The Children of the Holocaust


The Children of the Holocaust

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I was born in Zwickau, which is in Eastern Germany.

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There's quite a big mountain range which separates

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Germany from the Czech Republic,

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and these are called the Erzgebirge, the Copper Mountains.

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My father took us all over

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the mountains, leaving everything behind, and went to Prague.

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Hitler marched into Prague in March 1939.

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My father realised he's on a wanted list.

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So he left my mother and went to Poland.

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It was extremely difficult for my mother to be left alone with

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two small children.

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Street by street, Jews were cleared

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and, any moment, it was probably our turn.

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My mother, she must have had a will of iron and great courage.

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She went from one embassy to another, queued up all night.

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And if she ever got to the desk, they said to her, "We will take you,

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"but we can't take your two children."

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And my mother wouldn't separate us. So she hung on to us.

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The only thing she could think of was to hope somebody would

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take her and the children.

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She was rejected by everyone. But then, the miracle happened.

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A knock on the door meant death, because it meant deportation.

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But for us, a knock on the door was the beginning of a new life

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because we opened the door to a woman from the British Embassy

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who had braved the curfew.

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She brought the entry visa to Britain,

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train tickets to get through Germany, through Holland

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and a ferry to Ramsgate.

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BUT she did not have an exit visa.

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You were supposed to have an exit visa to cross borders.

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And she said, "You'll just have to say you're going to see

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"family in Holland

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"and take nothing with you that could possibly show anyone

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"that you're going for more than a day."

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We made it through Czechoslovakia without any problem,

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and we got on the train in Germany.

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Sat down, thinking, "Good, we've got a carriage to ourselves,"

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when an SS Officer came and sat next to her.

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He was trying to chat her up.

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And he realised what was going on and he couldn't help us.

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But the fact that he sat there, now that might have been her salvation.

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Off we went to the hook of Holland and got on a ferry to Ramsgate.

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On the ferry, I kept saying, "When are we going to be in England?"

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My mother got really fed up of me,

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she said, "When it starts raining, you'll know you're in England."

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So...!

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As I was on the train, it began raining.

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And I must have been the only person there who was just totally

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thrilled, because I knew I was in England.

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The next morning was Sunday, September 3rd 1939.

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As we arrived to Liverpool Street Station, I put my foot

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on the platform, suddenly, everything went quiet

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and there was a huge announcement on the loudspeaker

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and everybody stood, perfectly still.

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The announcement was Chamberlain, saying...

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"I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street.

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"This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin

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"handed the German Government a final note

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"stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock,

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"that they were prepared at once

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"to withdraw their troops from Poland,

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"a state of war would exist between us.

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"I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received,

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"and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany."

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That was 11 o'clock, 3rd September 1939,

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as my foot hit the platform.

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And that was the beginning of the Second World War.

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The liberation of Belsen had been put on general

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release in every cinema and people were asked to go and see that.

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And of course, I went.

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There was no question of me being too young to see that sort of thing.

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And I was totally and absolutely horrified,

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as everyone was watching it.

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And I just felt terribly emotionally disturbed

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and the feeling was overwhelming.

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I just couldn't believe that these sort of things had happened

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and that my family had disappeared in that terrible way.

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I have never got over what I have learned about the Holocaust,

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and what I've read.

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I mean, if you look around this house,

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you'll see I've got a huge section in the next room

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of Holocaust literature, people who have written about the Holocaust.

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And everything I do, I believe, has an element that relates to it.

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Not voluntarily, it's something I can't help myself.

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For example, if I'm peeling potatoes, as I throw the potato peel

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away, I think about the girls in Auschwitz who

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looked for a bit of potato peel because they were starving.

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Another thing that's been left with me

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and my children and grandchildren always laugh about it -

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I'm terrified of being without food.

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In my car I always have something to eat.

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Now, I don't eat a great deal myself, but I always have water

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and I always have something to eat.

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And that is definitely a throwback to the fear of hunger.

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However much you can learn about history,

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and of course it is important to learn and to think you're not going

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to make the same mistakes again, the fact is we do, as human beings,

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as parents we make mistakes that we promise ourselves we will never do.

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I think human beings can't help it,

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the frailty of the human being is such that we do repeat mistakes.

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But I think, whatever people say about young people today,

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I think they are more tolerant.

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So maybe there is hope. I think humanity is getting better.

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Hopefully I'm right.

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In 1938, when I was eight years old,

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there occurred what has become known as the Polenaktion.

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Early in the morning, we were all sleeping in our beds.

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The Nazis entered our flat.

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We were going to be taken away.

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We were put on board a train.

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We came to realise that we were all polish Jews.

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We were luckier than some, we had been taken as an entire family.

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Some of the people who had been separated, they didn't know

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whether they would ever see one another ever again.

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To make matters worse, there were people of all ages -

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babies, there were very old people,

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people who were ill, some had been taken out of hospital beds.

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Travelled for the rest of the day and after it got dark...

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..the train stopped and we were told to get off.

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Outside the station, there were two rows of SS men.

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We were marched off.

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And the rumour went round that we were being taken to some

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remote place where we would all be shot.

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I did see people collapse through exhaustion,

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and I was left in no doubt about the brutality of these SS men.

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We marched for some hours.

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And then we were stopped at a railway line,

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and we were told that the SS men were not coming any further.

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It seems likely that this was, in fact, the Polish frontier.

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The SS Men wouldn't want to cross that at this particular stage,

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that could provoke an international incident.

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We were told that we would have to go on marching between the rails,

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because on either side there were ditches,

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and anybody who fell risked injury, not only from the fall,

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but also being trampled.

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Eventually, soldiers and police came and took us prisoner.

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What the Poles were trying to do was to force us back into Germany.

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The German authorities were ready for that

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and attempts to send us back failed.

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We managed to get to Krakow, where we had some relations,

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and we arrived on their doorstep.

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Round about the time that we went to Poland, Britain allowed children

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to be brought over, in what came to be known as the Kindertransport.

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I was very lucky to be one of the few to be rescued from Poland.

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I would have died with all the rest of my family if I hadn't been.

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I went to foster parents in Coventry.

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In the autumn of 1940, the so-called Blitz began.

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Coventry was one of the most severely bombed cities.

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We had 17 raids when a few bombs were dropped on the city.

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And then one night, we had a very big raid.

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Now, Home Office advice was that if you hadn't got an air-raid

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shelter, the safest part of the house was under the stairs.

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Under our stairs we had a small pantry.

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So we all crowded into that, foster parents,

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my sister and I and the dog.

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He was very vicious, he bit quite a few people.

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We tried to keep our distance but whenever a bomb came very near,

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the dog growled.

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And we were really afraid, all of us.

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We heard a very loud hissing sound

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and it was obvious the bomb was coming near.

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It landed just a few doors down.

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The next morning, when we emerged, the house had lost its doors

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and its windows and part of the roof.

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It's amazing that there were many small air raids,

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and generally speaking, people took them in their stride.

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But during these big air raids,

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I certainly felt very much afraid, and I don't think many people,

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if they are truthful, could say otherwise.

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Germany was a very, very advanced country.

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It's produced some of the world's finest musicians,

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some of the world's finest writers.

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It had made advances in human civilisation, in all its spheres,

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and so it is utterly amazing that a country which was

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so advanced should suddenly descend to barbarities, which really

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bear comparison with what was happening in the Middle Ages.

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There are some people who think, quite wrongly, that the

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study of history is a waste of time, that one should study things

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more to do with the present age, rather than study a bygone age.

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I don't agree with that at all, because first of all,

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the only way we can understand the present is by finding out how

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it came into being, as a result of the past.

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But, at least as importantly, perhaps even more so,

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is those who don't study history are destined to repeat it.

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And things which can happen once, can happen a second time.

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One must study the conditions which led up to them,

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and try to avoid the repetition of these dreadful things.

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Back in my school days, about 1938,

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I have a wonderful photograph, a class photograph of all of us here.

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It's something which is a great pleasure to look at,

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but also extremely sad.

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Because, unfortunately, the Germans killed many, many children.

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One and a half million innocent children were

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killed during the Holocaust.

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Why should innocent people, just because they were Jewish,

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be killed for no reason at all?

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And I look at these faces, I don't know who survived and who didn't.

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I only know that I survived.

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We had this radio in our dining room,

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and Father was often listening,

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but when he had the news on, you could hear this shouting,

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and that of course was the typical Hitler speech-making.

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Everybody was aware of this knock at the door

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and it always came during the night,

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when they came to take away people, either to take them

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to prison or to beat them up or whatever,

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and that fear was there all the time I was at home.

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You feel insecure, you don't feel at ease.

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You can't relax and you know that something is wrong.

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Germans didn't come into Czechoslovakia

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until 15th March 1939.

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And I realised that my parents were wanting to get the children

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away to safety.

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And my turn came, I left home on 28th March 1939.

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The only thing I really remember is getting into a taxi.

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I remember my mother and my father and my brother standing near me.

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But I cannot remember saying goodbye to them, I can't remember

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whether I hugged them, kissed them, whether I cried.

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I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever.

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We were travelling by train, through to London.

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But I ended up in Wallsend on Tyne,

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where a very kind family had offered to give me a home.

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I start getting homesick and I start feeling very, very poorly.

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Because A, I was missing my parents,

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B, I didn't speak one word of English.

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The food was totally different.

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I'd never eaten toast, porridge, kippers, marmalade,

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all these normal English things.

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And I just basically cried for as long as I stayed with them.

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From the age of nine, in those four years, in those war years,

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I lived with so many different people.

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I mean, I would think I must have been at least

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through 15 to 20 different places.

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I never saw my parents after 28th March 1939.

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Father, he was transported on 19th April 1942,

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and he was already dead by 8th May.

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My mother is a different story altogether.

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The last proper evidence I have that she was alive

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was when she was transported to a small concentration

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transportation camp near Bratislava, called Sered'.

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And I've been working for years and years to try and trace her.

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And I am almost at the end of the trail.

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I received some evidence

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from a testimony given by somebody in 1962,

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who could have been on the same transport that my mother

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was taken on and on a death march

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on which she would have been shot and killed.

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The impact on me is something which has never left me.

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Every single day I rue the destruction of my family.

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To me, family is the most important building brick for human beings

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and that's why I find it so hard today.

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Well, the Nazi occupation as such is difficult to define,

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because the Nazis only actually came in to Czechoslovakia

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two weeks before I left.

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Although from '33 onwards, we were aware of it in the family.

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Me, as a small child, I wasn't.

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I think the biggest impact on me is the fact that I've learned to

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stand on my own two feet and fight my own battles.

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I have not reached what I had set out to do,

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but looking backwards now, it doesn't really make any odds.

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I've been basically lucky.

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I had a decent husband, and I've got a family.

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Although, there's nobody here. And what can you expect?

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I consider,

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although many human beings like to think they're superior to animals,

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we are only an animal. We are basically robots.

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We can't control anything.

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We've just got to cope with what we've got.

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What's happiness, can you define it?

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I've not been... I haven't been happy in one sense.

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I've had moments when I have enjoyed life.

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If you're on your own you don't want to sit in your own four walls.

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What do you do? Nobody wants you.

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So you do voluntary work.

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And I'm a thorn in the side of most folks when I do voluntary work

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because I speak up for the people who have problems.

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I'm sure it has quite a lot to do with my history

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because I've no graves to go to, where are my parents,

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one God knows where, one in the ashes up in Auschwitz.

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Therefore, I also don't have a religious belief.

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I mean, one of the things which often comes into my mind -

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you know if we have a terrible accident,

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everybody prays for these people.

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How many millions and millions and millions of prayers have been

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said since religion and superstition came in?

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And we're no better.

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I think people are not aware of other people's experiences

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and how it can be hurtful or how it can be good.

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The other story which I could tell you is, the kindness of strangers.

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The number of people who have helped me,

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until I was able to stand on my own feet,

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is amazing.

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I do remember the day the Nazis came to power.

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I was almost 13. I remember looking down from our window.

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The Nazis always celebrated their successes by torchlight processions.

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And the Nazis marched past and sang songs, bloodthirsty songs.

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The Nuremberg Laws which came in, in the autumn of 35,

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legalised anti-Jewish measures.

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We were no longer allowed to go to cinemas and theatres

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and be members of clubs.

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As a child, of any age, to be excluded from your peers is a blow.

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You feel inferior and you question your existence.

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There were three Jewish boys, including me, left in the class.

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The main Hitler Youth leader came and said,

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"It's time you left the school, we don't want you here."

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I left school at 16.

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If it hadn't been for the Nazis, I probably would have gone to

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university, but we could no longer do that,

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because universities were no longer accepting Jews.

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At the age of 18 I went to Hamburg, to college, to learn English.

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In the evenings we got together and we heard the news -

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we knew something was going to happen.

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In Nuremberg, my parents were arrested, kept standing

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in the square in the centre of the town for about two hours.

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Were abused, spat upon.

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The Synagogue was set on fire.

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The women, the older people and the children were sent home.

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When my mother got home, about 4 o'clock in the morning,

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she rang where I was staying.

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She said, "Father's gone away."

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Which was code for, he's been arrested. "Get dressed.

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"Go for a walk."

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So, that's what I did. I sat on park benches.

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Then I went round the department stores.

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I tried to make myself small, not to stand out.

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I could see the smoke from the burning synagogues everywhere.

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I could also see groups of Jewish people

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being frogmarched through the streets.

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Windows were smashed.

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The Germans invented the term Kristallnacht,

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because of all the broken glass.

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Eventually I went home.

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The Landlady said, "The Gestapo has been for you."

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It's a good job that I did leave the digs,

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otherwise I would have been sent to a concentration camp.

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Father was arrested

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and then sent to Dachau concentration camp near Munich.

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He was there for five or six weeks.

0:25:490:25:51

Most of the people were released just before Christmas '38.

0:25:510:25:56

And then he came home and he was a really changed man.

0:25:560:25:59

It was then quite obvious that there was no future for us

0:26:020:26:05

in Germany.

0:26:050:26:06

There was nowhere to go. No country wanted us.

0:26:080:26:11

Frank, my brother, was in Leeds. He tried to very hard to get me

0:26:110:26:15

a trainee post and finally succeeded.

0:26:150:26:18

And I came to Leeds.

0:26:180:26:20

We managed to get visas for our parents and they came.

0:26:200:26:24

Thank God, because four days later, war broke out.

0:26:240:26:27

Well, the day war broke out,

0:26:280:26:30

a policeman came, asking us to come down

0:26:300:26:33

to report to police headquarters.

0:26:330:26:35

We were registered as enemy aliens.

0:26:350:26:38

Cameras and binoculars were impounded,

0:26:380:26:40

which were considered spying equipment.

0:26:400:26:42

Churchill was by then just become Prime Minister.

0:26:440:26:47

And his civil servants famously asked him,

0:26:470:26:50

"What shall we do with these enemy aliens?"

0:26:500:26:52

And Churchill's words were, "Collar the lot."

0:26:520:26:56

So we were interned, father, brother and me.

0:26:560:26:59

Well, all of us felt a bit sore,

0:26:590:27:01

because we were more opposed to the Nazis than the British natives were.

0:27:010:27:06

We were kicked out there because we were Jewish.

0:27:060:27:09

And we were interned here because we were German.

0:27:090:27:11

We wanted to fight the Nazis

0:27:110:27:13

and instead we were kept behind barbed wire.

0:27:130:27:15

Survival is instinct, it's natural. Everybody has that.

0:28:150:28:19

You try desperately to get out of Germany,

0:28:210:28:24

which we eventually succeeded in.

0:28:240:28:28

And, well, you know you are a survivor because you're there.

0:28:280:28:35

Well, obviously my contemporaries who committed these

0:28:360:28:41

atrocities are dreadful.

0:28:410:28:45

But I'm concerned that I sometimes think what I would have been

0:28:450:28:53

if I hadn't been Jewish.

0:28:530:28:54

Would I have been a Nazi? And I probably would.

0:28:540:28:58

You know, it's very difficult for a 12, 13, 14-year-old to resist

0:28:590:29:04

the temptations that the Nazis offered for kids of that age.

0:29:040:29:08

Uniforms, campfires, learning to shoot rifles.

0:29:080:29:12

Things like that that they did in the Hitler Youth.

0:29:120:29:16

And it's very, very difficult for a kid of that age to resist

0:29:160:29:20

that temptation and not be part of the crowd.

0:29:200:29:25

It's a warning, I suppose, to people to be vigilant, not be bystanders.

0:29:250:29:31

But to speak out if they encounter bad things or evil things.

0:29:310:29:37

This is exactly what happened, Germans stood by and did nothing,

0:29:400:29:46

and then sometimes were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler.

0:29:460:29:51

So, that is the warning, you keep constant vigilance.

0:29:520:29:57

I was 14. In the wagon was only a very small window.

0:30:260:30:30

It was hot.

0:30:300:30:32

We were so cramped, we couldn't even sit down.

0:30:320:30:35

Some people had some water, and some people didn't.

0:30:350:30:39

After two days and one night,

0:30:390:30:41

through the wagon I could see SS men with dogs, barbed wire,

0:30:410:30:46

electric fences.

0:30:460:30:48

We'd arrived in Birkenau, Auschwitz.

0:30:480:30:51

And they said, "Men on one side,

0:30:530:30:56

"women children on the other side".

0:30:560:30:58

And we made two long queues.

0:30:580:31:01

Mengele happened to be on the selection platform.

0:31:020:31:06

He pointed the finger to the left or to the right.

0:31:060:31:09

I'd noticed a lot of people who were chosen to go to the right

0:31:090:31:14

were fitter men.

0:31:140:31:15

To the left, children went, mothers with children, elderly men.

0:31:150:31:20

I knew that's not a good point.

0:31:200:31:23

You know, if they don't need you, they kill you and that's it.

0:31:230:31:28

Then suddenly, they tried to take a child away from her mother,

0:31:280:31:32

and she started screaming and the SS men run towards her.

0:31:320:31:36

As they run there, I decided to go over to the right.

0:31:360:31:41

I was very lucky.

0:31:410:31:43

All the people which went to the left-hand side

0:31:430:31:46

went to the gas chambers.

0:31:460:31:47

And they gassed them and then burned their bodies.

0:31:470:31:52

We walked into a place called the sauna,

0:31:520:31:55

a brick-built building in Birkenau,

0:31:550:31:59

and were told to leave all our clothing on the floor.

0:31:590:32:02

I had six photographs of my family.

0:32:050:32:08

And that's the last time I had a photograph of my family.

0:32:080:32:12

I had my hair shaved off

0:32:120:32:15

and from there we went in to the next room and we had our uniforms.

0:32:150:32:19

Striped suits.

0:32:190:32:21

It was big on me, so I put it up.

0:32:210:32:24

They didn't give us any bath or shower.

0:32:240:32:27

They soon started getting problems with lice.

0:32:280:32:32

Lice walked round all over us. Itchy, very itchy.

0:32:320:32:36

They live on your skin.

0:32:360:32:39

We were a thousand men in a barrack.

0:32:390:32:41

Three bunks high, ten people on a bunk.

0:32:410:32:45

We slept on the boards.

0:32:450:32:47

There was no straw, there was no covers.

0:32:470:32:51

People snored, people moaned, people died next to you.

0:32:510:32:55

5:30 in the morning, they woke us up

0:32:560:32:58

and they allowed us to go to the washroom.

0:32:580:33:01

In the washroom there was about five buckets of water.

0:33:010:33:04

And you just dipped your hands, washed your eyes and that was it.

0:33:040:33:09

I was just skin and bones, because they didn't feed us.

0:33:110:33:16

They gave us a small piece of bread in the morning,

0:33:160:33:18

with some black coffee made of burnt wheat.

0:33:180:33:21

And lunchtime we got some watery soup with a few leaves

0:33:210:33:25

swimming round and that's it.

0:33:250:33:27

Live on that for months and years, going on,

0:33:270:33:31

you're just like a skeleton.

0:33:310:33:33

Your mind can't think properly, your body is weak,

0:33:330:33:38

you're starving all the time.

0:33:380:33:40

You think about food all the time. You can't help but think about it.

0:33:410:33:45

In Auschwitz I've been tattooed, I've got a number B7608,

0:33:480:33:53

on my left hand.

0:33:530:33:55

It's still there now. And I just can't take it off.

0:33:550:33:58

I've lost 81 from my family.

0:33:590:34:01

I've only found my sister, two years after the war.

0:34:030:34:06

How could I say how it changed me?

0:34:070:34:10

I'll never forget what I went through.

0:34:100:34:14

I suffered so much.

0:34:150:34:18

It was the most horrific thing any human being should ever see.

0:34:180:34:22

The world should never see that again.

0:34:230:34:25

I will never forgive the older generation of Germans, never.

0:35:170:35:21

I've nothing to those born after the war.

0:35:210:35:24

But I will never, never forgive the Germans, what they did to me

0:35:240:35:29

and to other people.

0:35:290:35:31

Never.

0:35:310:35:33

Historically, if you talk about it to people,

0:35:330:35:37

to groups and so on, people learn and if anything like that

0:35:370:35:43

could come up again, they would stand up against it and so on.

0:35:430:35:48

So that's why, basically, I talk about it all the time.

0:35:480:35:52

I know myself that I've done quite a bit educating people

0:35:520:35:58

and so on and young people, I've educated them.

0:35:580:36:02

I told them the history and so on, what I went through.

0:36:020:36:06

And the suffering I did go through.

0:36:060:36:09

And I never want to see that happen to them.

0:36:090:36:12

I'm a very strong-minded person in myself.

0:36:130:36:19

And if I want to do something, I usually do it.

0:36:190:36:25

And I try everything I can to achieve certain things.

0:36:250:36:31

Now, I'm... I'm relaxed.

0:36:310:36:35

I'm...

0:36:350:36:37

I'm actually retired.

0:36:380:36:41

But I still carry on teaching young people, which is very,

0:36:410:36:46

very important to me.

0:36:460:36:48

I'll do it until the day somebody calls me to the other side.

0:36:480:36:54

Ooh, my Paris was gorgeous.

0:37:220:37:25

I lived in the 20th arrondissement.

0:37:250:37:27

I loved Paris, being a little girl there was fun.

0:37:280:37:32

We used to walk along the Seine and over the bridges.

0:37:320:37:36

My mum used to buy me lovely ice cream.

0:37:360:37:39

And she used to put me on a carousel ride

0:37:390:37:42

and the marionettes in the park!

0:37:420:37:45

There was music always playing.

0:37:450:37:47

And it was a lovely life. It was a cultured life.

0:37:470:37:50

I remember going to a pre-school. I loved going there.

0:37:520:37:56

But I didn't go there for very long.

0:37:560:37:58

Slowly, slowly, my life changed.

0:37:580:38:02

The first thing we couldn't do, we couldn't go out.

0:38:020:38:05

You started to hear noises that you hadn't heard before.

0:38:050:38:09

It was really scary sometimes.

0:38:090:38:12

As I understand it now, we were occupied.

0:38:120:38:15

And all the shouting

0:38:150:38:17

and the carrying on you could hear outside was soldiers.

0:38:170:38:20

The day it happened, it was August and it was hot.

0:38:230:38:26

And I was with my father at the window.

0:38:260:38:29

And suddenly he said, "They're here."

0:38:290:38:31

And we went into the bedroom and my mum pushed me under the bed.

0:38:330:38:38

You could hear all these boots on the stairs.

0:38:380:38:41

And they banged on the... "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang."

0:38:410:38:44

And we didn't answer the door. We stayed in the bedroom

0:38:440:38:47

And then they took an axe and they came in.

0:38:470:38:50

Told us, "Raus! Out!"

0:38:500:38:53

And they told my parents, "Pack a bag."

0:38:530:38:56

During all the commotion, Madame Collomb came in,

0:38:560:38:59

she was our next door neighbour.

0:38:590:39:00

And she said, "What's my child doing in this apartment?"

0:39:000:39:04

She took me by the hand, took me away.

0:39:040:39:07

Had they realised what she was doing,

0:39:070:39:09

we'd have all been shot on the spot. And she got away with it.

0:39:090:39:12

She took me to her apartment and put me

0:39:120:39:15

underneath her dining table, with a big chenille tablecloth over it.

0:39:150:39:19

Made me a little bed, and I lived there for two or three weeks.

0:39:190:39:22

And it was dark, and it was solitary and it was lonely

0:39:220:39:25

and I had nightmares there.

0:39:250:39:26

I never saw my parents again after that.

0:39:280:39:31

And I was a lost, totally lost child.

0:39:310:39:34

After that, Madame Collomb took me out at night.

0:39:360:39:39

And furtively we had to go to catch a train.

0:39:390:39:42

The first hiding place she took me to was Mondoubleau,

0:39:420:39:46

which is south-west of Paris.

0:39:460:39:48

I couldn't go to school, I couldn't go out on the street,

0:39:480:39:51

because there were German soldiers everywhere.

0:39:510:39:53

They hid me in a sort of a strange outhouse.

0:39:530:39:57

Stayed there two years in hiding.

0:39:570:40:00

Then I was taken to the Auvergne, to a farm in the middle of nowhere.

0:40:000:40:04

There was no light, no water. You have to be self-sufficient.

0:40:060:40:10

You grow up overnight.

0:40:100:40:12

I slept occasionally inside the house, but then other times

0:40:140:40:18

I went and slept with the goat, because she'd had some kids.

0:40:180:40:22

They were warm and they were friendly

0:40:220:40:24

and snuffle against your cheek.

0:40:240:40:26

During the day, I had to go out and work like a man.

0:40:280:40:32

It's hard, in the winter when it's frozen.

0:40:330:40:36

My hands were blue and they were cracked and bleeding and sore and

0:40:360:40:40

my feet were in the same condition, because I didn't have shoes.

0:40:400:40:44

I used to sit down and cry sometimes.

0:40:440:40:47

But it didn't do any good, so I stopped that.

0:40:470:40:50

Nobody heard.

0:40:500:40:51

Nobody ever said, "Oh, I'll explain what happened to you.

0:40:530:40:56

"I will explain what war means. I will explain what happened

0:40:560:41:00

"to your parents, that you are never going to see them again.

0:41:000:41:03

"I will explain that you are never going back

0:41:030:41:05

"to your house in Paris, forget it, it's gone."

0:41:050:41:07

The war finished in '45, and I was still in the Auvergne for two years.

0:41:120:41:16

We didn't know, we hadn't been told.

0:41:160:41:19

I didn't know the war was over, because we didn't have newspapers,

0:41:190:41:22

we didn't have a radio, we didn't have electricity.

0:41:220:41:25

Nobody knew.

0:41:250:41:26

My war really started when I came to Britain.

0:42:080:42:11

I couldn't speak the language. I didn't know who I was.

0:42:110:42:14

I was traumatised. Couldn't talk. Didn't want to talk.

0:42:140:42:17

They thought I was dumb. I didn't speak.

0:42:170:42:20

When I was growing up, I was about 17,

0:42:200:42:23

I was going to go and join the army and I was going to go over

0:42:230:42:26

and kill them all.

0:42:260:42:28

That was my anger. I hated them.

0:42:280:42:31

I couldn't bear to hear the German accent.

0:42:310:42:34

And it made me very...

0:42:340:42:37

..cautious...

0:42:390:42:41

and never wanting to go anywhere near those countries

0:42:410:42:45

or associate with anything that had to do with Germany for a long time.

0:42:450:42:50

I believe that because they're going to keep

0:42:500:42:53

the Holocaust Memorial Day in perpetuity, I hope,

0:42:530:42:57

and that there are certain places like Yad Vashem and Beth Shalom

0:42:570:43:02

who have a memorial to the Shoah, which is the Holocaust.

0:43:020:43:06

I do believe that it should be at least remembered.

0:43:060:43:11

Yes, I do, I do.

0:43:110:43:12

I think it should be taught, you know, in perpetuity.

0:43:120:43:15

Because, even if it is not the Holocaust, the other story -

0:43:150:43:19

Rwanda, Syria, Yugoslavia - should be told.

0:43:190:43:27

They should be kept alive in the memory of people.

0:43:270:43:31

They shouldn't be allowed to be forgotten

0:43:310:43:34

because that way, things will...

0:43:340:43:37

Because we're human, we will forget.

0:43:370:43:41

I look at my sons, I look at my grandchildren,

0:43:410:43:44

I look at my great grandson, and he's a fabulous little boy,

0:43:440:43:47

and I'm just very happy about what I have achieved.

0:43:470:43:52

And every day I say, "Thank you," about 10,000 times a day,

0:43:520:43:55

"Thank you!"

0:43:550:43:56

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