Thank you all.. Queen & country
UK became home after Holocaust hell
At the most British of occasions beside a trestle table festooned with Union Jack napkins and cups of tea sits a Dutch woman who feels completely at home.
Aged 83, Channa Clein is a contemporary of the Queen, like so many who joined her yesterday for a very special Jubilee celebration in Her Majesty’s honour.
Organised by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, of which Her Majesty was a founding patron, the party was also a thank you to her realm – which, many feel, they owe their lives, and those of their children and grandchildren; generations who might never have been.
The unbreakable thread, which connected Channa and many of her fellow diners yesterday, is the fact they are all survivors of the Holocaust.
Sitting beside them are younger survivors of later genocides, from Rwanda and Bosnia, who have also found sanctuary here.
They have all rebuilt their lives under the Queen’s reign. She is one of few remaining contemporary witnesses to the crimes that could easily have cut those lives short. “The Queen bore witness to what happened,” says Channa. “This is my country now, and I am hugely grateful to this country for giving me such a wonderful welcome.”
It is in Britain where she met her husband and had two daughters. Louisa, 42 – by her side yesterday – is embedded in British culture as Maya Stepney in ITV soap Emmerdale. And Natalie, 45, is distinguished classical cellist.
A couple of seats down, Ivor Perl, 90, echoed her words, after clapping for the arrival of his tea and scones.
He was 12 when he was taken to Auschwitz, where he lost his parents and six siblings. He arrived in Britain in 1945 with
little more than the
This is my country now and I’m hugely grateful for its welcome
CHANNA CLEIN ON JOURNEY FROM FLEEING NAZIS TO THE UK
I thought I had arrived in heaven. I was treated like a human being again
shirt on his back. Now he has the British Empire Medal. “I thought I had arrived in heaven,” he recalls. “I was treated like a human being again.
“The Queen stands for openness, compassion, a society together. This is very important for survivors.”
Vera Schaufeld, 92, who arrived on the Kindertransport aged nine, adds: “We are so glad we were able to come, all of us have managed to make a good life here.”
Stories of courage abound in this room. Channa is here because her parents, Hein and Toussie Salononson, living in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, gave up their daughter, then three, and her baby sister, Ly, to save their lives, by sending them to foster parents.
Hein remained in hiding, while Toussie worked in the resistance, and ensured her parents managed to hide at a farm.
“My parents were heroes,” said Channa, unable to say more. “It must have been very traumatic for them to be separated from us, and each other.” She adds: “We were lucky.” Toussie’s sister, Els, a dancer, did not manage to hide, and was killed in a death camp in 1943, aged 39.
“My grandparents were broken,” Channa recalled of their reunion after the war. “It was when we came back the hard work started, to build a life, with all the terrible memories.”
As a three-year-old, Channa only has snapshot memories of her separation from her family.
When her mother, an actress, and father, an architect, made the decision to give up their children in 1942, using underground networks and charities to source foster parents, she was initially placed in a children’s home.
“I was so homesick I wouldn’t eat,” she recalls. “They took me away. The next day the home was bombed.”
She recalls meeting her foster parents, who had children of a similar age and lived elsewhere in the Netherlands. Quite quickly, she settled and her mother visited once or twice, bringing clothes.
“I remember someone glamorous and nice. But to a three-year-old your perception of a mother is someone who cares for you. It was a trauma for her, but not for me,” she says.
Meanwhile, while her baby sister lived elsewhere with another couple, her father Hein, who had prominent Jewish features, went into hiding.
“He was lucky he survived,” she said. “He hardly went outside.”
Meanwhile, Toussie, adopting false papers, joined the resistance. “She used to help soldiers, mainly Americans, who were stranded in Holland,” Channa recalls. “She saved lives.”
Toussie spoke little of it, although always kept on her kitchen wall a certificate signed by President Eisenhower, which thanked her.
“She felt she would go down with a fight,” said Louisa. “I feel so proud, they were not passive victims, they were fighters.” Rebuilding their bond when liberation came was no fairy-tale reunion. “I remember we had to go on a boat to Amsterdam,” Channa says. “I wanted to go back to my foster parents.”
Broken as they were, she adds: “It’s the wonderful thing about the human spirit, you recover, and look forward at new things.”
The family recreated their life in Amsterdam, where Channa remained until she was 30, when she moved to Britain as a violinist. That she was accepted here means everything.
So too for the parents of Robert Voss Esq CBE, Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, who took his seat beside the survivors.
He is Jewish, and his parents were refugees who came here after losing 60 relatives in the Holocaust.
He passes on Her Majesty’s warm thanks to the survivors. She wants them to know she owes them a debt. For the diversity, rich cultures, and hard work they have provided.
“I thank you for what you have brought to this country,” he says, raising a glass.
Every survivor stands to join him.
IVOR PERL HE WAS 12 WHEN HE WAS TAKEN TO AUSCHWITZ