Daughters of refugees set for Sunday’s Antiques Roadshow
THE DAUGHTERS of refugees from Nazi Germany will be on the Antiques Roadshow, exploring the history of items their parents brought with them when they escaped to the UK.
Diana Barzilay and Evie Hill will be appearing on the BBC series on Sunday with a candelabra, a silver bowl and their late mother’s engagement ring. They will also show an album of photos taken aboard the St Louis.
Diana, who lives in Poole in Dorset, told the JC that going on the show “wasn’t about finding out the value of the items, but about sharing my parents’ story”.
Elsa and Selmar Biener left Magdeburg in Germany in May 1939 on the St Louis liner, which sailed from Hamburg to Havana in Cuba. Of the 937 passengers, almost all of them were Jewish refugees.
Cuba’s government refused to allow the ship to land and neither America nor Canada were willing to admit the passengers. The ship was forced to turn around and was finally allowed to dock in Antwerp in Belgium.
UK prime minster Neville Chamberlain agreed to take 288 passengers, who travelled on to the UK on other ships. 254 of the other St Louis passengers ended up being murdered in the Holocaust.
Elsa, 23, and Selmar, 33, who were already married, were able to find refuge in the UK. They were initially interned on the Isle of Man, before moving to Upper Clapton in East London and then to Cricklewood, northwest London, where Evie and Diana grew up. “The experience of showing our parents’ items on the show was very emotional for us,” said Evie, who lives in north-west London. “Our parents never talked about their experiences of the war. A lot of what we learnt was from listening to their conversations over the years, which they thought we didn’t understand. But I was aware of what relatives who hadn’t managed to escape had endured and I was hugely affected by what had happened. This has left a deep scar that I don’t think will ever totally heal.”
The episode was filmed by the sea in Swanage and Diana recalled that interviewer Siobhan Tyrell was “most interested in the photo album”, adding: “It was lovely to be able to share the story. I just regret that we don’t know more than we do, but I am pleased that we are able to talk about it, especially now with everything going on with Israel.”
Evie added: “It upsets me enormously that since the events of October 7 in Israel, people are denying history when there is so much evidence of what people endured.”
Michael Newman, CEO of the Association of Jewish Refugees, who put the sisters in touch with the show’s producers, told the JC: “We are so proud that AJR member Diana Barzilay will be on the Antiques Roadshow this Sunday, spotlighting the lesser-known story of the St Louis.”