Survivor Stories

Survivor Stories

We thank the Holocaust survivors who give their time to tell their stores to the students who attend our education sessions.
Eva Clark

Eva Clarke BEM

Eva was born in Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria, on 29th April 1945. She and her mother are the only survivors of their family, 15 members of whom were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau: three of Eva’s grandparents, her father, uncles, aunts and her 7-year-old cousin, Peter. Read more>

Stephen Frank

I was suddenly different from all my other friends. I was no longer allowed to play in the park, my father could not take public transport to work; I couldn't go into the swimming pool or the zoo.  Read more>

Gerald Granston

Gerald Granston BEM

In May 1939 the cruise ship S.S. St Louis sailed from Hamburg for Cuba with about 980 Jewish passengers fleeing from Nazi persecution. Almost everyone had landing certificates, illegally sold to them by the Cuban director of immigration in Germany. As the ship approached Havana’s harbour, the Cuban government invalidated the landing certificates and the refugees were denied entry.  Read more>
John Hajdu

John Hajdu MBE 

John Hajdu (pronounced Hai-doo) was born in Budapest on 29 April 1937. The son of Gyorgy Hajdu and Livia Farago, John’s early life was typical of a well-to-do, middle class Jewish family living in a predominantly Jewish area of Budapest. Read more>
Anne Kirk

Ann Kirk BEM

I was born in Berlin in 1928, although, because my parents moved about so much, I spent just the first and the last six months of my German life there. It was when the Nazis moved into the Rhineland that I first became aware of them. I remember standing by the roadside when the soldiers marched in. Read more>
Bob Kirk

Bob Kirk BEM

I was born in Hanover in 1925, the youngest of three children. My father’s family had been cattle dealers in southern Germany for generations. I can trace the family tree back to about 1700. My father and uncles were among the first generation to leave the business and the village. Father went to school in Heidelberg, and then he studied textiles in Frankfurt. My parents married in 1912 and settled in my mother’s home town, Hanover, where Dad established a textile business. Read more>
Irene Kurer

Irene Kurer

My name is Irene. I was born in the city of Dresden in 1929. My father was a senior Civil Servant, my mother wrote Newspaper articles and I have an older sister, Marion. We lived a happy life with grandparents, aunts, uncles & cousins living nearby.  Read more>
Peter Lantos

Peter Lantos was born in 1939 in Makó, a small provincial town in the south-eastern corner of Hungary. In the summer of 1944 he was deported with his parents to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany where his father died of starvation. He and his mother survived and were liberated by the US Army outside Magdeburg .  Read more>

Susan Pollack

Susan Pollack MBE

Susan was born Zsuzsanna Blau on 9th September 1930 in Felsögöd, Hungary. She had one brother, Laci, and lived with her mother and father. She also had a large extended family who she regularly spent time with.  Read more>
Joan Salter

Joan Salter MBE

Joan was born Fanny Zimetbaum in Brussels, Belgium, on 15th February 1940. She lived with her parents, who were both originally from Poland, and her older half-sister, Lilane.  Read more>
Elsa Shamash

Elsa Shamash

Even over 80 years on from her flight from the Nazis, Elsa Shamash retains a strong German accent. She is a little deaf and her daughter helps her understand my questions. Her father was a pioneering radiologist and the family, which lived in Berlin, was wealthy. She and her brother Heinz were at private school before Adolf Hitler came to power, but then had to transfer to a Jewish school. The family’s non-Jewish maid had to quit: it was no longer permissible for Jews and non-Jews to work together.  Read more>

Mala Tribich

Mala was born Mala Helfgott in 1930 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Mala’s family fled eastwards. When they returned, Mala’s family had to move into the ghetto which was established in her hometown, the first in Poland. Life in the ghetto was terrible with families living in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions.  Read more>

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