Survivors unite for Radio 4 programme
FOUR AUSCHWITZ survivors have shared their experiences of the death camp for a Radio 4 programme to be broadcast this weekend.
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Lily Ebert, Susan Pollack and Zigi Shipper were interviewed by presenter Sue MacGregor for an episode of The Reunion, which brings together people involved in key moments of history.
Michelle Hyer, Holocaust education programmer at JW3, helped to organise the broadcast, which she said was “more important than ever in this current climate”.
“It was an honour and a privilege to help put together this group of survivors for Radio 4 and advise the producers,” she told the JC.
“JW3 provides a cultural enrichment programme just for survivors and refugees which has enabled me to build a relationship with these incredible people over a number of years.”
Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch survived Auschwitz by playing in the women’s orchestra at the camp. A talented cellist, she became a professional musician in Britain after the war. She was appointed an MBE for services to Holocaust education in 2016.
Mrs Ebert, 87, was 14 when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944 and transported the country’s 300,000 Jews to concentration camps.
She was sent to Auschwitz with her family, where her mother, younger brother and younger sister were immediately sent to the gas chambers.
For the past 40 years she has worked with the Holocaust Educational Trust, educating young people about the Shoah.
Mr Shipper was was born in January 1930 to a Jewish family in Poland and attended Jewish school. In 1940, he and his grandparents were forced to move into the Lodz Ghetto. He was 14 when he arrived at Auschwitz.
It took more than 50 years for him to feel able to talk publicly about his experiences about the camps. Mrs Pollack was born in 1930 in Felsögöd, Hungary. She was taken to Auschwitz in 1944 with her mother, who was killed on arrival. She lied about her age after another girl told her that anyone under the age of 15 was killed immediately.
In 2015 Mrs Pollack testified at the trial of a former Nazi SS guard in Germany. She is one of the few people to have come face to face with Josef Mengele, the high-ranking Nazi known as the “angel of death,” and lived to tell the tale.
The Reunion will air on August 19 at 11.15am on Radio 4
It was an honour to put this group together’