‘People must not forget the horrors of the Holocaust’
says RENEE SALT, BEM
‘Ihave cheated death many, many times,’ admits Holocaust survivor Renee Salt. At the age of 90, Renee remains a dedicated campaigner. The mother of two and grandmother of five was just 10 when the Nazis invaded her Polish home town.
She and her family were thrown on to the streets when German officers occupied their home. She spent the next five years living in Jewish ghettos and slave labour camps, before being moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen.
Renee survived numerous ‘selections’ where SS soldiers dictated who would live and die. The first was in the summer of 1942 when, after three years of living in the ghetto in her home town of Zdunska Wola, she heard shouts of ‘All Jews outside.’
‘By then, we had heard rumours that old people and young children were being slaughtered,’ she recalls. She and her family were taken to the local Jewish cemetery.
‘On each side of the cemetery gates stood the SS and the Gestapo with their batons, directing one to the right, one to the left,’ Renee recalls. ‘Invalids, pregnant women, people who didn’t look fit for work and old people went to one side, and the rest went to the other.’
For days, she, her parents and an aunt were forced to sit on gravestones under the glare of spotlights so no one could escape. Because she was 12, adults tried to make her look older with make-up, a headscarf, and high heels.
One SS officer was suspicious, and asked her how old she was. ‘I was paralysed with fright, I couldn’t stand up, I couldn’t answer,’ she recalls.
Her father insisted she was 18. ‘This SS man looked at me very hard. Eventually, he said, “She may remain sitting”.’
Renee was ‘ lucky’. Many were not, including her father, sister and 12 sets of uncles and aunts, her cousins and grandparents. In all, six million European Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. Renee’s mother died in hospital just 12 days after they were liberated from Bergen-Belsen. ‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my mother,’ she says, sadly.
After the war, Renee met her husband, Charles Salt, a British soldier who was at the liberation of Belsen. For 50 years, both were traumatised by what they’d witnessed: ‘ We couldn’t talk about it to each other or to our children.’
Twenty-five years ago, she was asked to go and speak to young people, to ensure one of the darkest chapters in human history was never forgotten.
Since then, she’s travelled the UK with the Holocaust Educational Trust, giving hundreds of talks. Each spring, she takes part in the March of the Living, where Holocaust survivors and young Jewish people march the four miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the largest concentration camp complex.
She’s finding this increasingly difficult but insists, ‘I want to ensure people will never forget and that it never happens again… these terrible things must not be forgotten.
‘It’s very sad because the world didn’t learn from the Holocaust. Atrocities are going on all over the world. And anti- Semitism is growing,’ she warns.
‘I am so proud to receive this award. I really am delighted, and I hope I can continue my work for a long time.’