‘Where Was God In Auschwitz?’: Yad Vashem UK and The Fed bring Holocaust testimony books project to London
JW3 hosts launch for initiative enabling survivors and refugees to tell their stories
Francine Wolfisz is the Features Editor for Jewish News.
A young boy who witnessed unspeakable horrors at Auschwitz, another forced to work with toxic chemicals and a third who waited decades to discover he had spent the first months of his life in a concentration camp, have seldom spoken about their Holocaust experiences.
But thanks to a unique project that began in Manchester and has now officially launched in London, this trio of survivors – all in their 80s and 90s – have had their remarkable life stories published for the first time.
My Voice is the brainchild of social care charity The Fed, which supports Jewish individuals of all ages in Greater Manchester.
Holocaust survivors are offered the chance to open up about their experiences, from life before the Second World War, to everything they endured at the hands of Nazi persecution, and after in rebuilding their lives.
The books – which total 42 to date, with another 16 in production – place emphasis on providing a safe environment for the survivor to tell their stories in their own words and are painstakingly put together by a dedicated team of volunteer researchers, interviewers, editors and photographers.
On Wednesday, the first three Holocaust Survivor Storyteller books produced by the London team, in partnership with Yad Vashem UK, were unveiled at a special event at JW3.
Ivor Wieder’s emotively-titled book, Where Was God In Auschwitz? relates how he arrived from his native Romania as a young boy of just 12 at the gates of the notorious Nazi death camp.
He recalls in grave detail how just minutes after reaching their destination, he was separated from his mother and baby sister, never to see them again. It’s a thought that still haunts Ivor 80 years later.
“I saw them get off the train and I never got to say goodbye. Selection, that’s my life story,” he reveals in the book.
Ivor stayed in the same barracks as his father and brother, Leo, and they were given consecutive tattooed numbers on their arms. “I was A3388, my father was A3389 and my brother’s was A38890,” he remembers. “Here our dignity was taken away. From now on we were only called by our number, rather than our name.”
He witnessed events too terrible for any child to endure, including being forced to watch seven men being brutally strung up onto gallows by the Nazis and systematically hung in front of the camp inmates.
Now 93 and a proud great-grandfather of 17, the scars of those years are still very much with him. He told Jewish News: “Day and night, I can’t forget about it,” he said. “I still ask God why these things happened, why?”
Equally powerful is the testimony of survivor Harry Olmer, 96, who was just 15 when he was sent with his brother and father to Plaszow in Krakow to work as slave labourers on a railway line.
A year later he was moved to Skarzysko-Kamienna, where he joined tens of thousands of Polish-Jews forced to work in chemical factories filling shells and land mines with acid.
He recalls the fear of breathing in the toxic material, as well as the acrid smell of dead bodies placed in a box next to the barracks where he slept.
“The smell of it was unbearable. It’s impossible to describe the conditions, it was a terrible place,” he said.
In another poignant passage, he revealed how against the odds he always felt he would survive.
“I never, ever thought I would die,” he said. “I was too young to die. How could I die?”
Harry was one of 600 orphaned Jewish children, known as “The Boys”, who were brought over to Lake Windermere in the aftermath of the war. He went on to marry his wife Margaret, who passed away just before their 70th wedding anniversary, which would have been marked in June.
Today he is the proud father of four children and eight grandchildren.
With a smile on his face, the nonagenarian said: “My family is my revenge against Hitler. I feel lucky to be alive and have my children and grandchildren.”
His daughter, Julia Kaye, said it had been “very emotional” to see her father’s entire life written into a book.
“We thought we knew everything about my dad’s life, but we found out so much more. It’s incredible to have that now.”
For survivor Jackie Young, seeing his life in words is nothing short of incredible given that he was 21 when he discovered he was a Holocaust survivor – having been just nine-months-old when he arrived at Terezin. He recalls nothing of being born in Austria, his mother or indeed the nurses who fed and looked after him in the camp, or of his rescue flight to Britain after the war.
His first memories start at the age of nine when he was adopted, but his new family told him nothing of his past. “I used to dream about things,” he reveals, though he could not make sense of the memories. For years after discovering he was born to an unmarried mother, he feared his father may have been a Nazi, but genealogists traced his Jewish biological father with the help of BBC show DNA Family Secrets in 2022.
With that came news he had extended family, including two cousins living up the road from him in north London.
Jackie said: “That was life changing. I used to think I was alone in the world, but I no longer was. The DNA opened a door I never thought could be opened.”
Speaking about My Voice, project manager Juliette Pearce said it was an “honour” to be entrusted with the stories of the survivors, with the books providing a valuable resource for schools teaching children about antisemitism and prejudice.
Lauren Libbert, who leads the project in London, said: “In the void of the six million who lost their lives stand the precious few stories of those who survived.
“They are an inspiration to us, especially at a time when we are witnessing another upsurge in hate.”
For more information about the My Voice project, visit https://myvoice.org.uk/
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