Kate’s ‘privilege’ to take portraits of survivors
Our duty to learn from Holocaust
Yvonne Bernstein with granddaughter
THE Duchess of Cambridge has taken photographs of Holocaust survivors for an exhibition marking 75 years since the genocide. Four survivors, alongside their children and grandchildren, feature in images for the project. Kate, below, took pictures of two of the surviving families and described them as “the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet”. One of her pictures is of Yvonne Bernstein, 82, from Germany, who was a hidden child in France. She is pictured with her granddaughter Chloe Wright, 11. The photos were taken at Kensington Palace. Speaking about the project, the duchess, who is the Royal Photographic Society patron, said: “It is vital that their memories are preserved and passed on to future generations, so that what they went through will never be forgotten.”
Liberated youngsters show their tattoos
Through the mist of yet another freezing dawn rising on the desolate, now silent, death camp of Auschwitz, Eva Schloss thought she saw a bear appear on the horizon.
The emaciated 15-year-old girl could have easily been hallucinating, driven mad by starvation and relentless terror.
It was eight months since the Austrian teenager had first arrived in this hell, and days since she and her mother awoke to find their filthy hut almost empty.
The Nazis had fled from Soviet troops, taking prisoners with them on death marches that would kill most, to hide evidence of their crimes. They left behind only those souls on the brink of death.
Eva and Elfriede should have gone with them, and surely perished. Their exhaustion meant they overslept and got left behind, awaking to “dead silence”.
The bear was in fact a scout arriving ahead of the advancing Soviets who, 10 days later, would free Auschwitz and those clinging to life there.
The 90-year-old, one of the few who was in Auschwitz for its liberation 75 years ago today, recalls this first moment of hope with a dazzling, lipsticked smile.
She says: “We saw a huge creature in fur with icicles hanging from him, who, before it was daylight, looked like a bear.
“When it came closer it turned out it was a Russian scout in a big Russian hat. He couldn’t speak our language. The Russians didn’t know about the camps, the gassing, that we were Jewish. But he looked at us, and knew we were victims.”
Soberly, she reflects on the fact that the fates of she and her playmate, the diarist Anne Frank, just one month younger, could so easily have swapped.
Anne and her older sister Margot were marched to Bergen-Belsen where they died before British troops could free them three months later. The pair posthumously became Eva’s stepsisters when her widowed mother married their widower father, Otto.
“If Anne and Margot had not gone on that march, they’d have survived,” she insists, quietly. “We overslept, and that saved our life. Our positions could have changed easily.”
Eva’s family and the Franks met in Amsterdam, where both fled to
Eva lives in London
MOST Holocaust survivors I meet don’t live as victims. For them, life isn’t about the horrors they saw and suffered, it’s about teaching as many young people as possible about the pitiless depths humanity can sink to.
It’s about showing how ordinary people can take part in genocide in their thousands and look away in their millions. That’s why today is important to every survivor – and everyone. We live in fragile times, in an era not unlike the 1930s, with rising nationalism across Europe, hotheads in the Kremlin and White House, politicians peddling hate and jihadists determined to start another Holy War.
Here in the UK, at least, the legacy of Holocaust survivors seems secure.
On this landmark anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, we pay tribute to the dwindling survivors.
We also pledge to continue their work when the last of them is gone.
That means embracing not isolating minorities, challenging not excusing intolerance and thinking about our personal duty to stand up to prejudice the moment we see it.
If we want to keep the Holocaust where it belongs – in the past – we need to keep talking about it.
Anne Frank
escape persecution. The girls would play on the street. Eva remembers the day “chatterbox” Anne showed off the diary Otto had given her for her 13th birthday. “I remember her being so happy,” she smiles. “She liked writing so much, she loved telling stories.” Soon afterwards, the Franks went into hiding, and so did Eva’s family, who were eventually betrayed, and transported in May, 1944.