Newsletter for Generation 2 Generation

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January 2025 | Tevet 5785
Editorial
Our January 2025 issue marks the 80th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz. It is a sobering date-stamp. Eighty years is within sight of a century; these horrors have almost receded into history. And yet thousands of those impacted by the Shoah are still with us. Worldwide, around 245,000 Holocaust survivors survive; 1,200 of them live in Great Britain [Claims Conference 23.1.24]. For them, and for the second and third generations, the Holocaust is still very much alive. Now as ever, Generation 2 Generation is there to hold on to the memory and the memories; to keep handing them on into the future in the hope that ‘never again’ remains exactly that.
This issue lists many events put on by G2G and our partners around the liberation date of 27 January (Holocaust Memorial Day) and in the surrounding weeks. We have also chosen to focus specifically on Auschwitz in our Features section. Historian Dr Jaime Ashworth reflects on why it is that Auschwitz has come to stand for the Holocaust as a whole. And five G2G speakers, each closely descended from an Auschwitz survivor, recall a totemic experience of the camp that has become part of their family history.
Vivienne Cato
G2G Upcoming Events
Wednesday 26 February at 19.30pm (online)
G2G Presents: Holocaust Distortion: 80 Years after the Liberation of Auschwitz
Using filmed testimony, Peter Kammerling tells the separate stories of why and how both his parents arrived in England on the Kindertransport from Austria. We will also hear what happened to their parents and other family left behind in Austria.
To reserve your place please click here

Events where G2G speakers have been invited to present publicly
Wednesday 22 January 19.00–20.00 online
A Holocaust Memorial Day presentation by Dalya Wittenberg from G2G
Online via MS Teams, Barnet Libraries
Read More
Dalya tells the story of her grandmother, Cilla Rotblat, who was born in the small Polish town of Sochaczew. Aged 18, at the outbreak of war, she fled with her boyfriend (later husband) towards Russia, ending up in 1945 in a displaced persons’ camp in Austria. Eventually they emigrated to the newly established state of Israel.
Monday 27 January 11.00–13.30 Hammersmith
Holocaust Memorial Day: For a Better Future
Read More
Francis Morton, one of our G2G speakers, presents the story of his parents, Czechoslovak Jews who survived the Holocaust. Francis has reconstructed the family’s history using over 500 letters sent to his mother in England by her family in Europe between 1938 and 1945. There will also be reflection on the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
Book here: Hammersmith
Friday 31 January 14.30-15.30 Live, Manor Farm Library Bury Street, Ruislip, HA4 7SU
Angela Strach presents the story of Eric Strach
Read More
Czech survivor Eric Strach qualified as a doctor in 1938. He was on holiday in France when he was warned not to return to Czechoslovakia. In 1940 he joined the newly formed Czech Army in exile and travelled with them from France to northwest England. During this time however, his family had been deported to Terezín, then on to concentration camps where they were murdered. Despite his ‘survivor guilt’, Eric’s hugely optimistic outlook enabled him to build a successful life, personally and professionally, after the war.
Book here: Hillingdon
Sunday 19 March 19.30-20.45 online
G2G Presents: The Story of Toby Biber
Using filmed testimony, Peter Kammerling tells the separate stories of why and how both his parents arrived in England on the Kindertransport from Austria. We will also hear what happened to their parents and other family left behind in Austria.
To reserve your place book here.

Recent Events
G2G Speakers
As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day, we are proud to announce that we now have 41 accredited presenters and expect to have 50 by the end of 2025. Two of our latest speakers are Sam Rogoff and Eric Schloss. Sam tells his Polish-born mother’s story of survival hiding as a Catholic political prisoner in Auschwitz, and how most of her family were shot by Nazis and Ukrainian militia. Eric Schloss describes his grandmother Eva’s survival, firstly in hiding in Amsterdam and then in Auschwitz. An important part of this presentation is the art and poetry of Eva’s brother Hans. Eva’s mother, also in Auschwitz, survived, but sadly her father and brother did not.
Speaker Bookings
We are booked to present to more than 350 groups this academic year. This is an increase of approximately 15% compared to the same period last year. Our audiences include those in prisons, libraries, secondary schools, universities, private businesses and local authorities.
Reviews
G2G and the Jewish Care Holocaust Survivors’ Centre present Commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz
Just two days ago on the 19 January, we held a moving memorial event together with Jewish Care Holocaust Survivors’ Centre with more than 130 people in attendance. It was wonderful to have so many survivors with us, listening and participating in the ceremony. The event was opened with some words from Daniel Carmel-Brown, CEO of Jewish Care; Isa Brysh recited a poem that she had written for this occasion; G2G’s Jacqueline Luck (granddaughter of Lela Black) told her Greek grandmother’s moving story of deportation from Athens and Auschwitz survival and the terrible loss of her young daughter, Marcelle; and Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence introduced us to the story and music of his great grandfather Heinz Lewin, a celebrated German composer, who continued to compose even when interned in the Septfonds internment camp in France and was then deported to Auschwitz and murdered in 1942. Finally, Renee Salt, survivor of Auschwitz, read an excerpt of her soon to be published memoir, A Mother’s Promise, paying tribute to her mother Sala who perished in Bergen Belsen but whose love and protection kept Renee alive. Finally, members of the survivor community lit candles to remember this 80th anniversary and to honour all those that did not survive. Closing words from G2G’s Director, Anita Peleg, promised the survivors and the community that survivor descendants will do their utmost to keep their stories and their legacy alive through the generations.
G2G Presents: The story of Walter and Herta Kammerling
On 21 November, Peter Kammerling spoke online for G2G Presents. Addressing a large audience, Peter told the moving story of his parents Walter and Herta Kammerling, both Austrian-born, who each escaped to England on the Kindertransport. They met in London through attending a left-wing refugee group called ‘Young Austria’; but as a married couple after the war they chose to return to Vienna. Living there for the next nine years, they had two sons – one of whom was Peter – and then moved back to the UK in 1956, settling in Bournemouth. Tragically, each of them lost close relatives (in Walter’s case, his parents and older sister) in the Holocaust. Peter’s talk used moving video clips of each of his parents giving testimony about their experiences. Walter’s reflections present a very personal and intimate portrait of the deep impact the separation from – and ultimate loss of – his immediate family had had on him.
Features
Auschwitz: Remembering for the Future
Dr Jaime Ashworth
That Holocaust Memorial Day commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz is not a coincidence. The camp is a central symbol of the Holocaust, metonym for the whole. It was not ‘after Treblinka’, or Belsen, or Sobibor (or Dachau, or….) that Adorno said it was barbaric to write poetry; it was after Auschwitz. Why should this be? Especially in Britain, it might have been expected that it would be Belsen, liberated by British troops, that would exercise the greater hold over the imagination. The answer tells us some important things about both the Holocaust and our understanding of it.
Continues…

… Continued Auschwitz: Remembering for the Future
What, though, was Auschwitz? Firstly, it is the German name for the Polish town of Oświęcim, with a history stretching back to the thirteenth century. It was renamed Auschwitz in 1939, when its population was around 13,000, of whom approximately 9,000 were Jews; a community had been in the town since the sixteenth century. In 1940, it became the site of a concentration camp, primarily for members of the Polish resistance and intelligentsia. By 1945, however, it also included more than 40 subcamps in business (especially coalmining) in the surrounding areas, run from the third major camp at Monowitz. From 1941, Auschwitz, and especially its subcamp Birkenau, became the centre of the murder of European Jewry in the ‘Final Solution’. Historians estimate that 1.1-1.3 million people died in Auschwitz, 90% of them Jews, mostly immediately after arrival.
Number deported | % of the total number of deportees | Number of victims | % murdered | % of the camp’s total victims | |
Jews | 1,100,000 | 85 | 1,000,000 | 90 | 91 |
Poles | 140,000 | 10.8 | 70,000 | 50 | 5.8 |
Sinti and Roma | 23,000 | 1.6 | 21,000 | 91.3 | 1.7 |
Soviet POWs | 15,000 | 1.2 | 14,000 | 93 | 1.3 |
Other groups | 25,000 | 1.9 | 12,000 | 48 | 1 |
Total | 1,300,000 | 1,100,000 | 85 |
Deportees and victims of Auschwitz, 1940-1945: all numbers are estimates based on very incomplete German documentation. For a detailed exploration of numbers see Franciszek Piper, ‘The Number of Victims’ in Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum (eds.) The Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998, pp. 61-76.
As the war ended, it became more and more common for Auschwitz prisoners to be sent to factories and camps inside the Reich. It was the arrival of ill and starving prisoners from Auschwitz that unleashed the collapse of sanitation and health in Belsen that led to the awful scenes of April 1945. This was why Anne Frank died in Belsen: weakened by the journey in a bitter winter and vulnerable to the diseases which ran uncontrolled through the camp.
The diversity of its functions – a centre for political persecution and slave labour as well as extermination – is key to understanding the site. Unlike Treblinka, Sobibor or Belzec (the destination for most of the Jews of Oświęcim), Auschwitz was a killing centre in addition to being a site of slave labour and political persecution; there were survivors to tell the tale. That many of them – Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, Charlotte Delbo, for example – were great writers, meant Auschwitz entered discourse in culturally significant ways.
Secondly, there was the issue of geography. Auschwitz was involved in the killing of Jews from all over Europe, but mostly not from Poland. The camps of Operation Reinhard focused on the killing of Polish Jewry with deadly efficiency in 1942-43: Belzec murdered 454,000, leaving just a handful of survivors. Ninety percent of Polish Jewry is estimated to have been killed in the years 1939-45. In most of the rest of Europe, the losses were not as heavy, and survivors brought Auschwitz into the lives of their nations. When survivors returned home, they took with them the memory of the camp, written on their skin in the tattoos which the Auschwitz administration employed to identify bodies after death: early use of photographs for identification was discontinued due to lack of materials and because prisoners were often unrecognisable from their initial registration. A picture of French survivor Charlotte Delbo shows her tattoo clearly, sleeves fashionably short, in defiance of the title of her memoir, None of Us Will Return.
Moreover, the Operation Reinhard camps were destroyed after they were decommissioned, leaving little in the way of traces. A visitor to Treblinka must try to imagine the site as it was, the monument occupying the space where the gas chamber did its awful work. By contrast, Auschwitz was liberated relatively intact – even the destruction of the crematoria in Birkenau was rushed and incomplete. The trial judges of Auschwitz SS men in the 1960s visited the site to measure accounts against the reality of buildings, fences, and watchtowers.
Nor were there relics on these sites, though archaeologists are making remarkable finds, especially at Sobibor. Two former Treblinka Sonderkommando recalled how they found the bundles of clothing they had assembled from the belongings of the murdered being distributed to displaced Germans, but the link to the site had been broken. In Auschwitz, however, warehouses were found overflowing with items that clearly showed the number and origin of the deportees. Pots and pans, coloured for kashrut, and tallitot, made clear that their owners had expected a new life, and had regarded their Jewishness as a central part of that. On suitcases, names and points of origin tell their stories, the word Waisenkind (orphan) sometimes compounding the tragedy. Mounds of shoes, distorted by time and hurried packing, are testimony to normal lives cut short. Red sandals and babies’ booties.
And in Block 4, behind glass, light dimmed to preserve its ever-increasing fragility, two tons of human hair. Photography is no longer allowed, but once upon a time a flash could cut through the dust to reveal the colours. Polish poet Tadeusz Ròzewicz wrote of ‘a faded plait/a pigtail with a ribbon/pulled at school/by naughty boys.’
The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is For a Better Future, enjoining us to ‘become the generations who carry forward the legacy of the witnesses, remember those who were murdered and challenge those who would distort or deny the past, or who discriminate and persecute today’. But to take the lessons forward, we must understand the past. Auschwitz has a complex and multilayered history, formed by what survived and endured as much as by what perished; even if it is the drowned, not the saved, who are its most important fact.
Dr Jaime Ashworth is G2G’s Historical Consultant. He is running a short course at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution (www.hlsi.org.uk) from January: ‘Understanding the Holocaust: Key Problems in Holocaust History’.

Auschwitz reflections: family memories of Auschwitz survivors

Lia Bratt with her grandfather Ivor Pearl
Lia Bratt on her grandfather, Ivor Pearl
My grandfather, Ivor Perl, survived Auschwitz as a teenager, and one story he told has always stayed with me. His older brother, David, worked in the SS kitchens and would risk his life to throw scraps of food over the camp walls for Ivor and his other brother Alec.
Those small bits of food made a huge difference. They weren’t just about survival – they were a sign that someone cared, even in such a terrible place. David knew the danger he was in every time he did it, but he still chose to help.
My grandfather said that knowing David was there, looking out for him, gave him a little bit of strength to keep going. It showed how even in the worst conditions, acts of love and bravery could shine through.
This story is a powerful reminder of the bond between brothers and the courage it takes to hold onto humanity in the face of so much cruelty. It’s something I think about a lot and will always carry with me.

Jacqueline Luck and her grandmother Lela Black
Jacqueline Luck on her grandmother, Lela Black
Not long after Lela’s arrival in Auschwitz, she started asking the more ‘experienced’ prisoners about what could have happened to her six-year-old daughter, Marcelle. Lela had initially been told that the children were going to school and would be looked after by the elderly. But the other prisoners laughed and pointed to the plumes of smoke coming out of the chimneys. “There are your children and grandmothers, burning there!” Lela couldn’t believe it, but after a few days, she had become hardened, just like the other prisoners. At the time, she felt very little. They were dehumanised and she didn’t even remember there being much crying. Some would try to commit suicide by running at the electric barbed wire fence, but the Germans were usually watching and would switch it off. The ‘offender’ would then be punished or killed. She also remembered two lovely sisters walking alongside each other. One collapsed and died, the other simply took her shoes and her bread, and continued on her way. They were all just existing like animals waiting for slaughter.

Melanie Martin
Melanie Martin on her aunt Liesje Vuijsje
My Aunt Liesje was deported on the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz. Liesje got on well with children and made friends with a little girl who had lost both her parents. Liesje did her best to comfort and distract her. She hoped that the rumours of family camps were true and that this little girl would be cared for. They arrived at Auschwitz during the third night. The doors opened to reveal a brightly lit platform and prisoners in striped uniforms who unloaded the trains, took out the dead bodies and piled up the luggage. The new arrivals were completely disorientated and confused amid the shouting, beatings, shooting and screaming. Men were separated from women and children into two columns. A handsome German officer stood in charge. This was Dr Mengele, known later as Dr Death. Liesje, still looking after the little girl, noted that the older women, the sick, and women with children were directed to the left. Mengele asked Liesje if the little girl was her daughter. Liesje hesitated, but in that instant she thought of her own children. She shook her head and Mengele indicated with his thumb that she should join the smaller line of younger women on the right. Liesje briefly kissed the girl and tried to gently move away from her. The girl started crying, clinging on to Liesje, so she had to push her towards the women on the left. She told my mother this most painful memory after the war.

Avital Menahem and her Grandfather Yisrael Abslesz
Avital Menahem on her grandfather Yisrael Abslesz
When my grandfather was admitted to the Auschwitz ‘hospital’ in November 1944, he slept in a bunk above a scholarly Greek man, a cantor, who was familiar with works of ancient Latin and Greek literature.
The man passed away, and before his body was removed my grandfather surreptitiously took the man’s bread ration which had accumulated in the two days since his death. My grandfather recalls that he always felt guilty for this because it was possibly disrespectful, but of course he needed the bread, and had he not taken it, someone else would have.
Interestingly as it happens, my grandfather’s bread was actually stolen from him a few months later. On the death march from Auschwitz, the Wehrmacht soldiers had allowed the wearied prisoners to rest in a side camp (the Auschwitz satellite camp of Althammer), soon to be liberated by the Soviets in late January 1945. Awakening from a deep sleep, my grandfather discovered that his bread had been taken, presumably by a prisoner who needed it more than him.

Jeanette Marx with her mother Mascha Nachmansonn
Jeanette Marx quotes her mother, Mascha Nachmansonn
The queueing for our meagre food was the most degrading behaviour I experienced. The prisoners were reduced to such desperate behaviour when we lost the little dignity our captors still allowed us to have. Prisoners fought amongst themselves to try to reach the front of the queue. They scratched each other and kicked to gain some advantage so that their portion would still, hopefully, contain the few pieces of vegetables in this so-called soup. It could make the difference of survival for one more day. Our human dignity was almost quashed. But we found it nevertheless when someone was so weak as to not being able to stand for hours during roll call. Anyone next to that person would risk their own safety to prop up that person.
Auschwitz was hell on earth. But even here, empathy and hope somehow survived.
With thanks to our G2G speakers who contributed these reflections.
Partner Events
Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR)Thursday 23 January 13.00 Wigmore Hall
Music in Auschwitz: Commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day
In honour of the musicians who were forced to perform. Narrated by Jason Isaacs.
Tickets £25 on 020 7935 2141
16-18th May
3G & 4G Solidarity Trip to Amsterdam
Following the recent anti-Jewish riots in Amsterdam, the AJR is arranging a weekend trip for our younger members to meet Dutch Holocaust descendants. Please email nextgens@ajr.org.uk for more information.
Jewish Community Centre (JW3)
Friday 24 January 10.30–12.00
Holocaust Memorial Day 2025: ‘Create a better future’ In building and online.
In partnership with the Wiener Library and Camden Council, we will present a powerful blend of testimonies alongside artefacts, photographs, and documents that highlight the stories of survivors, honour the memory of the victims and encourage reflection on the past, present, and future. Click here to book tickets
March of the Living 2025
21–24 April
For the first time, in 2025, the AJR will have a delegation on March of the Living UK, and all descendants are welcome to be part of it. In the year of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, this will be a unique opportunity to make this emotional trip in the company of other descendants. For details visit marchoftheliving.org.uk.
René Cassin
Wednesday 29 January 18.30–20.00, Wiener Holocaust Library
The Genocide in Darfur: When will it end, and a ‘Better Future’ begin?
To mark this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day, René Cassin together with The Wiener Holocaust Library, Waging Peace and the Darfur Diaspora Association UK, is hosting a joint event where we will learn about the current situation in Darfur and South Sudan, and the allyship and support we can offer. Click here to book tickets
Second Generation Network 2GN
Tuesday 4 February 18.30 online
Donating Your Archive – a 2G & 3G Experience
Many of us have inherited family archives – letters, photographs, diaries, objects – precious, fragile items that have somehow survived the Nazis, the Holocaust and the First and Second World Wars, and found their way to us, the Second and Third Generations. Where should they go next? Click here to register
Voices of the Holocaust
Monday 27 January 19.30, JFS Theatre
Kindness – A verbatim play based on the testimony of Susan Pollack OBE
Kindness: A Legacy of the Holocaust by Cate Hollis and Mark Wheeler is an emotional and powerful verbatim play centred on the testimony of Hungarian survivor Susan Pollack OBE, who, in 1944, aged 13, was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Click here to book.
Wiener Holocaust Library
Wednesday 22 January 18.30–20.00 in person and online
Dedication in Sculpture: The Story of Naomi Blake FRSS
Anita Peleg speaks on behalf of Generation 2 Generation about her mother, the sculptor and Auschwitz survivor Naomi Blake. Part of the Wiener Holocaust Library’s Fred Kormis: ‘Sculpting the Twentieth Century’ series of exhibition events. Click here to book tickets
Monday 27 January 14.00–15.00, the Wiener Holocaust Library
Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 – My name is Sara: In conversation with artist Sara Davidmann and curator Katy Barron
Artist Sara Davidmann’s father and aunt escaped the Holocaust by leaving Nazi Berlin on the Kindertransport, arriving in Britain in 1939. Researching her family history via a photo album, she discovered that that family members were deported to, and murdered in, Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. Click here to book tickets
Thursday 30 January 18.00–19.30 online
Holocaust Memorial Day 2025: ‘Where is my grandfather?’ A family history of the Holocaust in Hungary
The Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg, the Wiener Holocaust Library and the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Leicester are pleased to co-host. Hungarian writer and journalist Judit Kárpáti will speak about her mission to find out what happened to her grandfather in conversation with historian Louis Wörner. Click here to book tickets
To 6 February
Exhibition: Fred Kormis: Sculpting the Twentieth Century
Fred Kormis in his London studio, c. 1980s. Wiener Holocaust Library Collections
The Wiener Holocaust Library’s latest exhibition surveys the life and career of Jewish émigré sculptor Fred Kormis.
Other events
Theatre
29 January–1 March 2025 at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, London E8 3DL
As Long as we are Breathing – meditations on survival and beyond
The world premiere by Diane Samuels (author of Kindertransport). ‘As Long As We Are Breathing’ is a timely evocation of the true-life story of Miriam Freedman. Directed by Ben Caplan, the piece conjures Miriam’s childhood experience during the Holocaust and her journey to London in adulthood. Click here to book tickets
22 February 2025, 6.30 – 7.45 pm, Trinity Church, 15 Nether Street, N12 7NN, followed by reception
Reawakening Surpressed Music
FPS and the Wiener Library present an evening of rediscovered symphonic work supressed by the Nazi regime. For more information and to book email fps@admin.org.