Elland couple look back on Holocaust Memorial Day

Jan 27 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Elland couple look back on Holocaust Memorial Day

Ibi said: “They told the Hungarian police to round up all the Jews in the county outside the synagogue in the town centre. Then we were taken, all 11,000 of us, to the ghetto.

Unlike Val, Ibi spent only three weeks in the ghetto.

She said: “The Germans knew they were losing the war, so everything was going very, very fast. They told us we were going to Germany to work.

“Seventy-two of us were crammed in a cattle wagon. After three days the doors opened and I saw a row of SS men with rifles over their shoulders. We had no idea where we were.”

Ibi and her family had arrived at the most notorious death camp of all – Auschwitz.

The Nazis immediately separated the prisoners into groups.

Ibi’s father Herman was taken away with the rest of the men aged 15 to 45. He survived the war, but his wife and two of his daughters did not.

Ibi said: “My mother and I were standing with arms linked when we got to the head of the queue. An SS man pulled my arm away from my mother and said she and my younger sisters would go to a different camp where they wouldn’t have to work.

“All the time they were lying. The old, the children and the mothers were taken straight to the gas chambers.”

Ibi’s mother Emily, 46, and her two younger sisters Rachel, 10, and Miriam, 7, were taken away and killed.

Ibi and her other sister Judith, 13, were taken to the showers. She said: “They shaved all our hair off and then gave us soap. It wouldn’t lather. I found out later that the soap was made from human skin.”

Ibi and Judith stayed in a huge barrack housing 1,200 women. She said: “We would sleep 10 to a bed. In the morning they would bring us a cooking pot full of coffee and we would have to drink it like animals.

“At lunchtime we would get soup which had stones in it. You had to hold your nose as you ate. For dinner we each got 200 grammes of bread with a little margarine in the corner.

“The Nazis didn’t make us work, they were just waiting for the crematoria to come free so they could do away with us.”

By this stage the Red Army was advancing steadily towards Auschwitz, which is in modern-day Poland.

Ibi said: “At night we could hear the Allies bombing. In August 1944 we were taken from Auschwitz to Kaufering in southern Germany.

“It was a slave labour camp rather than an extermination camp. Every day we marched for two hours to the site of an underground factory.

“We made soup for the men working there, then in the evening we marched back to the camp.”

Like Val, Ibi remembers liberation on May 1, 1945 as a bittersweet day.

She said: “When I saw the US Army coming up to the camp in their jeeps I was euphoric. But then I realised my community was dead and I felt guilty for surviving.”

Ibi went to work at a hospital near Dachau, helping fellow survivors from the camp. It was there in November 1945 that she met a young man from Lithuania.

Val said: “That meeting was a turning point for both of us. We fell in love and decided to start a new life for ourselves.”

The couple married in 1946 and moved to Munich, where Val trained to be a radio technician. Two years later they heard that post-war Britain desperately needed workers.

Val said: “They were looking for miners, domestics and textile workers.

We got permits to go to England as textile workers. I have very pleasant memories of arriving in England.”

The couple settled in Elland and went to work at James Thornton Mill, Val as a weaver and Ibi as a burner and mender.

Val believes England is a tolerant country. He said: “I have never experienced anti-Semitism in this country. I was welcomed with open arms everywhere I went.”

The couple have two daughters, Pauline, 59 and Amanda, 52. Like many children of Holocaust survivors, Pauline and Amanda grew up without the extended family that other people take for granted.

Ibi said: “When Pauline was young she used to ask why she didn’t have grandparents like her friends did. You can’t tell a five-year-old about the evils that her family went through.

“We told our daughters about the Holocaust when they were about 14.”

Val and Ibi are both keen to educate the next generation, including their three grandchildren, about the Holocaust. In 1992 Val wrote the book And Kovno Wept about his experiences.

The couple, who are members of the Holocaust Education Trust, regularly visit schools to explain what happened to them. This month they have visited Moor End Technology College in Crosland Moor and Colne Valley High School.

Val said: “We’re trying to instil tolerance among young people. I want to point out to young people how privileged they are to live in a stable democracy.”

The Holocaust

ELEVEN million people, including six million Jews, were murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War. Victims included gypsies, homosexuals, communists and Soviet prisoners of war.

At first, special units of German soldiers moved around conquered territory killing people in mass shootings.

Later victims were rounded up into ghettos before being moved to concentration camps where they were either gassed or worked to death on starvation rations.

Holocaust Memorial Day is marked on January 27 each year – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz - where more than one million people were murdered.

Holocaust Events

EVENTS are taking place across Britain to remember the 11 million people murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War.

Kirklees Council will hold a special event at Dewsbury Town Hall at 7.15pm on Thursday.

Children from north Kirklees who visited Auschwitz will present a DVD of their experiences at the event. There will also be music from Avtar Lota, Annie Dearman and Steve Harrison and poetry from Adam Strickson.

Children from Moor End Technology College in Crosland Moor, Thornhill High, Westborough High School and St John Fisher Catholic High School in Dewsbury have produced artwork for the event.

Auschwitz survivor Iby Knill will be the guest speaker at Thursday’s memorial, which will be hosted by Kirklees Mayor Clr Karam Hussain.

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is Stand up to Hatred.

Organiser Dr Stephen Smith said: “It is vitally important we take this opportunity to encourage people to remember the lessons of the Holocaust and more recent genocides.

“They provide us with a powerful warning of where hatred can lead us if left unchecked.

“People are still attacked, discriminated against, persecuted and bullied because of who they are – because of their religion, sexuality, race or disability. We need to do something to stop this.”