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G2G Presents: The Story of Willy Halpert, 14 July, 7.30 pm – Zoom

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Other events

G2G News – July 2025

Newsletter for Generation 2 Generation

Winter 2023 V6 Winter 2023 V6 pdf

We deeply appreciate your support. Please share this newsletter with those who believe in our mission of Holocaust education and remembrance. Your efforts help us ensure that the lessons of history are never forgotten. Thank you.

July 2025 | Tamuz 5785

Editorial

On 8 May we marked 80 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe: VE Day.  In our mind’s eye many of us probably see the famous newsreel footage of British crowds celebrating in the Mall, cheering and singing, dancing and embracing.

But for Jews on the continent, for the remaining third of the Jewish people who had lived and thrived there before the advent of Nazism, it was more of a mixed experience. No doubt everyone was glad to know that Germany had been defeated. Yet once these few survivors, often emerging from the camps or from hiding, tried to return to their homes, they did not necessarily have a happy homecoming. In our two features this month, we explore this theme. Dr Ellis Spicer, author of Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Britain: Community and Belonging, gives an overview of what happened, and four G2G speakers tell of their own relative’s experience in returning to their old hometown.

In August we will be taking a summer break and there will be no Events Update that month. We look forward to seeing you again for our full newsletter in September.

Vivienne Cato

G2G Upcoming Events

Monday 14 July 19:30 (online on Zoom)

G2G Presents:  The Story of Willy Halpert

Using filmed testimony of Willy Halpert, G2G speaker Melvyn Leach will tell the story of his survival as a hidden child in Belgium. We will also learn what happened to Willy’s parents and to other members of his family. Willy, who lives in Canada, is a member of Melvyn’s family. Click here to book.

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Recent Events

G2G News

This academic year has seen continued growth for G2G, and we are receiving new bookings daily.

Across 2024-25 our speakers have been asked to present to 446 audiences in educational, community and civic organisations, numbering in total over 45,000 people. This represents an increase of 20 per cent on the previous year. Schools continue to represent more than 75 per cent of our talks, with civic organisations also showing increased demand.  Overall, since becoming a charity in January 2020, we have delivered over 1,300 presentations to approximately 140,000 people.

The number of our G2G Holocaust presenters has increased from 37 to 42 and we expect to have a total of 48 accredited speakers by the end of 2025. We continue successfully to recruit new speakers, with a specific focus on the Third Generation and those living outside London.  In total we are currently assisting over 20 speakers to develop their presentations, with ongoing mentoring, training and technical assistance. 

Our continued growth is thanks to the hard work of all our wonderful volunteers, who are involved in publicising our work, generating bookings, mentoring our new speakers, fundraising, and delivering presentations – all overseen and driven by our planning committee and trustees. As a result, we continue to receive wonderful feedback about our presentations to schools and to adult audiences. Here is a sample. 

“The presentation on the Holocaust was truly powerful. The way they conveyed the historical significance, and the emotional depth of the topic was amazing. I really appreciated how they highlighted both the personal and collective impact, making it not just informative, but deeply moving. It’s clear they put a lot of effort into it, and it really resonated with me. The presenter’s slides were meaningful and very engaging to one and it also was very appealing to one’s eyes as it shows and strengthens the point and story.”(School student, 14) 

“It helps me to…. remind the students that it began with small things. I have been in teaching for 20 years…. The work G2G is doing is by far the most engaging and impactful that I have experienced.”
(Teacher, Maidstone)

“This was the third year of Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh’s commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, and we thank Generation 2 Generation profoundly for educating us about the Holocaust.  All the speakers we have had so far have been passionate about sharing their experiences and thoughts.  Thank you Generation 2 Generation. I think these stories are a powerful medium for telling stories of persecution of Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Afghanistan. We too need to gather personal stories and convey them effectively.”
(The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh) 

We invite you to contact us to book a speaker for your organisation. Either email bookings@generation2generation.org.uk or Click here to book.

Features

Our special features on music this month are profiles of the life and work of, first, Heinz Lewin, and then Hans Neumeyer.

Returning Home

Ellis Spicer

Ellis Spicer conducted her PhD at the University of Kent between 2017 and 2021. Her book ‘Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Britain: Community and Belonging’ was published by Palgrave Macmillan in September 2024.

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It was often assumed that liberated survivors wanted to return to their nation of origin, or what they defined as ‘home’. It was assumed that the fall of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War meant an end to ‘statelessness’. However, Joanne Reilly has highlighted how there was a ‘slow realisation’ that many refugees and survivors did not share this view, and desired a fresh start away from their trauma. Katy Long has also drawn attention to the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe, provoking a lesser desire to return to another authoritarian regime.
 
There was also a much simpler explanation for a lack of desire to return ‘home’: many survivors did not consider their countries of origin their home anymore, rather the site of their families’ extermination. The months following their liberation became not just an attempt at physical and emotional rehabilitation but gathering information about their families’ fates. There was a broad sense of having ‘nothing to go back to’, with the destruction of whole communities giving surviving Jews the sense that they would be returning to a ‘hostile graveyard’.
 
‘Emotionally empty’, survivors sought being far away from the geography of their trauma. Such severe loss, particularly of important places, and indeed the overall concept of what their home was and became can have a paralysing effect on the relationship survivors have to their past, present and future.
 
There have been numerous writings on the concept of home and what the destruction of home can mean to an individual, and the trauma it can cause, or indeed worsen. This evolves for survivors as they become transnational in their approach and immigrate to countries such the UK, evoking how they can develop attachments ‘to more than one place and the ways in which home is shaped by memories as well as everyday life in the present’. Writing in 2001, John Porteous and Sandra Smith highlighted that no word existed for the action of destroying peoples’ homes or expelling them from their homelands, proposing the neologisms of ‘domicide’ (home destruction) and ‘memoricide’ (the destruction of memory’s ‘physical prop, the cultural landscape’).
 
Peter Read has written of the devastation that can be found when an individual returns to locations they associate with their childhood and finds them destroyed. This was indeed the case for many who attempted to return to their hometowns, who found their previous homes to be occupied by those unwilling to relinquish them, and continued antisemitism despite liberation from Nazism. Despite Poland being freed from the Nazi regime, centuries of antisemitism endured, with Roman Halter recalling examples of stones being thrown at them, with the police and military laughing rather than punishing the aggressors. These instances such as those recalled by Halter are but a small insight into the treatment of the Jews in postwar Poland who attempted to return to a place they had previously called home.
 
The stories of violence and threat encountered by young survivors who returned to postwar Poland from Theresienstadt seeking their lost homes and enquiring as to the fate of their families resonated within the testimony they have given since their arrival in the UK. The most extensive example of published material relating to this theme is former ’45 Aid Society President Sir Ben Helfgott’s1983 article for the Society Journal documenting his experience of returning to Poland. Evocatively, he opens his article with the following statement: ‘When I recall the nightmares of the Holocaust years, there is none that fills me with a greater dread and horror than the one I experienced on my return to Poland soon after my liberation’. Travelling with his cousin to their hometown of Piotrków, they had been treated well on the journey, and it had begun to restore their faith in humanity. To their dismay, this did not last long after crossing the border from Czechoslovakia into Poland, where they were interrogated as to their identities, with proof being demanded that they were survivors. Upon producing their Theresienstadt ID, they were asked to attend the police station with the officers, who proceeded to refer to them as ‘f****** Jews’ and demanded that they be silent. They were taken to a house where their Red Cross-provided clothes were stolen, and they were threatened with guns despite desperate pleas for mercy. The lines with which their interactions with the officers closed were haunting and reflect just how close the two boys had come to death: ‘You can consider yourselves very lucky. We have killed many of your kind. You are the first we have left alive’.
 
Ben’s article closed with how fortunate he felt to have escaped when so many Jews who returned to Poland were killed, and how he often wonders what happened to those individuals who were ‘strewn like dogs in unknown and forsaken places’. Ben’s powerful recounting of this additional trauma reminds us that antisemitism did not end with the end of the war and that survivors faced additional tribulations after their liberation. The opportunity to start again in different countries such as Britain was vital for these young survivors to begin to rebuild their lives.

Footnotes

i Reilly, Belsen, 81.
ii Long, Katy. 2013. The Point of No Return: Refugees, Rights and Repatriation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 62.
iii Reilly, Belsen, 81.
iv Long, The Point of No Return, 62.
v Unknown, Author. 15 June 1945. The Tragedy of Terezin. Jewish Chronicle, 9.
vi Reilly, Belsen, 83.
vii Read, Peter. 1996. Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 29-30.
viii Blunt, Alison and Dowling, Robyn. 2006. Home. Abingdon: Routledge, 202.
ix Porteous, John Douglas and Smith, Sandra Eileen. 2001. Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ix.
x Read, Returning to Nothing, vii.
xi Helfgott, Ben. 1983. My Welcome to Poland After the War. Journal of the ’45 Aid Society, 9.
xii Ibid, 10.
xiii Ibid, 11.

Reilly, Belsen, 81.
Long, Katy. 2013. The Point of No Return: Refugees, Rights and Repatriation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 62.
Reilly, Belsen, 81.
Long, The Point of No Return, 62.
Unknown, Author. 15 June, 1945. The Tragedy of Terezin. Jewish Chronicle, 9.
Reilly, Belsen, 83.
Read, Peter. 1996. Returning to Nothing: The Meaning of Lost Places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 29-30.
Blunt, Alison and Dowling, Robyn. 2006. Home. Abingdon: Routledge, 202.
Porteous, John Douglas and Smith, Sandra Eileen. 2001. Domicide: The Global Destruction of Home. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, ix.
Read, Returning to Nothing, vii.
Helfgott, Ben. 1983. My Welcome to Poland After the War. Journal of the ’45 Aid Society, 9.
Ibid, 10.
Ibid, 11.

Experiences of Survivor homecomings from within G2G 

Return from Auschwitz

Anita Peleg

Anita’s mother Naomi Blake was born Zissi Dum in Mukacevo, part of the new state of Czechoslovakia, which in 1938 became part of Nazi-backed Hungary. In April 1944 Naomi and her family were transported to Auschwitz where she and her sister were chosen for slave labour. Naomi managed to escape the Nazi death march in the face of the Russian army approach, returning home to Russian-occupied Mukacevo in June 1945.  

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From 2010–14, I wrote my mother Naomi Blake’s story of survival from Auschwitz. Despite all the terrible things she experienced, the part that I found the hardest to write was her experience of returning home.

She told me how she constantly dreamed that her father would be waiting for her on the doorstep of their house. But of course, her father was not there and what she found was a house in ruins, windows smashed, doors taken off their hinges, and all their possessions gone. As she walked around in shock she noticed white specks on the ground in the courtyard. Looking more closely, she discovered that these white specks were the remnants of her father’s holy books, torn to shreds and stamped into the ground. Overcome, she fainted and was helped by a neighbour who suggested where she might find assistance.

Assistance came in the form of other Jews who had recently returned and had seen or heard about the fate of her family members. She found her sister Malchi and her brother Moishe waiting for her. They were given a place to stay by a very kind Roma woman, who herself had been persecuted and then saved by a Russan soldier.

There they waited for news of the rest of the family. The wait was excruciating. Every day they went to the train station to see who descended the trains, every day they talked to different people to see if they had come across family members during their incarceration. Finally, they were overjoyed to see their sisters Ruchel and Sari return, together with Sari’s husband Erno. But from a family of 27 people only seven survived. Her parents and four brothers and sisters, along with their spouses and ten young children, had been murdered.

As I wrote this part of the story, I could feel the sadness and the emptiness, living in a place with no Jewish children and no-one over the age of 35, with no parents to offer advice.

My mother said, “It so happens that one feels guilty, it’s not a pleasant thing to survive other people, especially children. In the town you didn’t see a Jew. There used to be lots of bearded Jews, lots of children humming, playing, screaming, crying. Nothing on the street, only a few non-Jewish children, and they kept very quiet, they felt very uncomfortable. Whenever walking the streets we remembered, especially the children. We already knew that they did not survive at all. So, we ended up crying on each other’s shoulders wherever we happened to be together.”

{Source: British Library Audio Collection https://www.holocausttestimony.org.uk/interviewees/naomi-blake}

Grandma Lela returns to Athens

Jacqueline Luck

Lela Black née Amiel was born in 1918 in Salonica, Greece. In 1940 she moved from Salonica to Athens with her husband Joseph and young daughter Marcelle.  In 1944 the three were transported to Auschwitz where Lela was separated from her daughter and husband; she never saw them again. She was finally liberated by the Russians on 5 May 1945.  

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After surviving seven months in Auschwitz and having been liberated on 5 May from a munitions factory in Czechoslovakia, Lela was able to make her way back to Athens with the help of the Red Cross. She was the only survivor of her entire Greek family; although she entered Auschwitz with her six-year-old daughter Marcelle and husband Joseph, they did not make it out again.

By the time Lela arrived in Omonoia Square in central Athens, it was midsummer and very hot. Initially, nobody recognised her as her head was shaven, and she was wearing a military man’s uniform. When it became clear who she was, a huge number of people arrived to collect her, all fighting over who was to take her home! They asked her, “Where is Marcelle?” Lela answered flippantly, “Oh, she’s burnt”. Her friends looked at each other with disbelief, concluding that she must be mentally ill.

Since Lela’s property was no longer hers and had been looted after her deportation, her wonderful neighbours, the Kiritsis family, took her in and looked after her as if she were one of their own. Back in 1944, they had risked their lives to hide Lela, Marcelle and Joseph from the Nazis. Now that Lela was the only one left alive, they did everything they could to alleviate her suffering.

Lela remained there until 1946, when she joined her cousins, her only living relatives, in London.

Dachau revisited

Tim Locke

Raimund Neumeyer and his sister Ruth were born in the Bavarian town of Dachau. Despite being Jewish, the family did not follow the Jewish religion. They were brought up as Protestants, but they were persecuted by the Nazis because of their Jewish ancestry
. Despite their mother bringing up the children as Protestants, they were persecuted by the Nazis because of their Jewish ancestry. In May 1939 the two children escaped to England on a Kindertransport: their parents were murdered in the camps.

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My uncle Raimund Neumeyer came with my mother Ruth on a Kindertransport in 1939. The previous year the Burgomeister of Dachau, SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Dobler, forced them to leave their house in Dachau so that the town could be ‘free of Jews’. Just after his 18th birthday in 1943 Raimund joined the British army, anglicised his name to Raymond Newland and was posted to Germany as an interpreter for the intelligence service a month before the war ended.

In his letters to Ruth he describes the utter destruction of the country and his horror at the news from the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In 1946 he managed to get leave to visit Munich, where the Neumeyers spent their last months together in 1939, and found it in skeletal ruins. He hitchhiked from there to Dachau to visit old family friends: ‘In contrast to Munich, everything is intact: there’s virtually nothing changed at all.’ The former Neumeyer house was occupied by a tenant, who recognised him, wearing British army uniform, and screamed in shock. He then mounted a campaign to get Karl Dobler prosecuted: Dobler remained a free man but lost his job at Dachau town hall.

For more about Raymond’s letters to Ruth while he was serving as a British soldier, see my blog:
https://ephraimneumeyer.wordpress.com/2022/03/30/letters-from-war-torn-germany

A family lost

Angela Strach

Eric Strach was born in Brno, Moravia in 1914 and qualified as a doctor in 1938. Fortuitously finding himself in France on holiday soon after, he was advised to stay. In 1940 he joined the newly formed Czech Army in exile and travelled with them to England. During this time however, his family had been deported to Terezín, then on to concentration camps where they were murdered.

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In May 1945, my father returned to his home country, Czechoslovakia, for the first time since he had left in 1938. He was part of the team of medics who were sent to help with the outbreak of typhus in Terezín.

Before taking up his duties there, he visited his sister Ilse’s flat in Prague. The concierge told him that Ilse and her two children had been taken to Terezín in 1942 and from there, ten days later, she believed they were sent to the Lublin concentration camp. She had no more news of them after that.

Greatly saddened, my father then managed to find some cousins and an aunt in Prague who had, amazingly, survived Auschwitz. They told him that they had witnessed non-Jews sharing their rations with Ilse and the children, risking heavy penalties. One cousin told him she had seen his parents regularly in Auschwitz during 1944 but after a few months, saw them no more.

Knowing all his close family had been murdered, my father took up his duties in Terezín. The work was dangerous due to the high risk of contagion. Even some of his medical colleagues died from typhus.

After the work in Terezín was done, Dad returned to his old home in Brno. A neighbour told him most of the family’s furniture and belongings had been stolen, but he retrieved a few items. These were all that remained of his former life at the end of the war.

So Dad decided to make his home in Wigan, where he married and raised his family.

Partner Events

Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)

Wednesday 9 July 2025 19:00 (online)
Ask us about the Paris conference

If you are thinking about coming to the 35th Annual Conference of the  World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants  in Paris but have some questions, join us for this free online event when you can ask two 2Gs and two 3Gs about their experiences at past conferences. Registration is now open on the World Federation website. The conference, which will be held at the Marriott Rive Gauche, begins on Friday afternoon and ends on Monday midday, with optional trips on offer for before and after the conference, including to the Jewish quarters of Paris and to Drancy, the internment camp in the north of the city. All delegates will be offered a special hotel rate. Anyone who would want to travel together on the Eurostar from London can email nextgens@ajr.org.uk and we would be happy to coordinate the booking.  The Zoom link will be in the July Journal and in the weekly e-newsletter.

Sunday 10 August 14:00-17:00 (NW London venue)
Unearthing Holocaust Archives

A unique opportunity to meet experts from the top Holocaust Archives in the UK. Hear from the archivists and book your slot for a personal consultation. Meet other Holocaust descendants to compare family research techniques and resources. Featuring Dr Bea Lewkowicz, AJR Refugee Voices archive and Holocaust Testimony UK; Dr Amy Williams, newly discovered Kindertransport lists; World Jewish Relief, archive of Jewish refugee registration cards and files; The Wiener Holocaust Library London, Holocaust archives including the Arolson Archives (ITS).  Free to attend but donations are welcome to cover the cost of security and refreshments.   Click here to book. 


The National Holocaust Centre and Museum

Thursday 10 July 16:00-19:00 (in building)
Wednesday 13 August 10:00-13:00 (in building)

Professional Development Day: Teaching the Holocaust in Primary Schools 
Come to the Museum for a free professional development day, specially designed for primary school teachers.Click here to book .

Sunday 27 July 13:00-14:30 (in building)
The Archaeology of Romany Gypsies with John-Henry Phillips
Archaeologist, presenter, and filmmaker John-Henry Phillips will be coming to the Museum to discuss the history of Romany Gypsies in the UK, their heritage, and his fascinating discoveries.Click here to book .

Wednesday 6 August 11:00-14:00 (in building)
A Boy From Baghdad – Author Event with Miriam Halahmy
Author and friend of the Museum, Miriam Halahmy, hosts an interactive talk on her book A Boy From Baghdad, followed by a family writing workshop.Click here to book .

Wednesday 20 August 13:00-14:30 (in building)
History Wardrobe Presents: The Wartime Wardrobe
Following her previous sellout event, join clothes historian Lucy Adlington for highlights of Forties fashion in the History Wardrobe collection.   Click here to book .
 


Jewish Community Centre (JW3)
Wednesday 9 July 19:00 (in building and online)
Next Stop, Finchleystrasse!
Join journalist Etan Smallman for a colourful history of the Finchley Road and learn how influential and important it was for European Jews from the 1930s onwards.  From the Cosmo, Dorice and Balsam cafes to the Laterndl theatre and Blue Danube Club, the establishments of this microcosm of Mitteleuropa became a home from home for the displaced of NW3 and a tribute to a vanished world. Tickets £12.  Click here to book .

Our Freedom: Then & Now
An invitation to descendants of Holocaust survivors aged broadly 18–35 to explore how Holocaust memory is passed down and what freedom means today.In a warm, supportive space, participants will take part in a series of artist-led workshops to create a personal memory piece honouring someone affected by the Holocaust and will also co-produce a podcast reflecting on these stories. Beginning in September, the project will culminate in a public exhibition and launch at JW3 in November.  No creative experience is needed, nor a direct family connection to the Holocaust. Register your interest at tinyurl.com/jw3-freedom by 11 August or email gianina@jw3.org.uk for further information.


Second Generation Network (2GN)

Tuesday 9 September 18:30-20:00 (online)
Network Discussion Group Meeting: Love, Intimacy and Parenting

How much and how have our Second Generation patterns affected the ways in which we have raised our children? How much of our Second Generation inherited traumas have we passed on to the Third Generation?  Network Member Ido van der Heijden will give a brief introduction, after which participants will have the opportunity to share their own experiences and insights. Please note our Discussion Group meetings are for Network members only. To book a place please email: davidwirth@secondgeneration.org.uk .


Wiener Holocaust Library

Wednesday 9 July 9 18:30-20.00 (in building)
Book Launch: The Czech Refugee Trust Fund in Britain 1938-1975 – A Lifeline to Freedom

Join Charmian Brinson and Jana Buresova to discuss their new book on the Czech Refugee Trust Fund. The book documents the vital role of the British-based Czech Refugee Trust Fund (CRTF) and its predecessor, the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC). It provides much needed insight into the now almost forgotten political debates, controversies and difficulties that impacted on both the British and Czechoslovak governments as well as on refugees fleeing from Fascism in Czechoslovakia, especially during 1938 and 1939. Click here to book.
 
Thursday 10 July 10 19:00-20:00 (online)
Book Talk: Spaces of Treblinka with Jacob Flaws

The Holocaust and Genocide Research Partnership (HGRP), an initiative of The Wiener Holocaust Library and the Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway University of London, as part of the New Academic Book Series, are pleased to announce a lecture with Jacob Flaws on his new book Spaces of Treblinka, chaired by Dan Stone. Click here to book.
 
Wednesday 30 July 18.30-20.00 (in building)
Book Talk: German-Jewish Life Writing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust with Helen Finch in Conversation with Anna Hájková


A lecture with Helen Finch about her new book, German-Jewish Life Writing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust, in conversation with Anna Hájková. How did German-speaking Holocaust survivors pursue literary careers in an often-indifferent postwar society? How did their literary life writings reflect their postwar struggles? This monograph focuses on four authors who bore literary witness to the Shoah – H. G. Adler, Fred Wander, Edgar Hilsenrath, and Ruth Klüger. It analyses their autofictional, critical, and autobiographical works written between the early 1950s and 2015, which depict their postwar experiences of writing, publishing, and publicising Holocaust testimony. The Wiener Library has a close connection with H.G. Adler, who worked with the Library’s founder, Alfred Wiener, in collecting survivor interviews and more.   Click here to book.

Until 10 July
Exhibition: Traces of Belsen
Marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, this new exhibition (opened on 10 April) tells the full story of not just the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, but also the history of the camps at Bergen-Belsen during the Nazi era and then post-war, when it became the largest DP camp in Germany for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and emerged as a centre of renewal of Jewish life in Germany.

16 July-10 October
Exhibition: Looted: Two Families, Nazi Theft and the Search for Restitution

The original table owned by the Wertheimer family and restored by Katharina Mayrhofer and Helen Emily Davy, 2022.
It is estimated that property worth at least £135 billion in today’s currency was looted from Jews in Europe between 1938 and 1945. In Austria, following the Anschluss – the German takeover of Austria in March 1938 – Jews fled persecution by the Nazis. Many had their belongings stolen or had to sell them under duress.  One Jewish family from Braunau am Inn in Upper Austria, the Wertheimers, were forced to sell their home for a fraction of its worth in 1939. Some of the Wertheimers’ belongings came into the possession of their pro-Nazi neighbours, the Kaltenhausers, either through direct looting or as the result of pressured emergency sales.  Many decades later, Katharina Mayrhofer, a descendant of the Kaltenhausers, discovered a table in the attic of her family house near Braunau.  Mayrhofer embarked on a search for the original owners of the table, which led her to a collaborative project of restitution and restoration with Helen Emily Davy, a descendant of the Wertheimers.  This exhibition examines how descendants of victims of the Nazi era and of National Socialists confront a shared past. The Wertheimers’ table, an ordinary object with an extraordinary history, unearths difficult questions about memory, responsibility, and justice. For press enquiries please contact the Press and Communications Manager sdulieu@wienerholocaustlibrary.org.
This exhibition has been created with the support of the Austrian Ministry of Culture, Arts Council England and the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Invitation to participate in a project with the Wiener Holocaust Library
Photographer Mike Stone and Dr Barbara Warnock from the Wiener Holocaust Library are seeking participants for a project examining slave and forced labour in Nazi industry. ‘UK residents impacted by slave or forced labour are invited to share their experiences and have a photographic portrait made. We plan to feature these portraits in an exhibition at the Wiener Library in Spring 2026.’  For more information, to participate or to offer your assistance, please contact the organisers on 07721 844 380 or mike@mikestone.co.uk

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Past Newsletters

G2G Presents: The story of Liesl Woltär – Zoom

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G2G News – March 2025

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Winter 2023 V6 Winter 2023 V6 pdf

We deeply appreciate your support. Please share this newsletter with those who believe in our mission of Holocaust education and remembrance. Your efforts help us ensure that the lessons of history are never forgotten. Thank you.

May/June 2025 | Iyar/Sivan 5785

Editorial

Music and the Shoah

May 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day. It follows close upon the commemoration of Yom HaShoah, the worldwide Jewish community’s Holocaust Memorial Day, which itself follows on from the anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen on 15 April, which G2G marked on 6 May. The Hebrew date of 27 Nisan was chosen for this by the State of Israel in 1951 as it marks the date of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1944. In this edition you can read about G2G’s contribution to Yom HaShoah UK’s ceremony in London and about our event commemorating Bergen-Belsen at JW3.

The hope for a better future that is implicit in the marking of Yom HaShoah is shared by the human expression of music, its creation and its performance. In this edition we look at two Jewish composers of the Holocaust period whose music, once lost, is being rediscovered. Heinz Lewin was a celebrated and successful composer, widely known, whose career and life ended in Auschwitz. Hans Neumeyer, despite being blind from age 13, was a prolific composer who died in Terezin. Only a tiny fraction of his work has survived.

Whilst music was exploited and perverted by the Nazis to mask the horrors of their regime – one thinks particularly of camp orchestras of conscripted Jewish prisoners – when freely chosen it expresses joy and freedom. We have focussed on music in this issue as a testimony to the continuing optimism of the human spirit.

Vivienne Cato

G2G Upcoming Events

Wednesday 18 June 19:30 (online on Zoom)

G2G Presents The Story of Liesl Woltär

At the start of Refugee Week (16-22 June; refugeeweek.org.uk) Paul will tell the story of how his mother escaped from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia to the UK as a 26-year-old refugee, together with her 19-year-old sister. Paul incorporates Liesl’s own words, using scripts she wrote for talks she herself gave, voiced by her adult granddaughter. We will also hear about what happened to other family members left behind. Click here to book.

Monday 14 July 19:30 (online on Zoom)

G2G Presents:  The Story of Willy Halpert

Using filmed testimony of Willy Halpert, G2G speaker Melvyn Leach will tell the story of his survival as a hidden child in Belgium. We will also learn what happened to Willy’s parents and to other members of his family. Willy, who lives in Canada, is a member of Melvyn’s family. Click here to book.

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Recent Events

Yom HaShoah at Victoria Tower Gardens, 23 April 2025

Diana Cook

Survivor Harry Olmer and I stand in front of thousands of people gathered to pay tribute on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Harry stands proud in his dark suit, family members close behind him. There are six candles to light, honouring not only the six million, but also survivors, other innocent victims, righteous gentiles who risked their own lives, one and half million murdered children, and the lost generations. Each of the six candles is lit by a survivor, together with community representatives. I was honoured to be asked, together with fellow speaker, Maralyn Turgel, to light candles on behalf of G2G.

I was expecting the Yom HaShoah ceremony at Victoria Tower Gardens by the Houses of Parliament to be solemn, but nothing quite prepared me for the heart-wrenching interviews with survivors, who, despite suffering brutality, cruelty and degradation found the strength to restart their lives after the war. I think I must have had something in my eye when El Malei Rachanim, the memorial prayer, was sung from the depths of cantor Jonny Turgel’s heart.


Stories of Liberation, Resilience, Relief and Remembrance

Seymour Kelly and Liz Kelly


On Monday 6 May, JW3 in London hosted a G2G memorial event marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945. A moving tribute to the liberators of Europe and Holocaust survivors, the evening began with filmed testimonies of survivors remembering the moment they were freed.

G2G presenter John Wood spoke about his father Lt Col Leonard Berney, one of the first British Army liberators of Bergen-Belsen, and about why his father’s eyewitness account is still relevant today. Dr Peter Lantos, a Hungarian Jew who survived Belsen, spoke rivetingly about being, with his mother, miraculously liberated by the US Army from a train intended to deport some of Belsen’s surviving prisoners. He tragically lost his father and brother. Post-war in the UK, Dr Lantos went on to specialise in neurodegenerative diseases. Later in life, he managed to track down and meet up with the US soldier who had secured his freedom.

Ella Garai-Ebner, a 3G speaker for G2G, told the story of her Hungarian grandfather, Dr George Garai. The horrors of slave labour and concentration camps left Dr Garai unable to speak about his experiences. However, towards the end of his life he committed his story to writing, asking his descendants to tell the world.

Two actors from Time will Tell Theatre took to the stage with a spellbinding delivery of ‘Hell on Earth’, voicing testimonies of British forces staff in Belsen. Then JW3 Holocaust Education Programmer Thamar Barnett led a lively discussion panel with the guest speakers. Fittingly, the evening ended with more filmed reflections from Holocaust survivors – lessons for the future.

Features

Our special features on music this month are profiles of the life and work of, first, Heinz Lewin, and then Hans Neumeyer.

Heinz Lewin – Finding New Life in Extinguished Dreams

Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence

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Memories don’t always dull as we grow older and further from events.
My mother, Yvonne, has devoted the last several years to researching the grandparents she never knew, three lives extinguished in Auschwitz and the fourth in Riga.

From fragmented anecdotes, scraps of paper, interviews and the internet, she continues to uncover the story of her father’s father, the composer, Heinz Lewin. Eighty-three years after his final performance and his murder, his music and cabaret bring vibrant life from the ashes.

Heinz was born in Wiesbaden in 1888. There are records of Jews active in business around Wiesbaden’s thermal springs from the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 1920s, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig explored their Jewish spirituality there. His parents Moses and Chaja had hoped that Heinz would take over the family cigarette business they had established in 1891. It was a successful enterprise, at the forefront of glamour and artistic advertising. It was one of the first companies to attract customers with football cards.

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But Heinz had other dreams. From a young age, he showed extraordinary musical talent, composing songs, operettas and dance music. His first public performance was in Wiesbaden in 1904, aged just 16.

By 18 he had presented a three-act operetta, Prinzpapa. A 1908 review described him as ‘a young rival to Lehar… In the not-too-distant future, one can say that this or that polka, or a certain waltz style, is an ‘authentic Heinz Lewin.’’

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In 1912, Heinz married Jenny Trabsky. His growing prestige was evident: they held a civil ceremony in St Pancras, London, followed by a banquet at the Trocadero in Piccadilly as well as a chuppah [wedding] and dinner in a prestigious Wiesbaden hotel. 

Drafted into the German army during the first World War, Heinz served as a truck driver until an injury brought him home. He returned to both the cigarette factory and his music.

My mother’s father Ralph was born in 1914. He shared few memories of his childhood, but he recalled ruling musical staves on blank paper for his father while Heinz composed at the piano – with a parrot perched on his shoulder.

From 1925 to 1936, Heinz’s success took him to Berlin. He went on to write the soundtracks to silent movies. His compositions were included in the early talkies in Germany and France, and later in the 1930s Hollywood remakes of European films.

He became a member of Schlaraffia Berolina, a cosmopolitan society of artists that mimicked a medieval Teutonic court. It was banned in 1937. As life for Jews in Germany darkened, Heinz adopted the pen name Henri Letton and moved to France.

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With the outbreak of war in 1939, he was interned as an enemy alien. He was sent to the labour camp at Septfonds in Vichy France — a camp for political prisoners and Jews.

The commandant of the Jewish prisoners was Capitaine Prévôt. Acknowledging that his prisoners included intellectuals and talented artists, he encouraged them. In June 1942 Prévôt arranged a fundraising gala concert to support the camp and the neighbourhood. It was under the musical direction of my great-grandfather. 

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Through researching Septfonds survivors’ literature and archives 15 years ago, my mother connected with two of the youngest prisoners. Jules Fainzanc had sung in the concert. He would later survive five death-marches. Henri Lichtenstein worked in the communications room and was in the neighbouring barracks to Heinz. In August 1942, it was Lichtenstein who took the fateful order that the Septfonds camp was to be emptied of its Jewish inmates.

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They recalled that Prévôt kept back his ‘concert Jews’ for two extra days to allow for one final performance. But on the night of 3 September 1942, Heinz was one of 211 names on the train from Septfonds to Drancy. On 9 September, he was listed among a thousand deported to Auschwitz on Convoy 30. And there, Heinz perished. But his story doesn’t end. 

Capitaine Prévôt was a meticulous man. He recorded the camp’s day-to-day activities in his diaries. Prévôt’s archive was recently purchased from his family by local historian and councillor Jean Marc Labarta. Not only had Prévôt encouraged the artists in the camp, he had retained the prisoners’ cartoons of him and also their musical scores.

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The words of the prisoners’ march underscore the strain of their work and yet a spirit which is unbroken.

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Reveille, refrain, in sunshine and rain, 
We march with songs on our lips.
With pickaxe and shovels 
We work in the forests, in fields and meadows
All happiness forgotten, 
Hard at work, the day is so long,
Tirelessly, we toil but always with good heart [humour].
Marching through villages and sleepy landscapes, 
Singing this same tune.

Beautiful watercolours cover musical scores of compositions written in the camp by Heinz Lewin. Behind the illustrations are original compositions, dances and songs, written by the grandfather my mother never knew.
A Rumba d’Amour, a passionate dance of love, was written in Septfonds – music, written and performed in the darkness of captivity by those who yet dreamed of liberation.

A cartoon from 1941 and a photograph from 1942 show Heinz at the piano. The musical ensemble of the Septfonds camp was preparing for the gala concert.

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Souviens-Toi
Remember! My darling.
Our kisses, so tender, Cherie!
Your hand in mine… Nostalgia fades away…
Light, triumphant, rises.
My torments suddenly calm down at the day’s end.
Hopes and confidences fill my healing heart.

We read in his diaries that Prévôt made a special note to thank Heinz for his work.

Eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz and almost 83 years since Heinz composed his final works, his music has premiered in London; performed for the very first time to an audience of free men and women, to survivors and their families.

Though his creativity and dreams were extinguished by the Nazis, Heinz lives on today in newly discovered music and before new audiences; certainly, beyond anything, beyond any family Heinz might ever have imagined.


Click here to listen to Heinz Lewin’s Rumba d’Amour composed in Septfonds Camp.

Hans Neumeyer and the music no one will ever hear

Tim Locke, G2G Presenter

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At the end of my G2G presentations, I include an extract of a duo for violin and viola written by my maternal grandfather, Hans Neumeyer (1887-1944). He had a brilliant musical mind and composed a lot of music between the wars, but virtually his entire output went up in smoke in 1940s Berlin, during Allied bombing. 

Hans was blind from the age of 13. Despite his blindness, or perhaps because of it, he developed great musical skill that was to gain his admission in 1904 at the age of 17 to the Academy of Music in Munich, where he studied harmony, counterpoint and composition.

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Hans with some of his students

Contacts in Hans’s musical world

After graduating he wrote academic works, composed and taught. One of his many music colleagues was Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, who established a celebrated school of eurhythmics (a kind of improvised movement method responding to rhythm, improvisation and tempi) at Hellerau, near Dresden, where Hans taught and played the piano. Here he met Vera Ephraim, one of the students and his future wife (my grandmother). Another student, an English woman called Beatrice, was later the hugely important contact that enabled my mother Ruth and uncle Raymond to flee Nazi Germany in 1939 on a Kindertransport to England. 

My grandparents moved into the town of Dachau after marrying in 1920. Their house, where Ruth and Raymond were brought up, was always full of music – with musicians coming to play chamber music with Hans, himself an extremely accomplished pianist who must have learnt his music through braille or by ear. Both Vera and Hans gave lessons. Vera and Hans were both to perish later in the Holocaust. 

In the 1930s Hans met a Jewish violinist called Dela Mankiewitz, who in 1933 married Helge Blakmar, a future Danish resistance leader. Dela became Hans’s secretary and collaborator, sharing musical ideas and writing down his compositions as he dictated them. 

In 2022, I received an astonishing email from a woman in Sweden, who had discovered in her basement a box containing over fifty passionate love letters written by Hans to Dela in 1937. There are numerous references to pieces he was writing, including three sonatas (though he doesn’t say for which instrument). Dela says she and Hans were collaborating on a ‘great work’, but we will never know what it was to be.

Two pieces for his children

After Ruth and Raymond’s departure to England on the Kindertransport, Hans composed two pieces for them and sent them via a contact in Switzerland: a Christmas song written for Raymond in December 1939, and two little recorder duets written for Ruth in Easter 1940 when she was living in Cambridge with a family whose daughter Jane became an instant best friend. 

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Ruth wrote to her parents saying she and Jane were enjoying playing recorders under the almond trees in the garden, so Hans composed two little recorder duets for the two girls, and Vera drew this picture on the front cover. Ruth later donated it to the Imperial War Museum. Suzanne Bardgett, the former Head of Research, told me it is one of her favourite items in the whole museum.

Continuing to the end

On Red Cross messages sent from Germany to England in 1940 and 1941, Vera mentions that Hans is still very much engaged in his music: ‘Father composes many flute and other pieces’.

Hans was deported to Theresienstadt in June 1942, but despite his blindness survived for two years before dying there of a lung disease. A group of Czech music students befriended him and nicknamed him ‘The Professor’. Hans gave them music lessons, while they looked after him and made sure he was getting fed. One of them, Thomas Mandl, survived and became a concert violinist. He never forgot Hans’s extraordinary musical intellect. Hans taught his Theresienstadt pupils basic four-part and eight-part harmony exercises, eight-beat physical exercises, intonation and rhythmic exercises. 

Mandl last saw him in the block washroom and was shocked at his expression of utter dejection and some sort of strange wild premonition. In May 1944 he heard of his death and enquired about the day of the funeral. It was a sunny day: three of Hans’s pupils were among those who saw his crudely made coffin placed among the others on a truck and followed it to the barrier on the edge of the camp, which was as far as they were allowed to go. The barrier came down; ‘That was the way our dead left us’.

Aftermath

Hans’s death hit Dela badly. She barely spoke about the war after that, though she kept his picture in her front hall. She wrote to a friend, ‘It’s not as good as things were. It’s really hard for me to get over Hans’ departure.’ 
In 1943 Dela fled on a boat from Denmark to avoid deportation by the Nazis. The boat, pursued by a Nazi gun boat, had engine trouble but fortunately a favourable wind blew it into Swedish waters, and they were safe. Dela spent the rest of her life in Sweden.

She took on that voyage the only two pieces of Hans’s music that she had left, and thus these were saved for posterity. One was a duo ‘DBSG’ for violin and viola, written in 1940 – the opening notes are D, B (the German for B flat), S (E flat) and G, representing the initials of Dela Blakmar and an unknown musician friend, SG (a violist, I assume), to whom it was dedicated. (Click here to hear the haunting second movement.) The other piece is a trio for strings in four movements, opening with a sombre slow introduction on the cello (click here to hear the entire piece).

My mother told me that listening to the few works of his that survive was the one chance I had to hear his voice – through his music. What little remains of his output is tantalising, and I’d love to think there’s more of it somewhere, perhaps lurking in a synagogue or a dusty archive.

Selected posts from my blog posts (click on these links):

Thomas Mandl’s memories of Hans in Theresienstadt
Hans’s love letters to Dela
Tributes to Hans from fellow musicians
A prewar connection with other musicians

Partner Events

Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)
Friday 30 May 10:30
Opportunity to meet members of NAGiD
NAGiD – Nes Ammimer Gemeinschaft in Deutschland is the German association of former volunteers of Nes Ammim, an international ecumenical village in Israel, interested in the relationship between Jews and Christians. NAGiD members from Germany and the Netherlands are visiting London in May. If you would like to come along to meet the group at the Wiener Library on 30 May, please email nextgens@ajr.org.uk .

Friday 12 – Monday 15 September
35th  Annual Conference of the The World Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants, Marriott Rive Gauche, Paris
An opportunity to spend a weekend with other descendants from all over the world. Optional trips are available before and after the conference, including to the Jewish quarters of Paris and to the internment camp of Drancy. All delegates will be offered a special hotel rate.  Debra Barnes has written about the last three conferences in the AJR Journal: 2022 St Louis, 2023 Washington DC, and 2024 Toronto.  Click here for registration. Please also email nextgens@ajr.org.uk if you would like to join a group booking on the Eurostar from London.

Holocaust Education Trust
Teacher Training Seminars
The Holocaust Educational Trust is delighted to announce upcoming in-person training seminars for teachers in Scotland (Glasgow, Sunday 22 June). In addition, the Trust continues to offer a series of online seminars for teachers across the UK. In the coming weeks, these online sessions will explore topics such as Jewish refugees to Britain, the use of second-generation voices in the classroom, teaching the history and culture of Eastern European Jewish communities, the occupation of the Channel Islands, and liberation.   Click here to apply.

Insiders/Outsiders
Tuesday 27 May 18:00-19:30 (online)
Rogues and Scholars: Boom and Bust in the London Art Market 1945–2000
James Stourton’s entertaining, informative and very readable book tells the colourful story of the London art market from the immediate postwar period to the turn of the millennium. In this talk James will focus on the brilliant emigrés, among them Frank Lloyd and Harry Fischer, Herbert Bier, Erica Brausen and Annely Juda.  Free. Click here to bookTuesday 17 June 18:00–19:30 (online)
The Ark: Wedgwood and European Refugees 1933–1945

Between 1933–1945, thousands of European refugees escaping Nazi persecution sought refuge in Britain. Due to an apathetic British government, assistance for refugees was the responsibility of individuals, organisations, and businesses, such as Wedgwood. Through archival material and collections held at the V&A Wedgwood Collection, this talk by Michael Ruddy will reveal how the Wedgwood family and Company worked resolutely to help those being oppressed across Central Europe.
Free.  Click here to book

Jewish Community Centre (JW3)
Wednesday 21 May 19:00–20:15 (in building)
The Prosecutor
British writer and journalist Jack Fairweather and journalist Jonathan Freedland discuss Jack’s new book, The Prosecutor: the gripping true story of Fritz Bauer, a gay Jewish lawyer who returned to post-war Germany to seek justice for Holocaust crimes – only to find himself battling a nation eager to forget. Tickets £15 Click here to book

Wednesday 4 June 19:00–20:00 (in building)
The Inheritors: From Guilt to Responsibility
A compelling conversation on Austria’s reckoning with its Holocaust legacy.
Conny Kerman, a family psychotherapist with a special interest in the effects of third-generation trauma, is joined by JW3’s Simon Graf, a young Austrian volunteer from Gedenkdienst, an organisation that sends volunteers to Jewish organisations worldwide as an act of remembrance and reconciliation. Tickets £10 Click here to book

Thursday 12 June 19:00-20.15 (in building)
The Piano Player of Budapest

The story of young Hungarian Jewish pianist Stephen de Bastion’s brutal journey through forced labour camps, Mauthausen, Gunskirchen, and the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust. Stephen’s granddaughter Roxanne tells the story of his resilience, escape and reunion with his piano.  Tickets £15 Click here to book

René Cassin
Tuesday 17 June 18:30–20:00 (online)
Refugee Week: Community as a Superpower, Compassion at its Best

In this event, we will celebrate the ‘power of community’, and in particular the Jewish community, that has welcomed vulnerable refugees. Anita Peleg (G2G’s Director) will be talking about her experience hosting a Ukrainian family.  Click here to bookSecond Generation Network (2GN)
Tuesday 10 June 18:30–20:00 (online)
Music – A Creative Response to the Holocaust

Two distinguished string players, Krzysztof Chorzelski (Second Generation) and Laura van der Heijden, (Third Generation) will talk about what music and music making means to them in connection with their backgrounds.  Click here to book

Voices of the Holocaust
Monday 9 June 19:30 at Kinloss Synagogue, London N3
Kindness: A Legacy of the Holocaust

A testimony play by Cate Hollis and Mark Wheeler, centred on the experiences of Susan Pollack OBE. Interwoven are complementary narratives, including that of the love story of Mala Zimetbaum and Edek Galinski.  Tickets £25 members, £30 non-members (£5 less if booked before 18 May).   Click here to book

Wiener Holocaust Library
Tuesday 27 May 18:30–20:00 (in the Library and online)
A joint AJR/Wiener Holocaust Library event
A Quirk of History – The Logistics of Destruction in Hungary
A panel presentation of new, cutting-edge research on the Holocaust in Hungary, in particular the role of transportation in accelerating the Final Solution there. Researchers will present their new findings on the deportation of Jews by train in Hungary in 1944, with specific focus on the train that left Debrecen, headed to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but that was diverted instead to Strasshof concentration camp in Vienna. Using mixed methodologies, the researchers, including historians, engineers, educators – and a survivor of that very train, Agnes Kaposi – present their work from diverse backgrounds and disciplines.  Click here to book

Until 10 July
Exhibition: Traces of Belsen
Marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, this new exhibition (opened on 10 April) tells the full story of not just the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, but also the history of the camps at Bergen-Belsen during the Nazi era and then post-war, when it became the largest DP camp in Germany for Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and emerged as a centre of renewal of Jewish life in Germany.

Invitation to participate in a project with the Wiener Holocaust Library
Photographer Mike Stone and Dr Barbara Warnock from the Wiener Holocaust Library are seeking participants for a project examining slave and forced labour in Nazi industry. ‘UK residents impacted by slave or forced labour are invited to share their experiences and have a photographic portrait made. We plan to feature these portraits in an exhibition at the Wiener Library in Spring 2026.’ 
For more information, to participate or to offer your assistance, please contact the organisers on 07721 844 380 or mike@mikestone.co.uk

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Past Newsletters

Holocaust Survivors Moshe Senensieb and Ester Kraut

The Story of Moshe Senensieb and Ester Kraut

Survivor Story
Speaker Bio
Presentation Clip
Holocaust Survivor Moshe Senensieb born 1919​ age 17, 1936​
Holocaust Survivor Ester Kraut born 1922​ age 16, 1938
Cattle trucks used in the Soviet Union for deportations
Jews deported from Rzeszów ghetto, 1942
Holocaust Survivors Ester Kraut and Moshe Senensieb

Moshe Senensieb 1919 – 1990 and Ester Kraut 1922 – 2021

Moshe Senensieb and Ester Kraut were born to Jewish families in Rzeszow, Poland. Moshe was born in 1919 and died in Nottingham in 1990. Ester was born in 1922 and died in London in 2021.   

Ester and Moshe were high school sweethearts. In 1939, aged only 17 and 20, they escaped from Nazi-occupied to Russian-occupied Poland. The Russians deported them to a labour camp in the Ural Mountains, where they faced hard labour, extreme cold and hunger, before being released 14 months later.  They were distanced from the Nazis in Stalin’s remote, brutal labour camps and this ultimately saved them from a worse fate under Hitler. 

Their release presented new problems, living for 5 years as refugees in war time Soviet Union. When they were repatriated to Poland after the war, their families were no longer alive. Ester lost her parents and her only sister. Moshe lost his parents and three of his six siblings.  

Alongside Moshe and Ester’s story, the presentation highlights the historical and political events that had a crucial effect on their lives. It outlines the rise of the Nazis, their racial policies and the systematic murder of European Jews.    

After the war Moshe and Ester rebuilt their lives in Israel. Ester became a primary school teacher, and Moshe had a successful business career. In the mid-sixties Moshe’s business took them to Italy. In later life they moved to England to be near their children.  

Ester and Moshe’s story is presented by their daughter, Aliya. Excerpts from a book Ester wrote and quotes from Moshe’s account of the story are used in the presentation (read by Ester’s great-granddaughter and Moshe’s grandson). These describe eloquently their normal early lives, which were followed by the shock of finding themselves in a Soviet labour camp, their struggles after their release and their eventual route to safety.    

Survivor Story
Speaker Bio
Presentation Clip

Aliya will be speaking to Year 12/13 and adult audiences initially.

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Holocaust Speaker Aliya Middleton

Presented by Aliya Middleton 

Aliya was born in a displaced persons camp in Northern Italy and grew up in Israel. She studied Biochemistry at Jerusalem and Cambridge universities, then pursued a career in Bio-Medical research at Nottingham University Medical School.  After retirement she served as a magistrate which she found interesting and rewarding. She and her husband now live in London and enjoy spending time with their children and grandchildren.  

The story Aliya tells about her parents’ exile to remote parts of the Soviet Union is little known. It is the story of many Polish Jews who had similar experiences and survived the Holocaust through suffering atrocious conditions at isolated Soviet labour camps.



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G2G Presents: The Story of Toby Biber – Zoom

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