her, "We will take you, | 0:01:12 | 0:01:18 | |
"but we can't take your two children." | 0:01:18 | 0:01:20 | |
And my mother wouldn't separate us. So she hung on to us. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:24 | |
The only thing she could think of was to hope somebody would | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
take her and the children. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:30 | |
She was rejected by everyone. But then, the miracle happened. | 0:01:30 | 0:01:35 | |
A knock on the door meant death, because it meant deportation. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:41 | |
But for us, a knock on the door was the beginning of a new life | 0:01:41 | 0:01:45 | |
because we opened the door to a woman from the British Embassy | 0:01:45 | 0:01:49 | |
who had braved the curfew. | 0:01:49 | 0:01:52 | |
She brought the entry visa to Britain, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
train tickets to get through Germany, through Holland | 0:01:55 | 0:02:00 | |
and a ferry to Ramsgate. | 0:02:00 | 0:02:02 | |
BUT she did not have an exit visa. | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
You were supposed to have an exit visa to cross borders. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:08 | |
And she said, "You'll just have to say you're going to see | 0:02:08 | 0:02:10 | |
"family in Holland | 0:02:10 | 0:02:12 | |
"and take nothing with you that could possibly show anyone | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
"that you're going for more than a day." | 0:02:15 | 0:02:17 | |
We made it through Czechoslovakia without any problem, | 0:02:17 | 0:02:20 | |
and we got on the train in Germany. | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
Sat down, thinking, "Good, we've got a carriage to ourselves," | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
when an SS Officer came and sat next to her. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:32 | |
He was trying to chat her up. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:34 | |
And he realised what was going on and he couldn't help us. | 0:02:34 | 0:02:37 | |
But the fact that he sat there, now that might have been her salvation. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:41 | |
Off we went to the hook of Holland and got on a ferry to Ramsgate. | 0:02:43 | 0:02:48 | |
On the ferry, I kept saying, "When are we going to be in England?" | 0:02:48 | 0:02:52 | |
My mother got really fed up of me, | 0:02:52 | 0:02:53 | |
she said, "When it starts raining, you'll know you're in England." | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
So...! | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
As I was on the train, it began raining. | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
And I must have been the only person there who was just totally | 0:03:03 | 0:03:07 | |
thrilled, because I knew I was in England. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
The next morning was Sunday, September 3rd 1939. | 0:03:11 | 0:03:18 | |
As we arrived to Liverpool Street Station, I put my foot | 0:03:18 | 0:03:22 | |
on the platform, suddenly, everything went quiet | 0:03:22 | 0:03:26 | |
and there was a huge announcement on the loudspeaker | 0:03:26 | 0:03:30 | |
and everybody stood, perfectly still. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
The announcement was Chamberlain, saying... | 0:03:33 | 0:03:37 | |
"I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:42 | |
"This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
"handed the German Government a final note | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
"stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock, | 0:03:53 | 0:03:58 | |
"that they were prepared at once | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
"to withdraw their troops from Poland, | 0:04:00 | 0:04:03 | |
"a state of war would exist between us. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:06 | |
"I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, | 0:04:08 | 0:04:13 | |
"and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany." | 0:04:14 | 0:04:20 | |
That was 11 o'clock, 3rd September 1939, | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
as my foot hit the platform. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:29 | |
And that was the beginning of the Second World War. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:31 | |
The liberation of Belsen had been put on general | 0:05:40 | 0:05:43 | |
release in every cinema and people were asked to go and see that. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
And of course, I went. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:48 | |
There was no question of me being too young to see that sort of thing. | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
And I was totally and absolutely horrified, | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
as everyone was watching it. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
And I just felt terribly emotionally disturbed | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
and the feeling was overwhelming. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:05 | |
I just couldn't believe that these sort of things had happened | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
and that my family had disappeared in that terrible way. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:13 | |
I have never got over what I have learned about the Holocaust, | 0:06:15 | 0:06:21 | |
and what I've read. | 0:06:21 | 0:06:23 | |
I mean, if you look around this house, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:24 | |
you'll see I've got a huge section in the next room | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
of Holocaust literature, people who have written about the Holocaust. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
And everything I do, I believe, has an element that relates to it. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:38 | |
Not voluntarily, it's something I can't help myself. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:42 | |
For example, if I'm peeling potatoes, as I throw the potato peel | 0:06:42 | 0:06:47 | |
away, I think about the girls in Auschwitz who | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
looked for a bit of potato peel because they were starving. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:54 | |
Another thing that's been left with me | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
and my children and grandchildren always laugh about it - | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
I'm terrified of being without food. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:02 | |
In my car I always have something to eat. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:06 | |
Now, I don't eat a great deal myself, but I always have water | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
and I always have something to eat. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:12 | |
And that is definitely a throwback to the fear of hunger. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:17 | |
However much you can learn about history, | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
and of course it is important to learn and to think you're not going | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
to make the same mistakes again, the fact is we do, as human beings, | 0:07:24 | 0:07:29 | |
as parents we make mistakes that we promise ourselves we will never do. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
I think human beings can't help it, | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
the frailty of the human being is such that we do repeat mistakes. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:41 | |
But I think, whatever people say about young people today, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:47 | |
I think they are more tolerant. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
So maybe there is hope. I think humanity is getting better. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
Hopefully I'm right. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:58 | |
In 1938, when I was eight years old, | 0:08:27 | 0:08:30 | |
there occurred what has become known as the Polenaktion. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:34 | |
Early in the morning, we were all sleeping in our beds. | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
The Nazis entered our flat. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
We were going to be taken away. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:44 | |
We were put on board a train. | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
We came to realise that we were all polish Jews. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:53 | |
We were luckier than some, we had been taken as an entire family. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:58 | |
Some of the people who had been separated, they didn't know | 0:08:58 | 0:09:02 | |
whether they would ever see one another ever again. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
To make matters worse, there were people of all ages - | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
babies, there were very old people, | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
people who were ill, some had been taken out of hospital beds. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:17 | |
Travelled for the rest of the day and after it got dark... | 0:09:19 | 0:09:22 | |
..the train stopped and we were told to get off. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
Outside the station, there were two rows of SS men. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:31 | |
We were marched off. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:34 | |
And the rumour went round that we were being taken to some | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
remote place where we would all be shot. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
I did see people collapse through exhaustion, | 0:09:41 | 0:09:45 | |
and I was left in no doubt about the brutality of these SS men. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:50 | |
We marched for some hours. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
And then we were stopped at a railway line, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
and we were told that the SS men were not coming any further. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:01 | |
It seems likely that this was, in fact, the Polish frontier. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:07 | |
The SS Men wouldn't want to cross that at this particular stage, | 0:10:07 | 0:10:11 | |
that could provoke an international incident. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
We were told that we would have to go on marching between the rails, | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
because on either side there were ditches, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:23 | |
and anybody who fell risked injury, not only from the fall, | 0:10:23 | 0:10:27 | |
but also being trampled. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:29 | |
Eventually, soldiers and police came and took us prisoner. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:35 | |
What the Poles were trying to do was to force us back into Germany. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:40 | |
The German authorities were ready for that | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
and attempts to send us back failed. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
We managed to get to Krakow, where we had some relations, | 0:10:46 | 0:10:51 | |
and we arrived on their doorstep. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
Round about the time that we went to Poland, Britain allowed children | 0:10:54 | 0:10:59 | |
to be brought over, in what came to be known as the Kindertransport. | 0:10:59 | 0:11:04 | |
I was very lucky to be one of the few to be rescued from Poland. | 0:11:04 | 0:11:10 | |
I would have died with all the rest of my family if I hadn't been. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
I went to foster parents in Coventry. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:18 | |
In the autumn of 1940, the so-called Blitz began. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:25 | |
Coventry was one of the most severely bombed cities. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:29 | |
We had 17 raids when a few bombs were dropped on the city. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:34 | |
And then one night, we had a very big raid. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:38 | |
Now, Home Office advice was that if you hadn't got an air-raid | 0:11:38 | 0:11:42 | |
shelter, the safest part of the house was under the stairs. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:46 | |
Under our stairs we had a small pantry. | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
So we all crowded into that, foster parents, | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
my sister and I and the dog. | 0:11:53 | 0:11:56 | |
He was very vicious, he bit quite a few people. | 0:11:56 | 0:12:00 | |
We tried to keep our distance but whenever a bomb came very near, | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
the dog growled. | 0:12:03 | 0:12:05 | |
And we were really afraid, all of us. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:10 | |
We heard a very loud hissing sound | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
and it was obvious the bomb was coming near. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
It landed just a few doors down. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
The next morning, when we emerged, the house had lost its doors | 0:12:19 | 0:12:24 | |
and its windows and part of the roof. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
It's amazing that there were many small air raids, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
and generally speaking, people took them in their stride. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
But during these big air raids, | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
I certainly felt very much afraid, and I don't think many people, | 0:12:38 | 0:12:43 | |
if they are truthful, could say otherwise. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
Germany was a very, very advanced country. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:45 | |
It's produced some of the world's finest musicians, | 0:13:45 | 0:13:48 | |
some of the world's finest writers. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
It had made advances in human civilisation, in all its spheres, | 0:13:51 | 0:13:59 | |
and so it is utterly amazing that a country which was | 0:13:59 | 0:14:04 | |
so advanced should suddenly descend to barbarities, which really | 0:14:04 | 0:14:10 | |
bear comparison with what was happening in the Middle Ages. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:17 | |
There are some people who think, quite wrongly, that the | 0:14:17 | 0:14:22 | |
study of history is a waste of time, that one should study things | 0:14:22 | 0:14:26 | |
more to do with the present age, rather than study a bygone age. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
I don't agree with that at all, because first of all, | 0:14:30 | 0:14:36 | |
the only way we can understand the present is by finding out how | 0:14:36 | 0:14:42 | |
it came into being, as a result of the past. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
But, at least as importantly, perhaps even more so, | 0:14:45 | 0:14:50 | |
is those who don't study history are destined to repeat it. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:55 | |
And things which can happen once, can happen a second time. | 0:14:55 | 0:15:01 | |
One must study the conditions which led up to them, | 0:15:01 | 0:15:07 | |
and try to avoid the repetition of these dreadful things. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:14 | |
Back in my school days, about 1938, | 0:15:43 | 0:15:48 | |
I have a wonderful photograph, a class photograph of all of us here. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:53 | |
It's something which is a great pleasure to look at, | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
but also extremely sad. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:58 | |
Because, unfortunately, the Germans killed many, many children. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
One and a half million innocent children were | 0:16:02 | 0:16:04 | |
killed during the Holocaust. | 0:16:04 | 0:16:07 | |
Why should innocent people, just because they were Jewish, | 0:16:07 | 0:16:11 | |
be killed for no reason at all? | 0:16:11 | 0:16:13 | |
And I look at these faces, I don't know who survived and who didn't. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:18 | |
I only know that I survived. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:20 | |
We had this radio in our dining room, | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
and Father was often listening, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
but when he had the news on, you could hear this shouting, | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
and that of course was the typical Hitler speech-making. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:34 | |
Everybody was aware of this knock at the door | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
and it always came during the night, | 0:16:37 | 0:16:39 | |
when they came to take away people, either to take them | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
to prison or to beat them up or whatever, | 0:16:42 | 0:16:45 | |
and that fear was there all the time I was at home. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
You feel insecure, you don't feel at ease. | 0:16:49 | 0:16:52 | |
You can't relax and you know that something is wrong. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
Germans didn't come into Czechoslovakia | 0:16:57 | 0:16:59 | |
until 15th March 1939. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:03 | |
And I realised that my parents were wanting to get the children | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
away to safety. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
And my turn came, I left home on 28th March 1939. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:15 | |
The only thing I really remember is getting into a taxi. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:19 | |
I remember my mother and my father and my brother standing near me. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
But I cannot remember saying goodbye to them, I can't remember | 0:17:24 | 0:17:28 | |
whether I hugged them, kissed them, whether I cried. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:34 | |
We were travelling by train, through to London. | 0:17:35 | 0:17:38 | |
But I ended up in Wallsend on Tyne, | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
where a very kind family had offered to give me a home. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:45 | |
I start getting homesick and I start feeling very, very poorly. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:51 | |
Because A, I was missing my parents, | 0:17:51 | 0:17:54 | |
B, I didn't speak one word of English. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:57 | |
The food was totally different. | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
I'd never eaten toast, porridge, kippers, marmalade, | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
all these normal English things. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:05 | |
And I just basically cried for as long as I stayed with them. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:10 | |
From the age of nine, in those four years, in those war years, | 0:18:10 | 0:18:14 | |
I lived with so many different people. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:17 | |
I mean, I would think I must have been at least | 0:18:17 | 0:18:19 | |
through 15 to 20 different places. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
I never saw my parents after 28th March 1939. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:31 | |
Father, he was transported on 19th April 1942, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:40 | |
and he was already dead by 8th May. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:43 | |
My mother is a different story altogether. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
The last proper evidence I have that she was alive | 0:18:47 | 0:18:52 | |
was when she was transported to a small concentration | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
transportation camp near Bratislava, called Sered'. | 0:18:56 | 0:18:59 | |
And I've been working for years and years to try and trace her. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:04 | |
And I am almost at the end of the trail. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
I received some evidence | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
from a testimony given by somebody in 1962, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:13 | |
who could have been on the same transport that my mother | 0:19:13 | 0:19:18 | |
was taken on and on a death march | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
on which she would have been shot and killed. | 0:19:21 | 0:19:24 | |
The impact on me is something which has never left me. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
Every single day I rue the destruction of my family. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:35 | |
To me, family is the most important building brick for human beings | 0:19:35 | 0:19:40 | |
and that's why I find it so hard today. | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
Well, the Nazi occupation as such is difficult to define, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
because the Nazis only actually came in to Czechoslovakia | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
two weeks before I left. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:45 | |
Although from '33 onwards, we were aware of it in the family. | 0:20:45 | 0:20:49 | |
Me, as a small child, I wasn't. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:51 | |
I think the biggest impact on me is the fact that I've learned to | 0:20:51 | 0:20:56 | |
stand on my own two feet and fight my own battles. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:59 | |
I have not reached what I had set out to do, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:05 | |
but looking backwards now, it doesn't really make any odds. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
I've been basically lucky. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:10 | |
I had a decent husband, and I've got a family. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
Although, there's nobody here. And what can you expect? | 0:21:13 | 0:21:18 | |
I consider, | 0:21:18 | 0:21:20 | |
although many human beings like to think they're superior to animals, | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
we are only an animal. We are basically robots. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:27 | |
We can't control anything. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:29 | |
We've just got to cope with what we've got. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
What's happiness, can you define it? | 0:21:31 | 0:21:33 | |
I've not been... I haven't been happy in one sense. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:40 | |
I've had moments when I have enjoyed life. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
If you're on your own you don't want to sit in your own four walls. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
What do you do? Nobody wants you. | 0:21:46 | 0:21:48 | |
So you do voluntary work. | 0:21:48 | 0:21:50 | |
And I'm a thorn in the side of most folks when I do voluntary work | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
because I speak up for the people who have problems. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
I'm sure it has quite a lot to do with my history | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
because I've no graves to go to, where are my parents, | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
one God knows where, one in the ashes up in Auschwitz. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:09 | |
Therefore, I also don't have a religious belief. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
I mean, one of the things which often comes into my mind - | 0:22:11 | 0:22:14 | |
you know if we have a terrible accident, | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
everybody prays for these people. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
How many millions and millions and millions of prayers have been | 0:22:18 | 0:22:22 | |
said since religion and superstition came in? | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
And we're no better. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:26 | |
I think people are not aware of other people's experiences | 0:22:28 | 0:22:33 | |
and how it can be hurtful or how it can be good. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:36 | |
The other story which I could tell you is, the kindness of strangers. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:40 | |
The number of people who have helped me, | 0:22:40 | 0:22:42 | |
until I was able to stand on my own feet, | 0:22:42 | 0:22:45 | |
is amazing. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:46 | |
I do remember the day the Nazis came to power. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:18 | |
I was almost 13. I remember looking down from our window. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:23 | |
The Nazis always celebrated their successes by torchlight processions. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:28 | |
And the Nazis marched past and sang songs, bloodthirsty songs. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:34 | |
The Nuremberg Laws which came in, in the autumn of 35, | 0:23:34 | 0:23:38 | |
legalised anti-Jewish measures. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
We were no longer allowed to go to cinemas and theatres | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
and be members of clubs. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
As a child, of any age, to be excluded from your peers is a blow. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:52 | |
You feel inferior and you question your existence. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:57 | |
There were three Jewish boys, including me, left in the class. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:02 | |
The main Hitler Youth leader came and said, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
"It's time you left the school, we don't want you here." | 0:24:04 | 0:24:08 | |
I left school at 16. | 0:24:08 | 0:24:09 | |
If it hadn't been for the Nazis, I probably would have gone to | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
university, but we could no longer do that, | 0:24:12 | 0:24:15 | |
because universities were no longer accepting Jews. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
At the age of 18 I went to Hamburg, to college, to learn English. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:24 | |
In the evenings we got together and we heard the news - | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
we knew something was going to happen. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:30 | |
In Nuremberg, my parents were arrested, kept standing | 0:24:30 | 0:24:34 | |
in the square in the centre of the town for about two hours. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:38 | |
Were abused, spat upon. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
The Synagogue was set on fire. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
The women, the older people and the children were sent home. | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
When my mother got home, about 4 o'clock in the morning, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
she rang where I was staying. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:51 | |
She said, "Father's gone away." | 0:24:51 | 0:24:53 | |
Which was code for, he's been arrested. "Get dressed. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:57 | |
"Go for a walk." | 0:24:57 | 0:24:58 | |
So, that's what I did. I sat on park benches. | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
Then I went round the department stores. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
I tried to make myself small, not to stand out. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
I could see the smoke from the burning synagogues everywhere. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
I could also see groups of Jewish people | 0:25:16 | 0:25:18 | |
being frogmarched through the streets. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:20 | |
Windows were smashed. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:24 | |
The Germans invented the term Kristallnacht, | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
because of all the broken glass. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:30 | |
Eventually I went home. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
The Landlady said, "The Gestapo has been for you." | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
It's a good job that I did leave the digs, | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
otherwise I would have been sent to a concentration camp. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
Father was arrested | 0:25:44 | 0:25:46 | |
and then sent to Dachau concentration camp near Munich. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
He was there for five or six weeks. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:51 | |
Most of the people were released just before Christmas '38. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:56 | |
And then he came home and he was a really changed man. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
It was then quite obvious that there was no future for us | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
in Germany. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:06 | |
There was nowhere to go. No country wanted us. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:11 | |
Frank, my brother, was in Leeds. He tried to very hard to get me | 0:26:11 | 0:26:15 | |
a trainee post and finally succeeded. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
And I came to Leeds. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:20 | |
We managed to get visas for our parents and they came. | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
Thank God, because four days later, war broke out. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
Well, the day war broke out, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:30 | |
a policeman came, asking us to come down | 0:26:30 | 0:26:33 | |
to report to police headquarters. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:35 | |
We were registered as enemy aliens. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:38 | |
Cameras and binoculars were impounded, | 0:26:38 | 0:26:40 | |
which were considered spying equipment. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:42 | |
Churchill was by then just become Prime Minister. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:47 | |
And his civil servants famously asked him, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
"What shall we do with these enemy aliens?" | 0:26:50 | 0:26:52 | |
And Churchill's words were, "Collar the lot." | 0:26:52 | 0:26:56 | |
So we were interned, father, brother and me. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
Well, all of us felt a bit sore, | 0:26:59 | 0:27:01 | |
because we were more opposed to the Nazis than the British natives were. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:06 | |
We were kicked out there because we were Jewish. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
And we were interned here because we were German. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:11 | |
We wanted to fight the Nazis | 0:27:11 | 0:27:13 | |
and instead we were kept behind barbed wire. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:15 | |
Survival is instinct, it's natural. Everybody has that. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:19 | |
You try desperately to get out of Germany, | 0:28:21 | 0:28:24 | |
which we eventually succeeded in. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
And, well, you know you are a survivor because you're there. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:35 | |
Well, obviously my contemporaries who committed these | 0:28:36 | 0:28:41 | |
atrocities are dreadful. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
But I'm concerned that I sometimes think what I would have been | 0:28:45 | 0:28:53 | |
if I hadn't been Jewish. | 0:28:53 | 0:28:54 | |
Would I have been a Nazi? And I probably would. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:58 | |
You know, it's very difficult for a 12, 13, 14-year-old to resist | 0:28:59 | 0:29:04 | |
the temptations that the Nazis offered for kids of that age. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:08 | |
Uniforms, campfires, learning to shoot rifles. | 0:29:08 | 0:29:12 | |
Things like that that they did in the Hitler Youth. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
And it's very, very difficult for a kid of that age to resist | 0:29:16 | 0:29:20 | |
that temptation and not be part of the crowd. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:25 | |
It's a warning, I suppose, to people to be vigilant, not be bystanders. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:31 | |
But to speak out if they encounter bad things or evil things. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:37 | |
This is exactly what happened, Germans stood by and did nothing, | 0:29:40 | 0:29:46 | |
and then sometimes were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler. | 0:29:46 | 0:29:51 | |
So, that is the warning, you keep constant vigilance. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:57 | |
I was 14. In the wagon was only a very small window. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:30 | |
It was hot. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:32 | |
We were so cramped, we couldn't even sit down. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:35 | |
Some people had some water, and some people didn't. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:39 | |
After two days and one night, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:41 | |
through the wagon I could see SS men with dogs, barbed wire, | 0:30:41 | 0:30:46 | |
electric fences. | 0:30:46 | 0:30:48 | |
We'd arrived in Birkenau, Auschwitz. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
And they said, "Men on one side, | 0:30:53 | 0:30:56 | |
"women children on the other side". | 0:30:56 | 0:30:58 | |
And we made two long queues. | 0:30:58 | 0:31:01 | |
Mengele happened to be on the selection platform. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:06 | |
He pointed the finger to the left or to the right. | 0:31:06 | 0:31:09 | |
I'd noticed a lot of people who were chosen to go to the right | 0:31:09 | 0:31:14 | |
were fitter men. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:15 | |
To the left, children went, mothers with children, elderly men. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:20 | |
I knew that's not a good point. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:23 | |
You know, if they don't need you, they kill you and that's it. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:28 | |
Then suddenly, they tried to take a child away from her mother, | 0:31:28 | 0:31:32 | |
and she started screaming and the SS men run towards her. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:36 | |
As they run there, I decided to go over to the right. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:41 | |
I was very lucky. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:43 | |
All the people which went to the left-hand side | 0:31:43 | 0:31:46 | |
went to the gas chambers. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:47 | |
And they gassed them and then burned their bodies. | 0:31:47 | 0:31:52 | |
We walked into a place called the sauna, | 0:31:52 | 0:31:55 | |
a brick-built building in Birkenau, | 0:31:55 | 0:31:59 | |
and were told to leave all our clothing on the floor. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:02 | |
I had six photographs of my family. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
And that's the last time I had a photograph of my family. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:12 | |
I had my hair shaved off | 0:32:12 | 0:32:15 | |
and from there we went in to the next room and we had our uniforms. | 0:32:15 | 0:32:19 | |
Striped suits. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:21 | |
It was big on me, so I put it up. | 0:32:21 | 0:32:24 | |
They didn't give us any bath or shower. | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
They soon started getting problems with lice. | 0:32:28 | 0:32:32 | |
Lice walked round all over us. Itchy, very itchy. | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
They live on your skin. | 0:32:36 | 0:32:39 | |
We were a thousand men in a barrack. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:41 | |
Three bunks high, ten people on a bunk. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:45 | |
We slept on the boards. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:47 | |
There was no straw, there was no covers. | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
People snored, people moaned, people died next to you. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
5:30 in the morning, they woke us up | 0:32:56 | 0:32:58 | |
and they allowed us to go to the washroom. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:01 | |
In the washroom there was about five buckets of water. | 0:33:01 | 0:33:04 | |
And you just dipped your hands, washed your eyes and that was it. | 0:33:04 | 0:33:09 | |
I was just skin and bones, because they didn't feed us. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:16 | |
They gave us a small piece of bread in the morning, | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
with some black coffee made of burnt wheat. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:21 | |
And lunchtime we got some watery soup with a few leaves | 0:33:21 | 0:33:25 | |
swimming round and that's it. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:27 | |
Live on that for months and years, going on, | 0:33:27 | 0:33:31 | |
you're just like a skeleton. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:33 | |
Your mind can't think properly, your body is weak, | 0:33:33 | 0:33:38 | |
you're starving all the time. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:40 | |
You think about food all the time. You can't help but think about it. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:45 | |
In Auschwitz I've been tattooed, I've got a number B7608, | 0:33:48 | 0:33:53 | |
on my left hand. | 0:33:53 | 0:33:55 | |
It's still there now. And I just can't take it off. | 0:33:55 | 0:33:58 | |
I've lost 81 from my family. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:01 | |
I've only found my sister, two years after the war. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:06 | |
How could I say how it changed me? | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
I'll never forget what I went through. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:14 | |
I suffered so much. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:18 | |
It was the most horrific thing any human being should ever see. | 0:34:18 | 0:34:22 | |
The world should never see that again. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
I will never forgive the older generation of Germans, never. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:21 | |
I've nothing to those born after the war. | 0:35:21 | 0:35:24 | |
But I will never, never forgive the Germans, what they did to me | 0:35:24 | 0:35:29 | |
and to other people. | 0:35:29 | 0:35:31 | |
Never. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:33 | |
Historically, if you talk about it to people, | 0:35:33 | 0:35:37 | |
to groups and so on, people learn and if anything like that | 0:35:37 | 0:35:43 | |
could come up again, they would stand up against it and so on. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:48 | |
So that's why, basically, I talk about it all the time. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:52 | |
I know myself that I've done quite a bit educating people | 0:35:52 | 0:35:58 | |
and so on and young people, I've educated them. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:02 | |
I told them the history and so on, what I went through. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:06 | |
And the suffering I did go through. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:09 | |
And I never want to see that happen to them. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:12 | |
I'm a very strong-minded person in myself. | 0:36:13 | 0:36:19 | |
And if I want to do something, I usually do it. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:25 | |
And I try everything I can to achieve certain things. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:31 | |
Now, I'm... I'm relaxed. | 0:36:31 | 0:36:35 | |
I'm... | 0:36:35 | 0:36:37 | |
I'm actually retired. | 0:36:38 | 0:36:41 | |
But I still carry on teaching young people, which is very, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:46 | |
very important to me. | 0:36:46 | 0:36:48 | |
I'll do it until the day somebody calls me to the other side. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:54 | |
Ooh, my Paris was gorgeous. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:25 | |
I lived in the 20th arrondissement. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:27 | |
I loved Paris, being a little girl there was fun. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:32 | |
We used to walk along the Seine and over the bridges. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
My mum used to buy me lovely ice cream. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
And she used to put me on a carousel ride | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
and the marionettes in the park! | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
There was music always playing. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
And it was a lovely life. It was a cultured life. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
I remember going to a pre-school. I loved going there. | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
But I didn't go there for very long. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:58 | |
Slowly, slowly, my life changed. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:02 | |
The first thing we couldn't do, we couldn't go out. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:05 | |
You started to hear noises that you hadn't heard before. | 0:38:05 | 0:38:09 | |
It was really scary sometimes. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
As I understand it now, we were occupied. | 0:38:12 | 0:38:15 | |
And all the shouting | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
and the carrying on you could hear outside was soldiers. | 0:38:17 | 0:38:20 | |
The day it happened, it was August and it was hot. | 0:38:23 | 0:38:26 | |
And I was with my father at the window. | 0:38:26 | 0:38:29 | |
And suddenly he said, "They're here." | 0:38:29 | 0:38:31 | |
And we went into the bedroom and my mum pushed me under the bed. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:38 | |
You could hear all these boots on the stairs. | 0:38:38 | 0:38:41 | |
And they banged on the... "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang." | 0:38:41 | 0:38:44 | |
And we didn't answer the door. We stayed in the bedroom | 0:38:44 | 0:38:47 | |
And then they took an axe and they came in. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
Told us, "Raus! Out!" | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
And they told my parents, "Pack a bag." | 0:38:53 | 0:38:56 | |
During all the commotion, Madame Collomb came in, | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
she was our next door neighbour. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:00 | |
And she said, "What's my child doing in this apartment?" | 0:39:00 | 0:39:04 | |
She took me by the hand, took me away. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
Had they realised what she was doing, | 0:39:07 | 0:39:09 | |
we'd have all been shot on the spot. And she got away with it. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
She took me to her apartment and put me | 0:39:12 | 0:39:15 | |
underneath her dining table, with a big chenille tablecloth over it. | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
Made me a little bed, and I lived there for two or three weeks. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
And it was dark, and it was solitary and it was lonely | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
and I had nightmares there. | 0:39:25 | 0:39:26 | |
I never saw my parents again after that. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:31 | |
And I was a lost, totally lost child. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:34 | |
After that, Madame Collomb took me out at night. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
And furtively we had to go to catch a train. | 0:39:39 | 0:39:42 | |
The first hiding place she took me to was Mondoubleau, | 0:39:42 | 0:39:46 | |
which is south-west of Paris. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:48 | |
I couldn't go to school, I couldn't go out on the street, | 0:39:48 | 0:39:51 | |
because there were German soldiers everywhere. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:53 | |
They hid me in a sort of a strange outhouse. | 0:39:53 | 0:39:57 | |
Stayed there two years in hiding. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:00 | |
Then I was taken to the Auvergne, to a farm in the middle of nowhere. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
There was no light, no water. You have to be self-sufficient. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
You grow up overnight. | 0:40:10 | 0:40:12 | |
I slept occasionally inside the house, but then other times | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
I went and slept with the goat, because she'd had some kids. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
They were warm and they were friendly | 0:40:22 | 0:40:24 | |
and snuffle against your cheek. | 0:40:24 | 0:40:26 | |
During the day, I had to go out and work like a man. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:32 | |
It's hard, in the winter when it's frozen. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:36 | |
My hands were blue and they were cracked and bleeding and sore and | 0:40:36 | 0:40:40 | |
my feet were in the same condition, because I didn't have shoes. | 0:40:40 | 0:40:44 | |
I used to sit down and cry sometimes. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
But it didn't do any good, so I stopped that. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
Nobody heard. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:51 | |
Nobody ever said, "Oh, I'll explain what happened to you. | 0:40:53 | 0:40:56 | |
"I will explain what war means. I will explain what happened | 0:40:56 | 0:41:00 | |
"to your parents, that you are never going to see them again. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
"I will explain that you are never going back | 0:41:03 | 0:41:05 | |
"to your house in Paris, forget it, it's gone." | 0:41:05 | 0:41:07 | |
The war finished in '45, and I was still in the Auvergne for two years. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:16 | |
We didn't know, we hadn't been told. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:19 | |
I didn't know the war was over, because we didn't have newspapers, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:22 | |
we didn't have a radio, we didn't have electricity. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:25 | |
Nobody knew. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:26 | |
My war really started when I came to Britain. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:11 | |
I couldn't speak the language. I didn't know who I was. | 0:42:11 | 0:42:14 | |
I was traumatised. Couldn't talk. Didn't want to talk. | 0:42:14 | 0:42:17 | |
They thought I was dumb. I didn't speak. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
When I was growing up, I was about 17, | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
I was going to go and join the army and I was going to go over | 0:42:23 | 0:42:26 | |
and kill them all. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
That was my anger. I hated them. | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
I couldn't bear to hear the German accent. | 0:42:31 | 0:42:34 | |
And it made me very... | 0:42:34 | 0:42:37 | |
..cautious... | 0:42:39 | 0:42:41 | |
and never wanting to go anywhere near those countries | 0:42:41 | 0:42:45 | |
or associate with anything that had to do with Germany for a long time. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:50 | |
I believe that because they're going to keep | 0:42:50 | 0:42:53 | |
the Holocaust Memorial Day in perpetuity, I hope, | 0:42:53 | 0:42:57 | |
and that there are certain places like Yad Vashem and Beth Shalom | 0:42:57 | 0:43:02 | |
who have a memorial to the Shoah, which is the Holocaust. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:06 | |
I do believe that it should be at least remembered. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:11 | |
Yes, I do, I do. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:12 | |
I think it should be taught, you know, in perpetuity. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
Because, even if it is not the Holocaust, the other story - | 0:43:15 | 0:43:19 | |
Rwanda, Syria, Yugoslavia - should be told. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:27 | |
They should be kept alive in the memory of people. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:31 | |
They shouldn't be allowed to be forgotten | 0:43:31 | 0:43:34 | |
because that way, things will... | 0:43:34 | 0:43:37 | |
Because we're human, we will forget. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:41 | |
I look at my sons, I look at my grandchildren, | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
I look at my great grandson, and he's a fabulous little boy, | 0:43:44 | 0:43:47 | |
and I'm just very happy about what I have achieved. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:52 | |
And every day I say, "Thank you," about 10,000 times a day, | 0:43:52 | 0:43:55 | |
"Thank you!" | 0:43:55 | 0:43:56 |