Eva (then known as Maidi) was born in 1929 in the town of Szolyva in the Carpathian Mountains.Eva appears in some of the photographs that are the only visual evidence of the mass murder at Auschwitz. She was shaved, tattooed and give a uniform to wear. She felt so dehumanised and alone.A job in 'Canada' (a place of safety within the camp) enabled her to pinch food, clothes and on one occasion, diamonds. This possibly saved her life. In January 1945, Eva was forced to march ...

Marianne Phillips was born in 1924 in Berlin. Following the Nazi rise to power, and her mother’s sudden death, Marianne’s father temporarily placed Marianne and her younger brother in a Jewish orphanage. This is where she met Harry, her future husband. Having experienced the aftermath of Kristallnacht, and following a brief family reunion, her aunt arranged for Marianne to come to England on the Kindertransport in 1939.After initially living in Somerset, where she worked as a domes...

Suzanne Harris was born in Paris in 1919. When World War II broke out, her father signed up for the Foreign Legion and later became a prisoner of war. Suzanne, her sister and mother stayed in Paris for 2 years during the war, but it became too difficult and risky for Jews there. In 1943, they fled to Argenty in the countryside to join their extended family, only reaching it safely with the help of brave strangers.After liberation, Suzanne and her family returned to Paris, to find t...

Adash Bulwa was born in Poland in 1926. After the outbreak of war, he recalls the Germans entering his home city of Piotrków Trybunalsk and the establishment of the Jewish ghetto, which had terrible living conditions. Adash recounts his harrowing ordeals in the concentration camps of Belzec and Buchenwald. Most of his family were killed in Treblinka, and he worked and suffered in factories and labour camps, all while he was still a teenager.Following liberation, Adash returned brie...

Peter Mittler was born in Vienna in April 1930 and witnessed the Anschluss in 1938 when life changed overnight for Jews. He escaped to England on the Kindertransport in January 1939 and stayed with a sponsor family in London. Peter’s parents had also managed to get to England, but his father was sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man for 9 months during the war.Peter joined the British Army in 1949 and then studied Psychology at Cambridge. He went on to spend 14 years as Dir...

Ernest Hirsch was born in April 1925 in Neidenburg, East Prussia. When Hitler came to power in 1933, East Prussia was taken over by Nazis and his family’s business was boycotted.After moving to Berlin, Ernest witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in 1938 when his synagogue was set on fire. Ernest and his siblings left for England on the Kindertransport and were placed with different families. Unfortunately, his mother never managed to escape.After the war, Ernest served as...

Harry Olmer was born in 1927 in Sosnowiec, Poland. He and his five siblings had a happy childhood, staying with their grandmother Rochel Leah every summer in Charsznica, a rural area surrounded by woods.When war broke out, the Germans took over Sosnowiec. In 1942, Harry was taken to a concentration camp in Plaszów, working 12-hour shifts at a railway embankment on a small cup of coffee and lump of bread.Gruelling labour at Buchenwald and Schlieben left Harry dreadfully ill ...

Jackie Young was born in 1941 in Austria. He was a child survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp where he spent two years and eight months before liberation by the Soviet Army in May 1945. He came to England at nearly four years old and was adopted by a loving couple, the Janofskys, who told him nothing about his background.Jackie learned he was adopted at age nine when a boy at school told him and he started to understand why he always felt different from everyone else. Jack...

Tomi Komoly, born in 1936 in Budapest, was the only child of a loving Jewish family. Tomi describes the ordeals endured by Hungarian Jews under the Horthy regime and Nazi occupation. He provides an account of his survival after he was forced to move to a constricted ‘yellow star house’ and eventually found shelter with a Hungarian family with his mother. Tomi’s father was forcefully conscripted into the Hungarian Labour Service and did not survive.Post-war, facing the oppression of...

Helen Stein was born in Strasbourg on 28 December 1930, the eldest of 3 children. When war broke out, Helen and her family were evacuated to the free zone of St-Junien, near Limoges. However, in November 1942, the Germans crossed the line and the region was occupied.Helen and her siblings fled to Switzerland led by Marianne Cohn, who had already smuggled many children over the border to safety. They all had false papers and Helen became Helene Blanchet.Unfortunately, when t...

Peter Adler was born in April 1933 in Berlin. When Hitler came to power, his father lost his job for being Jewish, and in 1936 he moved to England, where he had to requalify as a doctor. By June 1938, Peter, his mother and sisters had joined his father in London and during the Blitz, Peter was evacuated to the countryside.After studying medicine at London University, Peter met his wife Eve, a nurse. They moved to Zambia for two years, lived in Israel for a short period, and settled...

Jack Aizenberg was born into a Jewish family in 1928 in Staszow, Poland. On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland and soon began targeting Poland’s 3.5 million Jews, looting homes, burning properties, publicly humiliating them and sending many to forced labour camps. In 1942, living in the last Polish town to be evacuated of all its Jews, Jack went into hiding; parting reluctantly from his parents and brother.Upon discovery of Jack’s hiding place, he was sent to work in a ...