Holocaust Memorial Day 2026

for me. I can hear Winding. Don, don't d on a wagon bound for market. There's a C with a mournful eye. High above him, there's a swow wing swiftly through the sky. Now the winds are laughing. They laugh with all their mind. Laugh and laugh the whole day through and half the summer's night. Donna, don. Stop complaining, said the farmer. Who told you to be? Why don't you have wings to fly with? Like the swallow, proud and free. How the winds are laughing. They laugh with all their mind. Laugh and laugh the whole day through and half the summer's night. Dona, don cause are easily bound and slaughtered, never knowing the reason why. But whoever treasures freedom like the swallow will learn to fly. How the winds are laughing. They laugh with all the might. Laugh and laugh the whole day through and half the summer's night. Dona, don is the Holocaust Memorial Day uh commemoration. We've got two counselors and Eva here who are going to be talking us through certain parts. Please introduce yourselves. >> Councelor K. Sorry. The uh theme that I'm going to be doing today is about about the the briefness the the chance the sheer chance of survival during the Holocaust. And um I'm going to talk start off with a a poem which is by uh Lotty Kramer survivor um from who lives in Peterbr um about her experience um after the war which emphasizes this. Then came the news from France of who'd survived. From all the family just one or two by a mere thread or miracle returned from hell to shadow th those whose names caused too much pain remembering. Then when we met again for the first time below the joy were tales untold or only hinted at. They'd walk on quicksand through a human lie. We could not know a fraction of their fears. Our trauma trauma had been statelessness and war that branded us as aliens in those years when we were allies really from before hostilities. Our lives could not compare with those dark memories that they could not share. >> Thank you councelor Niete. >> Hi. Thank you so much Emma. I'm councelor Lina representing um Hardwick and Taft. I would like to um briefly I'll share my screen and I'll briefly talk about uh Ruth Clapman who used to um live in our within our community. Um so I'm just going to tell a little bit of her her story and the reason why we're here today. So um Holocaust Memorial Day is observed on on this day on 27th of January. The date in 1945 when Otvitz and Vir Canal the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp was liberated. This day is not a celebration. It is a day of remembrance, reflection and responsibility. We remember the 6 million Jewish men, women, and children murder in the Holocaust and the millions of fathers who were targeted and killed. We also remember the victims of later genocides and we reflect on what happens when hatred is allowed to grow. But Holocaust Memorial Day is not only about history. It is about human choices. I want to speak today not only as a counselor but as a person who believes deeply that kindness and compassion are not soft values. They are essential ones. They are what hold communities together. And history shows us painfully clearly what happens when those values are stripped away. The Holocaust did not begin with camps. began with words, with labels, with the slow erosion of empathy, with people being treated as less than human, and with others being persuaded to look away. That is why days like today matter. They remind us of where the indifference can lead and they remind us why the story of someone from an from our own community like Ruth Kaplan remains so powerful. Many here will remember Ruth as a former mayor of Sanats, a town and district counselor, and a tireless charity worker. But before she became a respected local figure, she was a child growing up in Vienna, Austria, under the rising Nazi regime. Her family was persecuted. Her father was imprisoned before escaping. Her mother was forced into labor. Ruth's early life was shaped by fear, uncertainty, and injustice. Yet, even in those circumstances, her determination shown through. She taught herself English from American and British soldiers. A small detail perhaps, but one that speaks volumes about her will to survive, to connect, and to build a future beyond what she had known. Years later, she came to Britain. She married her husband Adrian and eventually settled in Huntington Share where she raised her family and immersed herself in a community life. And what moves me most about Ruth's story is not only what she lived through, but what she chose to do with her life. After experiencing cruelty, she chose kindness. After seeing division, she built community. After surviving persecution, she dedicated herself to service. Ruth served for many years as a counselor. She became mayor of sne from 1990 to 1991. She shared housing at Huntington District Council and worked extensively with the British Red Cross. She helped support the development of Hinchinbrook Hospital, blood transf transfusion services, and countless local councils. In 1990, she was awarded an MBE for political and public service. But title only tells part of the story. Her real legacy lies in the lives she touched, the people she helped, and the compassion she showed daily after day. She never forgot where she came from. She was proud of her Austrian heritage, but she also carried with her the understanding of what happens when prejudice goes in challenge and when humanity is denied. Her life stands as a powerful response to the hatred that shaped her childhood. It shows us that even after the worst of human cruelty, it is possible to choose empathy, service, and hope. Holocaust Memorial Day challenges each of us to reflect on our own choices. Because genocide is not only a crime of the past. It is a warning. A warning about what can happen when we allow people to be reduced to stereotypes. When cruelty becomes normalized. When compassion is dismissed as weakness. When silence feels easier than speaking out, my hope is that remembrance never becomes routine. That we don't only recall the past, but let it shape how we live now, in how we speak about others, how we respond to difference, and how we look after the most vulnerable in our communities. As a counselor and as someone who cares deeply about the future of this community, I hope we continue to build a place where kindness and compassion are visible, not abstract, where people feel they belong, where hatred finds no easy home. Today, we remember the victims of the Holocaust and of later genocides. We honor survivors and those who resisted. And we remember Ruth Clappen not only for what she endured, but for what she became. Let us honor them all, not just with words, but with the way that we treat one another, because remembrance is not only about the past, it is about the future we choose. >> Khan, you've got your section on the memoir. Um many years ago uh I was doing research about uh to to explain a booklet which I found in a small uh table which my father had bought in London in 1971 and the booklet was of a produced by a poet who died in the Holocaust um while in hiding in Warsaw. Um I was researching it and uh his sister-in-law was still alive in Warsaw. Um I went to interview her. She actually had produced a book about her memoirs which is virtually unknown. It's not you won't find it online at anywhere. Um it was produced in it was produced originally in Polish. It was translated to French and I've got a copy of the French book book here um which was um produced by a small um publisher in the in the in Le in Northern France. But it's a very interesting book because it explains she describes her escape from the ghetto and it emphasizes something which I wanted to emphasize is the fragility of survival. How everybody who survived during the Holocaust had to go through many many different close shaves to escape. Um so I I will describe it because I think it's um I'll read a section of the memoirs because I think it's a really interesting experience and emphasizes this. One day they let me know that my parents had been rounded up and that they were already want waiting to be taken away to such and such a place. Paulina um the mother of Joanna had managed to get them to go work in a depo. She had an enormous number of friends and many of them were part of the underground army. Paulina was a very generous woman, courageous woman. She bought Clandiststein newspapers into the ghetto. She enabled escapees to attain nonofficial papers. She found accommodation for those in hiding. By chance, one of those close to her, Paul, managed a warehouse which provided aid for Jews and Poles. I telephoned straight away to Pelina, and she promised to intervene on part behalf of my parents. Without worrying about the danger, I ran to this place. They had lined out the Jews around the periphery with the Germans in the center. I saw my family in the distance. Then I rushed up to one of the soldiers and assured him that my parents had been liberated. he could check this. The idea that they would fire on me or deport me had never even come to my head. I was thinking only of those near and dear to me. However, I had to go to work. That evening, I ran to my parents' apartment. My heart was beating. I rang the bell. My mother opened it. I remember that I allowed myself to fall to the ground and I kissed her knees. God, I was happy. Both of them were there and they hadn't been taken from me. Since my parents worked in the warehouse, um they were not at risk from deportation. But I decided to get my son Carol to the Aron side, as well as Wonder, the daughter of my sister, Rita. Through a Jewish policeman as intermediary, I contacted a Polish policeman, and for a bribe, they took the children over to the Aron side where Paulina received them. At first, my sister Rita refused to separate herself from the little one. I pleaded with her. I told her that the infants would be safe, that it would have a chance to survive. If they sent her to work in Germany without a daughter, this would be easier. We didn't then imagine that they would send us from the ghetto to not to work, but rather to the gas chambers. In the end, she gave way. When I got the news that the children had arrived at Paulina, I gave out a sigh of relief. One day at the instigation of Pina, the actress Yanina Martini arrived in the ghetto by the car, accompanied by a German. A forest's house had been rented for my parents where they could hide. My father had decided to leave, but he asked them to come back in two days because he had some preparations to make. They tried to persuade him not to delay until later, to take the indispensable items and to follow them. However, he didn't change his mind. They agreed to meet in 48 hours. The following day in the morning, I was at my parents. Suddenly, the place echoed with cries in German. Soldiers blocked off the road. They gave the order to leave the apartment. All disobedience will be punishable by death. In our flat, they had organized a hiding place, a niche behind the wardrobe. My parents hid there with Krisha's parents. But my mother didn't hurry, and today I still cannot forgive myself for having asked her, stressed and with a pretty high voice, to hurry up myself. I hurried out of the house, and running along a road full of clamor, I managed to extract myself from this crush and to rush to my my place. Then, too stressed to rest where I was, desperate and in tears, I went to Basha Palatinska, who was my friend during my time in the ghetto. That afternoon, my husband returned with the news that he had seen my family from afar, standing in the blocked off road, and even seen my father approach a German to show him his workers's card. This one had hit him on the face with his whip, splitting open his cheek. As I learned later, my friend Mitches, who was also there, he held in his hand his little girl and begged each Jewish policeman who passed by to take his child to my house, but nobody would risk it. I ran straight away to the apartment of my parents, hoping that perhaps they had in the end been released. I found the door open, a cup of tea on the table that had not been drunk, and on the floor my mother's slippers abandoned in haste. I sat petrified. The road was empty without people. It was necessary to actuously for the for them I could unfortunately do nothing more. My father had said that in the flower pot on the balcony, he had buried 20 2,000 gold dollars. The jewels and the rest of the money my mother carried sewed into her belt. I searched therefore and took the coins from the wall. I took only one little photo of my nephew. In reality, I don't know why I took it and what pushed me to this gesture. Then, without making myself noticeable, I returned bowled over, deeply unhappy, thrown into confusion, to the house. Once I had returned, I suddenly heard my name being called from the bottom of the courtyard. I looked out. Trisha was standing there, and she said, "Throw me some money for the car." I threw her some straight away. My cousin entered in the apartment. She had escaped at the flag plats. At first, she had refused to abandon her parents, but they had begged her to try to escape from death. In fact, a Jewish policeman from their friends was useful. He succeeded in getting her out of the plat to find her a car. A very short time after, a Jewish policeman came to my place with two Germans. They cried out there was a Jewish lady there who had escaped from Munchle Plats. Putting myself in front of the door which hid Krisha, I replied that there was no one in the apartment, but I could show them where they where they they must have run out. And leading them out onto the landing, I showed them the stairs which led to the attic and onto the roof. Trisha stayed with me for several days and afterwards she led left for some friends and I didn't see her again until after the war. Maria and her husband decided to get a number for life. it would cost $100. They were rounded up and the number of a red on a red piece of paper was pinned on their clothes. The policeman shouted, "All to the left except those with a number go who should go to the right at Jesse Street. The the Gustaf were waiting. They let us enter in order to count us. They hit everyone with a whip. We found ourselves in a line in a courtyard. In front of me was a doctor friend carrying a bag which he carried in which he carried a very small child. He halfoped it so the baby fainting could get a bit of air. It noisily came out that there would be a search. Terrified, I wanted to throw away my pin cushions containing my dollars that be because I was terribly frightened that they would be found and I would be beaten. My aranged husband, very annoyed, held me firmly by the hand and didn't permit me to get rid of them, but he didn't change his bag with mine. The Germans started to to review our our ranks, but didn't search us. Arriving by us, one of the two pierced the bag with his bayonet. Blood flowed from it. Then the Germans left, and we waited for ages in the court, not knowing what would become of us. In the evening, with more crap till the whip, they made us go out and told us to return to our homes. When I got back to our house, a nightmare was a nightmare was presented before us. The apartment doors were left open. In some, I saw people shot. In others, people lay there poisoned. There was a deadly silence everywhere, and there was blood everywhere. A few days afterwards, the occasion presented itself to use the services of a policeman who we knew to be honest and willing. I sent some dollars to Paulina for the care of our children and also for the care of Joanna who was living permanently with her husband on the Ariel side. I had no one here any longer. My parents, my sister Rita, the other members of my family had all been deported by the Germans. Henrik, my first husband, was of no importance to me. I had provided him with a number for life, and what followed was his business. I therefore decided to escape from the ghetto. I telephoned to Paulina to inform her of my intention to ask for her help on the day when once on the Aryan side I would telephone her again. She promised to help me. I learned that on the corner of Lesnar Street and Zelashnner Street there was a passage to the other side guided by Germans German police. The surviving Jews there still lived in the ghetto lined up and they would be taken to the work outside. Are you also that the German who had to monitor the convoy the next day like silver 20 slotty coins? At the start of the day, therefore, dress dressed in a poor coat and big boots in order to look like the others, and without carrying anything apart from a little empty handbag in which I put one of these coins, I took my place in the line, which was already waiting. They were unhappy people, completely exhausted, and having difficulty standing on their legs. Each one of them hid in his breast some pillowcases or a sheet. They hoped to exchange these on the Aryan side against potatoes or a piece of bread. The Germans started to count the people, taking from them their last little treasure, throwing it on the pavement all the time, hitting each each drew with beats of the whip. When my turn came, the German in charge of the convoy asked me what I had on me. I replied nothing. But opening my bag, I took the coin and slipped it into his hand. I remember his teeth which came forward in a horrible manner when he smiled putting the money in his pocket. He tapped my arm and went on further. Our line went forward to a they took us to a suitcase factory where the whose owner let me telephone. I told Paulina the address and implored her to save me. She assured me that she would send someone immediately to fetch me. And indeed a little time afterwards a woman arrived and told me to follow her. I saw her and replied, "No, ask Madame Paulina to come and take me in person." Was if I had a presentiment after having given service to my friend, this Polish lady will prefer to turn lucrative to lucrative activities. She would become an informer and would send me a blackmailer, a schmaltzovnik or pickates. Paulina was soon there. She carried a hat which was intended to provide some covering to my eyes full of fear and also her shoes too big for me by several sizes because my boots would have drawn attention. Having told the story to the owner of the FA factory, she asked me to accompany her. We went down a stairway, my knees coming through my clothes and my feet coming out of my shoes. My eyes, like a mad woman, were in part hidden by locks of hair which with which she had covered my forehead. A limousine stood in front of the doorway with a German captain at the wheel. Paulina opened the door and pushed me inside the car. At this very moment, the people who stood in front of the entrance cried to the driver, pointing at me, "It's a Jews." The German, very annoyed, lowered the window and cried out, "I know very very well that it is a Jews. I'm taking her away to work and quickly he started off. I went with Pina to the marketplace of the old town. The captain stayed in the car. My protector led me to her apartment. Then she went to find the German again. In fact, he was an old friend from St. Petersburg. She met him during the occupation in Warsaw. He was in the Vermacht, but he gave many services that helped to save Jews. >> Thank you. Eva, I'll just spotlight you. >> Right. Oh, it's it's so moving hearing these various accounts. Um, and also I I also remember Ruth very clearly. Um, right. Well, I'm here today. I've been asked I've been invited to tell you about my story, about my family. Uh, I am a survivor of the Holocaust, but only just because I was born in a concentration camp right at the very end of the Second World War, but that comes right at the end of this piece. Uh, my mother was Czech, my father was German, German Jewish, and he had escaped from Germany in 1933, and he'd made his way to Prague, the capital of Czechlovakia. He thought that was far enough to be safe. if it wasn't, but if he hadn't have come to Prague, he wouldn't have met my mother and I would not be talking to you today. He had been an architect and interior designer and initially he was employed by a furniture manufacturer actually to build film sets at the brand of film studios which are still there. My mother had been a law student at the Charles University but when the Germans invaded they closed all the Czech universities and nobody was allowed to study. So she decided she was going to try to find a job that had more sort of immediate practical use. And she decided to become apprentice to an aunt who happened to be a millinina, a hat maker. And as I always try to explain to students, um it might sound like an odd occupation, but in the 1940s, everybody wore hats. And it was the same in this country as well. My parents um they married in May of 1940 which was already under Nazi occupation. Uh and in November December of 1941 that is when they were deported to Derisin Dian the first uh the camp in Czechlovakia which was about 40 miles north of Prague and my parents were sent there. They were amongst the first um groups to be sent there because they were both young, strong and well able to work. And when people arrived in Theazine, that is the first time that they families would have been split up. So men were sent to one part, women to another part, elderly people to another part, and children to yet another part. They were able to meet up sometimes during the day, but to a large extent they led separate lives. And my parents were to remain in Terrazine for a remarkably long very unusually long period of time, three years. And as I've already mentioned, it was because they were both strong and able to work. But my mother also said that luck had an awful lot to do with it. And she constantly repeated that luck featured very highly in her whole story of survival. Now during the 3 years that they were there and with um you know the sexes being segregated, nevertheless my mother actually became pregnant in 1943. And when the Germans discovered this, uh they made my parents and for the couples who were also pregnant sign a document that said that when the babies were born, they would have to be handed over to be killed. Except they didn't use the word killed. They used the word euthanasia. My mother never heard the word euthanasia. She had to go and ask somebody what it meant. In the event the other four babies were born. We don't actually know what happened to those families. We assumed they all perished in Awitz. When my brother Yi Yi means George, he was born in February of 1944. He was not taken away from my parents, but he actually died of pneumonia two months later. and his death meant my life and my mother's life which is a very strange thing to say but true because had my mother arrived in the Avitz Birkana death camp holding my brother in her arms they would have both been sent straight to the gas chambers but because she arrived in Awitz not holding my brother and although she was pregnant again this time with me nobody knew she knew and he didn't show because it was very very early on so again she lived to see another day. My mother, yeah, as I said, the my mother always maintained that it was luck that kept them going. Well, at the end of September of 1944, their luck ran out because it was on that day that my father was sent to Awitz. And incredibly, my mother actually volunteered to follow him the very next day. And the reason she volunteered to follow him was because she had no idea where he'd been sent. And being the eternal optimist, she thought, well, as they had survived three years up to that point, she thought, well, nothing could get any worse. Little did she know, but she thought nothing could get any worse. They would survive. But in fact, she never ever saw my father again. and she heard from an eyewitness um quite soon after the end of the war, a friend that my father had actually been shot dead on a death march near Ashitz on the 18th of January 1945. And as you know, Ashitz is liberated by the Russian army on the 27th of January 1945, which is why we commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on the 27th. Now because my mother was still strong enough for work, she was actually sent out of Ashvitz. She was sent to a slave labor camp to an ars factory in a place called Fryberg in Germany in Saxony near Dresden where she was to remain for 6 months becoming progressively more and more starved and more and more obviously pregnant which was very very dangerous for her. But fortunately, the Germans only realized she was pregnant when it was too late to send her back to Awitz to be killed because Awitz had been liberated. And during the 6 months that my mother was in Fryberg, that is when the Allied bombing raids of Dresden took place. I know there's been a lot of controversy about those raids since, but I'm hopeful that you will appreciate that I'm talking to you from my mother's very personal perspective and from her perspective. The raids were just fantastic. When the raid started, the Germans locked all the prisoners in the factory and they went to the air rather. And the prisoners, even though they knew the next bomb could fall on them and kill a lot of them, nevertheless, they were very pleased because they realized it was the allies and they hoped and prayed that it wouldn't be too much longer before they were actually rescued. Now, at the end of March, the beginning of April 45, this is when the Germans, realizing they were losing the war, this is when they began to evacuate the camps. They were trying to empty the camps of living witnesses as to what had been going on inside them. And this is when the notorious death marches happened. My mother wasn't on a death march, but she was put on yet another train. But this time it didn't consist of cattle trucks. This time it consisted of coal workers open to the skies and filthy. And my mother was on a train like this for 17 days with about 2,000 other prisoners. And this was this nightmare of a journey was 17 days without any food and hardly any water. And at the end of the war when similar trains were discovered, they were discovered to just have piles of corpses in them. And at the end of this dreadful journey, the train actually arrived in this place called Mountousen. Mount Housen itself is a beautiful village on the banks of the Danube in Austria near Lintz. The concentration camp was up the steep hill behind the village. And when my mother saw the name Mountousen at the station, she had such a shock because as opposed to when she'd arrived in Aitz, not knowing what that was, this time she knew because she had heard about this appalling place from very early on in the war. And she said the shock was so great that she always assumed that it pro provoked or possibly provoked the onset of her labor. and she started to give birth to me on that coal worker. She had to climb off the coal wagon unaded. She had to climb onto a cart because the prisoners who were not strong enough to walk up the steep hills of the camp, they had to get onto carts and they were pulled up by others. She had people lying all over people with typhus and typhoid fever. And there was a Nazi officer who saw that she was in the midst of child labor and he said to her, "Dance shrine," which means you can carry on screaming because presumably she had been. And she always thought that she was screaming not because she was in labor but because she thought this was her very last minute on this earth. But we both survived the experience. I was born. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. Incredibly, the Germans allowed a doctor to come to my mother, a doctor who was also a prisoner. And presumably, they allowed it because they could hear the guns in the distance. And the doctor cut the umbilical cord and he smacked me to make me cry, to make me breathe. And there are three reasons why we survived. And the first is a very chilling one. On the 28th of April 1945, the Nazis had run out of gas for the gas chamber. My birthday is the 29th. So presumably had the train arrived on the 26th or 27th again, I wouldn't be here today. The second indirect reason why we survived was because on the 30th of April, Hitler committed suicide. But the last and the best reason why we survived was because on the 5th of May, the American army liberated the camp. My mother reckoned she wouldn't have lasted much longer. At the time of my birth, she weighed apparently about five stone, 35 kgs. And I weighed uh about three pounds. And when the Americans arrived, they had food and they had medicine. But I'm sure most of you will know that it's very dangerous to give staff people food because their bodies just cannot take it. And my mother spoke fluent English and she tried to tell as many people as possible who didn't what the Americans were saying. And they were saying to eat very very slowly and very small amounts. But you can imagine, can't you, that if you've been starved for months and years and suddenly you're handed an American chocolate Hershey bar, well, you tend to scoffed a lot and an awful lot of people at that stage collapsed and died. But one hopes that perhaps some of them, a few of them might have realized that they were actually free. After about three weeks, when my mother was strong enough to travel, the Americans asked her if she wanted to be repatriated to Prague. She did. And so we were put on yet another train, an ordinary train this time. We arrived back in Prague. It was at night and it was dark. And my mother said that was the worst moment of her three and a half years incarceration in camps because up to that moment she'd never allowed herself to think as to what had probably happened to all the rest of the family. She just never let herself think about it. But you know, arriving at your home station, you wonder if there might be anybody there to meet you. And of course, there wasn't. But nevertheless, she still had a vestage of optimism at the back of her mind. And she thought that perhaps one of her cousins might have survived. And indeed that lady had. And my mother found her and uh this lady very kindly um gave us a home for 3 years. And we had come from a very large extended family. And this uh cousin of my mother's her sister and one or two other members were the only members of the family who had survived. My father had been killed. um my three of my grandparents and all the other members of the extended family and because my mother was given closure quite soon after the end of the war. So three years later she was able to consider a new life and a new marriage and this is where my stepfather comes into the story. My stepfather Carol Bergman he was Czech and he was Jewish but he'd escaped in 39. He got to the UK he joined the RAF and after the war he came back to Prague to pick up the pieces of his family. most of whom had also been killed in Avitz. And he met my mother whom he had known as a family friend before the war. And they decided to get married and they also decided to leave because this was 1948 and that is when the communists took over and they did not want to live under a communist regime. And so we came to this country and I usually like to stress at this point that we might although we came legally, we might have come as refugees. We might have come as asylum seekers. We might have come as migrants. My stepfather uh was fortunate he managed to get a job in South Wales. And as a result, I grew up in Cardiff and that is also where I met my husband Malcolm uh who also came from South Wales. And the reason I live in Cambridge is because he was an academic. So I'm very lucky to be here by proxy. That is my story. Then I'd rush home at night and look for mail from Europe via the Red Cross. Maybe to say my parents had been traced, though frail and ill, but are still alive, a dream for me, and many others. The sterile makebelief that led to nightmares split my mind. The days were filled with slogging work. I buried grief, hunted for rations, joined banana cues. Now looking back from years they never reached. I wonder who she was. This person I who rushed up the bare stairboards that we shared with other tenants in the house. I tried pursuing her into our two room flat and will not find that letter on the mat. No pain on me. My ador might as be fork. Oh, I knew Fore! Foreign! Foreign! Le me It all it all it all is my son. for amen.