‘I despaired but I did not let cruelty and injustice break my spirit.’ | 27 January is Holocaust Memorial Day - the international day to remember the millions murdered under Nazi persecution. It also commemorates all those killed during more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Holocaust Memorial Day takes place every year on the anniversary of the liberation of the largest Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. On this day, people across the world come together to learn about the past and take action for a safer future.
At IWM, we are marking Holocaust Memorial Day with the opening of Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors, a free photography exhibition at IWM North.
The portraits in this exhibition highlight the experiences of survivors who made the UK their home after beginnings marked by unimaginable loss and trauma. They are a celebration of the rich lives these survivors have lived and the legacy which their descendants will carry into the future.
Among those featured in the exhibition is Sir Ben Helfgott, MBE. Born in Piotrków, Poland, in 1929, Ben was nine years old at the outbreak of the Second World War. His family were forced to move into the Piotrków Trybunalski Ghetto shortly after the German occupation of Poland in 1939.
Ben endured appalling conditions in the ghetto, which was overcrowded and unsanitary. In October 1942, Ben’s grandfather was sent to the Treblinka death camp, along with 22,000 of the ghetto’s 24,000 Jewish inhabitants.
Having escaped the deportations, Ben’s mother and youngest sister Luisa were later among 520 Jews taken to the woods and shot. They had voluntarily come out of hiding after the Nazis declared an amnesty for those that did so.
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