Media :
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Mon, 30 Jan 2012, 00:32 on BBC World Service (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
They survived what is still widely regarded as the worst crime in history, and they know that their own time to die is drawing near.
Holocaust survivors, now in their eighties and nineties, meet every day in North London at the world's first Holocaust Survivors Centre of its kind.
Jane Little spends a day with them and hears stories of enormous resilience, unfailing optimism, and unexpected humour.
Among others, she meets
Susan Pollock, who arrived at Auschwitz aged just 13, carrying a sewing machine on her back;
Lilly Ebert, who to this day wears the gold necklace her mother gave her, which she managed to hide in the death camp;
Freddie Knoller, who despite all that happened to him, is very clear that he believes in God and loves being a Jew.
But what do Jewish religious practice and the Yiddish culture of the shtetl mean to the other surivvors as their numbers dwindle?
And why is it that the soup at the centre is always thick and steaming hot?
Photo: Lilly Ebert shows the angel necklace which she hid in her shoe at Auschwitz.
WWII: Witnessing the Holocaust
Programmes, documents, interviews and journals conveying the experiences of those who witnessed the Holocaust
Genocide Under the Nazis
Articles, debates and links relating to the genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany during World War II
Children and the Holocaust
Article explaining the plight of the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered under the Nazi regime during World War II
Yiddish: A Struggle for Survival
Yiddish - a mixture of Hebrew and Middle German, spiced with Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Old French and Old Italian, was once spoken by more than ten million people - nearly two thirds of the world's entire Jewish population
Broadcasts
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Sat 28 Jan 201209:32
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Sat 28 Jan 201213:32
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Sun 29 Jan 201204:32
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Sun 29 Jan 201219:32
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Mon 30 Jan 201200:32
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