The story of Eva Urbach & Ulli Adler
Eva Urbach 1922-2010 & Ulli Adler 1925-2004
Lesley Urbach’s maternal family came from a small town in north-east Germany which now belongs to Poland. Her mother Eva, née Wohl, and three of Lesley’s aunts escaped to Britain and Argentina in 1938 and 1939. Their parents were murdered at Auschwitz on 19th February 1943.
Lesley’s presentation uses film and radio testimony provided by her mother and youngest aunt, Ursula née Wohl (known as Ulli), family photos and brief excerpts from historical films. These are interspersed with Lesley talking about the family’s life before and after the Nazis came to power in early 1933. She explains why and how her 16-year-old mother and 13-year-old aunt Ulli came to Britain on the Kindertransport in December 1938. The talk focusses on what happened to their parents left behind in Germany, using letters and poems sent by her grandparents to England and Argentina before and during World War Two.
Lesley refers to the other groups of people murdered during the Holocaust and a link is made to the ongoing persecution of people because of, for example, their ethnicity, religion, colour, gender, sexuality or disability, and the audience is encouraged to do something when they see injustice.
Presented by Lesley Urbach
Since retiring from her work as a careers adviser, Lesley Urbach has graduated with an MRes degree in Jewish History and Culture from Southampton University, and co-founded the Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group. She has been involved with Generation 2 Generation from its inception and is a co-chair of the planning committee and a trustee. Since 2014 Lesley has been befriending a young woman who came to Britain as a domestic slave, and between 2015-2020 helped support Syrian refugees in Barnet.
She tells the story of her mother and aunt who arrived in the UK on the Kindertransport, and the family left behind. She believes the persecution and murder of millions of Jews, as well as other minority groups, must be remembered and not relegated to a ‘detail of history’. Lesley also promotes the importance of standing up and speaking out against intolerance, bullying and the persecution of others.
Watch an excerpt from the story of Eva Urbach and Ulli Adler
