The event, timed to coincide with Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, will see survivors walk the two miles from Auschwitz to Birkenau, the adjacent camps where 1.1 million Jews perished. She explained that “as a German, you say, ‘Oh, we own this topic; we know everything.’ And suddenly you realize it is not true. There are so many narratives.” Holocaust survivor Alfred Garwood participated in the March of the Living UK, as he has in previous years, October 2021. Photo by Sam Churchill. In some ways this is a kind of two fingers up to the Nazis. The tried to kill European Jewry but here we were in our thousands – around 3000 altogether, a small contingent than normal because of the uncertainty around the pandemic – singing Jewish songs; alive, healthy, happy. They stole and burned the prayer shawls but here we all were in blue, many wearing the Israeli flag which is based on the tallit, proudly.

An insightful and honest account of massive psychic trauma, this remarkable book will resonate not only with those affected by or interested in the experiences of Holocaust survivors, but also any clinical practitioner working with clients who have experienced this type of intense trauma. Eitinger, L. ( 1971) Acute and chronic psychiatric and psychosomatic reactions in concentration camp survivors. In After the war, the Garfinkles settled in London’s East End, where they were “virtually unique” among Polish Holocaust survivors in being an intact family.

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The above-mentioned Governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They re-affirm their solemn resolution to ensure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end."

Thus, on 23 April 1945, the train reached its final destination in a forest deep in eastern Germany, a mile and a quarter outside the village of Trobitz. By the time all the dead had been buried, fewer than 2,000 survivors remainedBut while he was too young to have a vivid memory of the camps, Dr Garwood was a troubled child. He did not recover his health properly until a teenager, and struggled at school. I was born on 29 October 1942 to Solle and Mania Garfinkle in the Przemysl Ghetto some 200 miles east of Krakow. At 8 months of age, together with my parents and 4-year-old sister Leonia, we were sent to the Montelupich Gestapo headquarters in Krakow. From there we were transported to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, arriving on 6 July 1943, the day the camp became an Aufenthaltslager (holding camp). We arrived in Belsen in a group of 2000 but within 6 weeks we were down to 300.