Four Holocaust survivors came together this week to share their experiences of Auschwitz for a Radio 4 programme to be broadcast later this month.
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Lily Ebert, Susan Pollack and Zigi Shipper gathered to be interviewed by presenter Sue MacGregor for an episode of The Reunion, which reunites people involved in moments of history.
Michelle Hyer, Holocaust Education Programmer at JW3, helped organise the extraordinary meeting and said it was “more important than ever in this current climate.”
She told the JC: "It was an honour and a privilege to help put together this group of Holocaust Survivors for Radio 4 and advise the producers.
“JW3 provides a cultural enrichment programme just for Survivors and refugees which has enabled me to build a relationship with these incredible people over the past number of years.”
Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch survived Auschwitz by playing in the women's orchestra at the camp. She is a talented cellist who became a professional musician in Britain after the war. She was appointed an MBE for her services to Holocaust education in 2016.
Mrs Ebert, 87, was 14 when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944 and transported the country’s 300,000 Jews to the concentration camps.
She was sent to Auschwitz with her family, where her mother, younger brother and younger sister were immediately sent to the gas chambers.
Mr Shipper was 14 when he arrived at Auschwitz. He was born in January 1930 to a Jewish family in Poland and attended Jewish school.
In 1940, her and his grandparents were forced to move into the Lodz Ghetto. It took more than 50 years for him to be able to talk publicly his own experiences about the camps.
Mrs Pollack was born in 1930 in Felsögöd, Hungary. She arrived in Auschwitz in 1944 with her mother who was killed on arrival. She lied about her age after another girl told her anyone under the age of 15 was killed straight away.
In 2015 Mrs Pollack testified in the trial of a former Nazi SS guard in Germany. She is one of the few people to have come face to face with Josef Mengele, the high-ranking Nazi known as the “angel of death,” and lived to tell the tale.
The Reunion will air on August 19 at 11.15am on BBC Radio 4
