Holocaust survivors to speak out one last time
A dozen Holocaust survivors, all children when they were sent to the concentration camps, tell their stories in a landmark BBC film, The Last Survivors. Each has spoken in the knowledge that, a few years from now, there will be no one left alive who can bear witness to the genocide of the Jews. At a time when reports of anti-semitism in the UK are on the rise, the film also acts as a warning: a recent US survey found most millennials had never heard of Auschwitz.
FRANK BRIGHT vividly recalls the last time he saw his mother. As they arrived at Auschwitz in October 1944, she was herded into a line for those deemed unfit for work.
“She broke ranks, came to me, shook my hand and went back.” It was only later that day that he understood she had been sent to the gas chambers.
“I went out and I saw flames and I was told what they meant. I remember standing there and thinking, ‘Which of the flames is my mother?’”
Mr Bright is now 90 years old. He is one of a dozen contributors to a landmark BBC film in which Britain’s remaining Holocaust survivors tell their stories.
All were children when they were sent to the concentration camps. In The
Last Survivors, they recount both the horrors that they endured and the ways in which they have endeavoured to live fulfilling lives. They have given their testimonies in the knowledge that, a few years from now, there will be no one left alive who can bear witness to the Holocaust.
At a time when reports of anti-semitism in the UK are on the rise, the film also acts as a warning. Susan Pollack, another Auschwitz survivor, said: “One of the driving forces within me is to keep going as much as I’m able to, to inform, to teach and to remember. And to ask the audience: what are you going to do?”
The 90-minute film examines the different ways in which survivors deal with the trauma. Some, like Ms Pollack, give regular talks about their experiences; others, including Maurice Blik, have never spoken publicly before.
Mr Blik’s baby sister was born in Belsen. He was four, and remembers being excited to give her a first birthday present: a tiny boat fashioned from a carrot, with sticks for a mast.
He said: “I kept asking my mum, ‘Is it her birthday soon?’ And she would say, ‘Not now. Soon.’” The little girl did not live to receive the present.
One survivor, Ivor Perl, makes an emotional return to Auschwitz but another, Anita Lasker-wallfisch, a cellist who was a member of the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, is fiercely opposed to the camp becoming “a sightseeing event”.
Manfred Goldberg returns to Kassel in Germany for a memorial ceremony honouring his younger brother, who was murdered by the Nazis. The street where they lived now bears a small plaque. “I wonder whether passers-by ever stop to glance at this and inquire into the background. I have my doubts,” he says in the film.
A recent survey in the US found that two-thirds of millennials have never heard of Auschwitz. The Second World War is part of the curriculum in Britain, and the BBC said it wanted to make the film available to schools.
Alison Kirkham, the executive who commissioned the documentary, said: “It is important that we retain the memories and the testimony for posterity. That feels like a really important responsibility.”
The director, Arthur Cary, said he hopes it will still be watched “in 100 or 200 years’ time”.
He said: “I felt that what I could contribute was not sit all of the survivors down and ask them to go through those years from A-Z and then piece together a film about the past, but to go and spend time with them and try and find a way to connect with them.
“They are very normal people who lived through something extraordinary.
“It was a privilege to spend all this time with them. They all have a quiet dignity. I didn’t want to impose a film on them, I wanted this to be their film and let them speak for themselves.
“It’s the memories of separation from a parent that seem to be the area they found most difficult to talk about but was at the heart of their experience.”
While the film is emotional viewing, there are very few tears on screen. Ms Pollack, who lost 50 relatives, says: “I haven’t been able to cry because I think crying would have no end.”
‘I didn’t want to impose a film on them, I wanted this to be their film and let them speak’
Anew BBC documentary, The Last Survivors, follows individuals who survived the Nazi death camps, with stories that demand to be heard and remembered. They are necessary witnesses to history’s greatest evil.
But what will happen when the survivors are no longer among us? Already, with the Second World War two or three generations past, the distance of time is breeding ignorance. A survey released late last year found that roughly a third of Europeans know little or nothing about the Holocaust.
Here in Britain, new forms of anti-semitism are on the rise, especially among the far-left. This must be countered with argument and education, and better history. The young have to know what happens when hate wins – when fear and ideology trump compassion and reason.