Prince’s portraits of hope from hell of Holocaust
Charles unveils 7 paintings in moving tribute to genocide survivors
LiLy Ebert, a survivor of Auschwitz who saw half her family led off to the gas chambers, is not a woman who stands on ceremony.
So when the sprightly 98-year-old met the Prince of Wales this week she looked him straight in the eye, rolled up her sleeve and showed him the indelible blue-black inking on the inside of her left arm.
A-10572, it read. A for Auschwitz, 10 for her block number and 572 for her prisoner iD. Mrs Ebert – already awarded a British Empire Medal – attended the Queen’s Gallery in London as portraits of herself and six other survivors were unveiled.
The paintings were commissioned by Charles as patron of the National Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
Around her neck, she explained to the ‘deeply moved’ prince, was a small gold pendant emblazoned with an angel that she had been given by her murdered mother, Nina.
Mrs Ebert hid it from the concentration camp guards – first in the heel of her shoe and then, when her shoe had worn out, in the stale piece of bread she was given each day. She told Charles warmly: ‘Meeting you, it is for everyone who lost their lives.’
‘But it is a greater privilege for me,’ the clearly emotional prince told her, clasping her arm.
The display, Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust, will be a living memorial to the six million innocent men, women and children who lost their lives to Nazi genocide as well as a tribute to those who survived.
Both Charles – who personally devised the project – and Camilla attended the gallery for the event.
Along with Mrs Ebert, the other survivors were Helen Aronson, Manfred Goldberg, Arek Hersh, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Rachel Levy and Zigi Shipper.
The portraits will become part of the Royal Collection and a programme documenting their creation over the last year will be shown on BBC2 today at 9pm to mark National Holocaust Memorial Day. Mrs Ebert was born in Bonyhad, Hungary, and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1944 when she was aged 20 with her mother, Nina, and her siblings.
They were greeted by the Nazi ‘Angel of Death’, Dr Josef Mengele, who sent her mother, along with her brother, Bela, and one of her sisters, Berta, to the gas chambers. Lily and her two remaining sisters, Renee and Piri, were selected for the work camp and were finally liberated in 1945.
Referring to her necklace, which she has worn every day since, she said: ‘This necklace is very special. it went through Auschwitz and survived with me. Auschwitz took everything, even the golden teeth they took off people. But this survived.’
The prince had persuaded seven globally-acclaimed artists to paint the portraits.
They will be on display at The Queen’s Gallery for the next three weeks. Describing the paintings, Charles said: ‘These portraits represent something far greater than seven remarkable individuals. They stand as a living memorial to the six million innocent men, women, and children whose stories will never be told, whose portraits will never be painted.
‘[And] they stand as a powerful testament to the quite extraordinary resilience and courage of those who survived.’
Lily Ebert: ‘Meeting you, it is for everyone who lost their lives.’ Charles: ‘But it is a greater privilege for me.’