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A Family Story on Holocaust Memorial Day

Category: Social Mobility

Testimonial

As surprising as it sounds, the Holocaust was a regular and normal part of conversations during my childhood. Sitting in my grandparents’ home on a Saturday afternoon, they would share their experiences with their eight grandchildren. To keep the memories of loved ones alive, but also because they were experiences from their childhood and were relatable to us. My grandparents were among the lucky ones: they didn’t go to a concentration camp. They escaped, but grew up in Germany and Austria, living under Nazi rule, and as I will share, suffered things no child should ever have to.

My grandmother grew up in a town called Karlsruhe in the south of Germany, not far from Munich. She was six years old when the Nazis came to power. Every day in school, her teacher would make her list the reasons Jewish people were bad, make her sing songs of praise to the Fuhrer, and was victimised alongside a handful of other Jewish students in the class. She was part of a large family, most of whom perished in the camps. Her two uncles, Benny and Yaacov, led successful escapes from concentration camps, until they were finally caught and killed trying to infiltrate another camp to create an escape.

Together with her parents and first cousin, she escaped to the UK in August 1939. My great grandfather had been pulled out the line for deportation to Dachau. This was because his former secretary, whom he had been kind to, had a close, personal relationship with the local head of the Gestapo.

My grandmother told us these stories not to scare us, but to show us that no matter how life can let you down, there are always good people willing to help. Having suffered a miserable school experience, my grandmother sought to ensure that many children could have a more positive experience, setting up and running a nursery for many years. Despite her entire way of life having to change at a young age, her father being held in an internment camp when they arrived in England, and of course living in London through the Blitz, she always told us how lucky she felt to be alive, and to not have suffered in the same way as so many others. She would regale us with stories of her childhood in Germany with her extended family, and the mischief they got up to, focussing on the positives, despite so many of those cousins perishing. We learned at a young age to make our lives count for something, which is why each of her eight grandchildren are either professional care givers, or incredibly active volunteers.

My grandfather was nowhere near as lucky. He lived in Vienna, an only child and was 13 at the time of the German annexation. A few months later, in November 1938, he suffered through Kristallnacht – where Jewish homes, places of worship and shops were attacked, with many Jews left broken and dead in a government-organised pogrom. The following morning, together with his father, Norbert, he was ordered onto the streets, and – at gun point – made to clear up the mess the pogrom had caused. He rarely spoke about his experiences as a teenager in a Nazi country, but he undoubtedly suffered physical, verbal and emotional abuse. After Kristallnacht, his parents realised things were about to get a lot worse, and managed to secure him a place on Kindertransport, made possible by British government regulations changing to allow a quota of unaccompanied minors to enter Britain, and the kindness and philanthropy of many British people, including Sir Nicholas Winton.

Taken in at various hostels for Jewish immigrants, and in constant contact with various social workers, my grandfather grew up away from his parents and was fortunately in an environment where his natural ability in maths was noticed, and he was able to secure qualifications as a chartered engineer.

My great grandmother also managed to escape, although I have never been exactly sure how – and made her way to the UK, working as a domestic servant and eventually reuniting with my grandfather shortly before the end of the war.

My great grandfather was not so lucky. He was –like 6 million other Jewish people, and about 1-1.5 million others, whose views, sexuality or religion didn’t meet with the Nazi ideal –murdered. We know from records that he was transported to Auschwitz on 28th August 1942, and that he perished there. My grandfather said goodbye to his father at the age of 13, and never saw him again.

 

Letter from Welfare Department

Written: “Dear Otto; it is with sincere regret that I have to forward today information to you about your father, which has just come to hand. We have heard from the United Kingdom Secret Bureau that according to latest information, your father was deported from… to Auschwitz on August 28th, 1942. I am afraid that this means the worst. Needless to say, how sorry I am to have to forward such sad news to you and your mother. Yours sincerely, Mr W. Ruppin, Welfare Department (December 19th, 1946)

 

Over the years, I have been fortunate to hear first-hand from a number of those who survived the concentration camps and hear the harrowing tales of their experience. Above all, much like my grandparents, I have been inspired by how they took the broken pieces of their childhoods and made them into a brighter future. People like Sir Ben Helfgott who represented Great Britain in the Olympics, and Elie Wiesel, who contributed so much to education and human rights, and many others who gave up so much of their time to record their testimony and share their experiences. I would recommend reading Martin Gilbert’s ‘The Boys: Triumph Over Adversity’, and watching survivor testimony on the Holocaust Educational Trust, or the Stephen Spielberg US Holocaust Memorial Museum websites.

I have been able to visit various Holocaust exhibits around the world, and spend a day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.1 million of the 1.3 million were murdered.

If you want to really understand the expression ‘hell on earth’, you just need to go there.

To stand in the fields of Birkenau on a November morning, shivering despite multiple layers, knowing that two generations ago, my family were standing there in threadbare pyjamas. Seeing the remains of the chimneys where they incinerated the bodies. Standing in a gas chamber that has scratch marks in the concrete where people used the last moments of their life in wild panic, trying to survive. Passengers arrived at Auschwitz in a cattle cart driven by train. When they arrived, they faced selection – to the right, immediate death. To the left, the labour camps for prolonged agony which almost always ended in death as well. Standing on this platform, it all became too much for me. I could visualise the misery of families being separated, imagine the cries of children, and realise that if I was born in a different time or place, I would likely have been there as well.

Tortured and murdered simply because I am a Jew.

 

A stone picked up from Auschwitz

 

In that moment, and I am still not sure why, I reached down and picked up a stone (pictured) which I keep in my bedside cabinet. The stone was an inanimate object that witnessed the worst of humankind, the most abject misery, and the most horrific crimes. It reminds me that as a human being, I have the responsibility to not be inanimate in the face of injustice, to act and do my little bit to ensure ‘never again’ is not just a phrase, but a promise.

So, I must conclude by talking about the present.

I am afraid that antisemitism is once again a regular occurrence. Just a few weeks ago a bus full of Jewish children was attacked by three men on Oxford Street in London. There are hundreds of reported cases of antisemitism in the UK each month, and online antisemitic abuse is both normalised, and virulent. As a Jewish person who is easily identified because I wear a skullcap, I have been insulted, spat at and threatened, and I feel increasingly less secure. I wouldn’t walk around Paris with my skullcap on, and I am nervous in some parts of London, because there is a growing risk someone will try and do me harm. The physical threat I can cope with. It’s why there are security guards at my synagogue, and why when you take your voluntary shift, you are provided a stab-proof vest. It’s why my daughters’ school is a fortress, with blast gates and high fences, and why, once a year, they practice what to do in the event of an attack.

The real concern however is the hidden antisemitism; the feeling that somehow, there is a belief that Jews are privileged, and being Jewish is not truly a characteristic that needs protecting. That somehow, anti-Jewish racism is less important than other forms. It is under that cloud cover –that veil of indifference –that the Holocaust happened in the midst of what you have to assume was a majority of decent people. You may have heard about things like this online or in the news, and been unsure of how to react. Those who know me will know that I am not given to hyperbole; these feelings are real and shared by many Jews, in Britain and around the world.

We live in an imperfect world and my grandparents gave me a great grounding in channelling every adversity into a positive. I am so grateful to Capita for allowing a space for me to share my history and my thoughts in this forum, and to help preserve the memories of the victims of the Holocaust, including my great grandfather Norbert Rosmarin, of blessed memory.

by Simon Mitchell

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