‘We cannot forget’
Holocaust survivor to tell her story in Sydney
Hedy Bohm knows the opportunities of hearing Holocaust survivors speak of their ordeals are few and far between, and are getting rarer with each passing year.
That’s why the 88-year-old is now speaking publically about her Second World War experiences at the Auschwitz concentration camp and in a Nazi work camp.
And she’ll be relating her story in Sydney on April 23, when the Romanian-born, Toronto resident will address a Holocaust Memorial Service at the Temple Sons of Israel Synagogue on Whitney Avenue.
Event organizer Diane Lewis said it’s only recently that Bohm began to open about about her past and what she endured at the hands of the Nazi regime was responsible for the genocide of more than six million European Jews.
“She is a very special woman, but like many survivors she didn’t want to talk about these kind of things for many years, but she has
recently realized that as the number of survivors becomes less and less, there’s fewer people left to talk about it,” said Lewis, a local high school teacher.
“Another reason is Holocaust denying, and some survivors feel compelled because of that and they take on the responsibility of retelling their story, which is a very difficult thing to do, as they feel it represents those who cannot speak anymore.”
Bohm broke her silence about a decade ago and began speaking to students in Ontario. She then came into the media spotlight twice over the past three years when she testified against Oskar Groening, also known as the Bookkeeper of Auschwitz, in 2015, and against former Nazi SS guard Reinhold Hanning in 2016.
“We worry that this will become a footnote in the history books, we worry that the lessons that need to be gleaned from this terrible, terrible catastrophe will be forgotten,” said Lewis.
“We cannot forget — we have to fight for human rights because in a society that values human rights something like this would not be allowed to thrive, because Hitler didn’t do it alone, he had collaborators and we have to realize that unless we are wiling to find the courage to speak up and to live our lives in a way that respects people these kind of things can happen again.”
Bohm was a teenager when she and her family were deported from Romania to Auschwitz in 1944. After three months she was relocated to a work camp where she was forced to labour in a German munitions factory before she and other survivors were liberated by the United States Army. She never saw her family again, but did marry husband Imre before they escaped to Prague.
The couple arrived in Canada in 1948.
Along with her address at the Holocaust Memorial Service (Yom Hashoah) in Sydney, Bohm is scheduled to speak the following day to students at Riverview High School in Coxheath.