Simple artefacts – a striped uniform, a shoe and some eating utensils – will help to encapsulate the horror of the Holocaust when they go on display at a new exhibition centre in Huddersfield.
The Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre opens at the University of Huddersfield in September with funding including more than £600,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
A leading role in its creation has been played by the Leeds-based Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association (HSFA), chaired by Lilian Black.
She recently returned from a visit to the memorial sites of the former concentration camps of Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora where she negotiated the loan of objects that illustrate the daily life of victims.
The items consist of drinking and eating bowls, spoons and a shoe, plus the uniform of a Polish prisoner named Mieczyslaw Kowalski. The International Tracing Service, which documents victims of the Nazis, was able to provide information about him.
Born in September 1928, Mieczyslaw was imprisoned in October 1944, at Breslau, aged 16, then sent to Gross-Rosen concentration camp. He was transferred to Mittelbau-Dora on February 12, 1945, as a forced labourer. He spent time in the hospital prison suffering from frostbite and was liberated by American troops in April 1945, before being repatriated to Poland by The Red Cross.
Lilian’s late father Eugene, a Czech-born Jew who survived the Holocaust to build a new life in England, was a slave labourer at Mittelbau-Dora where the Nazis constructed the V2 rocket. He was sent to the camp after undergoing a selection process at Auschwitz-Birkenau and is likely to have encountered Mieczyslaw Kowalski.
Emma King, director of the Holocaust Heritage and Learning Centre, said: “It is amazing to have such precious and original artefacts from the original camp settings to be able to display for people to be able to actually see the reality of daily life in the camps.
“It was a deeply moving and emotional experience to see and touch these items which belonged to a human being who survived and donated them to our German partners. They add and enrich the documentary evidence we already have, of testimonies, photographs and recorded minutes of meetings planning the Final Solution.”
The artefacts were handed over to the centre at a special ceremony attended by many of the people closely involved in the project, including one of its patrons, Yorkshire businessman and philanthropist Jonathan Straight.
University deputy vice-chancellor Prof Tim Thornton, who also attended, said: “It is our great honour to be able to work with the HSFA and its partners to bring this new development to the University of Huddersfield for future teaching, learning and research. This is just the start of what I believe to be one of the most important partnerships for the future.”
Lilian said: “It has been a long journey in more ways than one as my father and other survivors were prisoners at these former concentration camps, but it is critical that we preserve our legacy and make it accessible for future generations to know how thin the layers of civilisation are.
“I cannot speak highly enough about our German partners in Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora for entrusting us with such precious items.”
In addition to its Heritage Lottery Fund Award, the Holocaust Heritage and Learning Centre has received support from the university the Pears Foundation, the Toni Schiff Memorial Fund, the Association of Jewish Refugees and a number of firms and patrons.
