Survivors’ story Young people have interviewed Holocaust survivors for a documentary to be shown on Brent Holocaust Memorial Day this month. Words by SHARON DONOVAN Pictures by ISABELLE PLASSCHAERT. When a Jewish girl arrived in AuschwitzBirkenau she could not have imagined that a talent for music would save her life. Anita Lasker Wallfisch was deported to the concentration camp in 1943. “When I arrived I mentioned in passing that I played the cello,” she said. “From that moment on I was a member of the all-female orchestra in Auschwitz.That was a ticket for survival. As long as they wanted music they couldn’t put us in the gas chambers.” Today she lives in Brent and is one of five Holocaust survivors who speak in a film made by young film-makers to mark Brent Holocaust Memorial Day organised by Brent Council.The day is being held to remember more than six million Jews and millions from other groups including gypsies, gays and lesbians and disabled people killed in the Holocaust.This year marks the 65th anniversary of AuschwitzBirkenau’s liberation on 27 January 1945, where the Nazis alone murdered more than one million people from across Europe. “We never thought we’d get out of Auschwitz,” said Anita. “We were sat five metres away from the gas chambers and saw everything that happened.” She and the other orchestra members were made to play as people were sent to their deaths in the gas chambers and marched in and out of the camp to work as slaves by the SS
Auschwitz Birkenau: picture courtesy of Holocaust Memorial Trust
guards. Jack Hecht is another survivor in the film who speaks about being sent to a camp with his parents and siblings. “My mother and father were taken to the gas chambers and killed immediately. We were sent to labour camps,” he said. When the Nazis fled the advancing Soviet forces in 1945 he was forced on a death march into Germany.
with film-maker Simon Drew on the documentary. Daniel Basu, from South Kilburn said: “This has made me appreciate what I’ve got. In this country we’ve got freedom, democracy, and civil rights.We should not complain about our day-to-day routines.”
“We were sat five metres away from the gas chambers and saw everything that happened.”
Jack Hecht, left, and Anita Lasker Wallfisch, right.
“We knew it was a death march, because people used to drop dead along the way,” he said. “Two of my brothers were killed there.They fooled us.The SS said that anyone who can’t walk should march out this side and go by lorry. But as we marched off, we heard gunfire, they shot everybody.They fooled us.” Anita was transported to Bergen-Belsen where she was liberated in in 1945. Their testimony has had a powerful effect on seven young people who worked
The film will be shown at Brent Holocaust Memorial Day on 24 January from 2.30-4pm at Brent Town Hall visit www.brent.gov.uk/whatson or call 020 8937 3144. JANUARY 2010
THE BRENT MAGAZINE
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