Eva Clarke - A baby survivor of the holocaust
Jan 27, 2020, 11:27 AM
I’m Eva Clarke, and I was born at Mauthausen, a Nazi concentration camp, in Austria. My date of birth is 29th April 1945. Myself and my mother were almost the only survivors of my family. I never even met my own father, because he was killed at another Nazi death camp, at Auschwitz. In fact, 15 members of my family were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau & one died in Terezin. Those murdered included three of my grandparents, I addition to my father, my uncles, my aunts and very tragically my 8 year old cousin, Peter.
I should also have been killed as a baby too. If the Nazis had not run out of gas for the gas chambers on 28th April 1945 and if the American Army had not liberated Mauthausen just days later, neither myself nor my mother would have survived…
It is an appalling tragedy that over 6 million Jews in Europe were killed by the Nazi regime, and this is such a big number you cannot imagine it. But I stand before you as a survivor. Perhaps you CAN imagine that I could have been the child wandering in the ruins in the picture Michael painted in his song. We were persecuted - and Nazis killed us - just because of our ethnicity - because we were Jewish. This is shocking isn’t it?
I’ve been lucky to have a happy life because my mother fell in love with a kind man who became my stepfather. We emigrated to Cardiff in Wales, where I went happily to school, made friends, and myself fell in love and got married. I’ve been living in Cambridge ever since, and have my own family of children and grandchildren. Indeed my son and grandson Theo are here with us today!
Now I invite Theo to come up on stage to stand by Michael and me with some of our young poets to be representing the next generation. Singer Mario will help you to light the symbolic six candles to pay tribute to the over six million Jews who perished during the Holocaust.
May I invite the singers from primary, secondary and community choirs to hum the Hebrew lament whilst we light the candles…