00:00by the community, our hosts survive the community.
00:06For decades we have spoken to people across the country sharing our painful memories.
00:15We have done this out of deep sense of duty to ensure that what happened to our families
00:23and six million Jewish men, women and children is never forgotten.
00:30Soon there will be no eyewitnesses left.
00:35That is why I ask you today to just listen, not to just listen but to become my eyewitnesses.
00:44I was born in Piotrkow, Trybunowski in Poland in 1930.
00:49I was the middle child of my parents, Sarah and Moshe Helfkott,
00:56with an older brother Ben and a younger sister Lucia.
01:01I had a happy childhood.
01:03We lived in a comfortable apartment nearby with extended family
01:10and there was a relatively large Jewish community.
01:13Life was very quiet, ordinary but very pleasant and happy.
01:20In September 1939, the first Nazi ghetto was established in my hometown.
01:30Life there was brutal.
01:32It was overcrowded, food was scarce, disease was everywhere
01:37and even as a 12-year-old child I was forced into hard labour.
01:48Like so many families, mine was torn apart.
01:54My mother and my eight-year-old sister were taken away in December 1942.
02:03What happened to them is indescribable.
02:06They were murdered in the most horrific way.
02:11Shot into open pits in Krakow Forest.
02:18This was actually taking place all over the country.
02:25The forest killings.
02:28My father and brother were deported to Buchenwald.
02:32I was sent with my five-year-old cousin Anne,
02:35first to Ravensbruck and then to Bergen-Belsen.
02:39I later learned that my father was murdered by trying to escape a death march just days before liberation.
02:51In the camps, we were stripped naked, shaved, put through freezing cold showers
02:58and even given the prisoner to guard.
03:02When we looked at each other, we barely recognised each other.
03:11We all looked the same.
03:14We were stripped not only of our freedom, but of our identities, our dignity, our humanity.
03:22It was as if they had taken away our very souls.
03:26When I arrived in Bergen-Belsen, the first thing that hit me was the smog and the stench.
03:37It was a hell on earth.
03:40Those still alive shuffled about like skeleton and just collapsed where they stood.
03:50Disease was everywhere and I became very ill with typhus.
03:54I could hardly move.
03:58One day, from the window of my barracks, I saw people running.
04:04And all I could think of was how have they got the strength to run.
04:09I couldn't move a muscle.
04:11That was on the 15th of April, 1945, when we were liberated by the British Army.
04:18And here I want to stress that they were wonderful and I really paid tribute to them
04:30of how wonderful we were treated and life just changed instantly when they arrived.
04:37Nearly a year after liberation, I received a letter from my older brother Ben against all odds he had survived.
04:49It was arranged by the Central British Fund Committee for me to come to England and we were reunited.
04:56Ben was a hero just 11 years after his liberation.
05:03He captained the British weightlifting team at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
05:12But amazing.
05:13He was also the leader of our survivor community and champion of Holocaust education.
05:22He was knighted in 2018 and he passed away, unfortunately, in 2023.
05:32And others seemed terribly.
05:36One of them's greatest wishes was to see the Holocaust Memorial Learning Centre built beside Parliament.
05:44A permanent place where survivor testimony would be preserved and where future generations
05:52could understand where antisemitism and hatred could lead if left unchallenged.
06:02He did not live to see the memorial, but he would have been proud to know that Parliament
06:12now passed the Holocaust Memorial Bill and that work will soon begin.
06:20Having endured the Holocaust, we survivors never imagined we would witness antisemitism
06:27as the level it is today.
06:32What we have seen in Manchester on Yom Kippur and in Sydney on Hanukkah has shaken me to the core.
06:43How 81 years after the Holocaust can Jewish people once again be targeted in this way?
06:50How 82 years after the Holocaust?
06:51Remembering the past is no longer enough.
06:55I speak to you leaders of this country.
07:00I proudly call home and I plead that you do what you need not, needs to be done to tackle this pain.
07:11When I was in Bergen-Belsen, I still had hope, because without hope, there's no survival.
07:22Today, I have hope. I hope in the next generation, the thousands of young people who have heard my testimony.
07:32Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today, and thank you for listening.
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