A Holocaust survivor on memory, legacy, and the future | Mala Tribich | TEDxCourtauldInstitute

January 27, 2015, marked the 70th Holocaust Memorial Day and the inauguration of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. By promoting awareness of what happened during the Holocaust, Mala hopes that we may remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice in society today.

Mala Tribich was born in 1930 in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland. When the Nazis invaded in 1939, Mala’s family fled eastwards but were later forced into the ghetto established in her hometown. When the ghetto was liquidated, Mala was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp and then to Bergen-Belsen. She came to England in 1947, where she married and gained a degree, and she now works closely with the Holocaust Educational Trust, an organisation devoted to educating young people about the Holocaust and the important lessons it teaches us.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

I am here because I am witness
to the horrific events

that befell European Jewry
during the Second World War.

And I experienced some of them:

life in a ghetto, life as a hidden child,
as a slave labourer

and in two concentration camps.

I'm one of those fast disappearing
numbers of Holocaust survivors

who can say, "I saw it. I was there."

My task this morning is to condense
five and a half years and aftermath

into 18 minutes, so I've had
a very difficult job to select.

I was born in Poland
in a town called Piotrków,

actually Piotrków Trybunalski,

which had a population of about 55,000,

of whom some 15,000 were Jewish.

There were several synagogues.

This is the Great Synagogue,

a splendid building
which dates back to 1793.

It was badly damaged during the war.

I was the middle child of three,

with an older brother, Ben,
and a younger sister, Łucja.

My father had a flour mill -
he was a partner in a flour mill.

My mother was a housewife
who looked after us at home.

I had relatives in several nearby towns,

and we used to visit
and spend holidays together.

I started my education at nursery,
the equivalent of infants, when I was four

and made many friends.

I moved up to junior school
at the age of six.

We observed the Jewish festivals,

and in short, I was living
a normal happy life in a loving family

at the age of eight.

But in 1939, on the 1st of September,

when the German army invaded Poland,

my world collapsed.

My hometown, being near the border,

was attacked immediately
by Stuka dive bombers,

which had small sirens
attached to the wings

to make a frightening noise.

The bombs had whistles
attached to them at the fins,

all designed to create panic,
which they did.

The Polish army was no match
for the Germans,

so Piotrków was very quickly overrun.

The occupying troops started
a campaign of looting and terror.

People were attacked for no reason at all.

Someone we knew,
my father's accountant, was shot,

and his body was left lying
in a block of flats for a whole week.

The German authorities
quickly imposed restrictions:

all radios were confiscated,

so we were isolated
from the outside world,

and valuables had to be handed in.

Jews were placed under curfew

and were not allowed to walk
on certain streets,

as this sign shows here.

We were also required to wear
an armband with the Star of David,

that is shown here.

Piotrków was the first town
in Poland to have a ghetto.

At the beginning of November,
all the Jews were removed from their homes

and herded into a small area of the town

into which some 10,000 Jews
from surrounding areas were also packed,

so it immediately became very overcrowded.

There could be as many
as three families to a room.

Malnutrition and the inadequate
sanitary conditions

caused much illness
and many epidemic diseases,

which in turn caused thousands of deaths.

This street sign
with skull and crossbones,

which I remember very well,

points to the ghetto.

Although there were frequent round-ups

and people were being sent away
to various camps,

the main deportation came
in the autumn of 1942,

and I only managed to avoid it
because my father and my uncle

paid for my cousin Idzia and me to stay
with a Polish family, the Maciejewskis,

in a nearby town, Częstochowa,

where we lived as Christians.

Now, this is a slide of my cousin Idzia.

This shows you where Częstochowa was
in relation to my hometown.

We felt very vulnerable and scared

because there was actually a reward
for turning in hidden Jews,

and Idzia, an only child,
was very homesick

and begged to be taken back.

So after some time,

the Maciejewskis supposedly
took her back to Polish friends

who she said were hiding
her parents' valuables.

In the meantime,

22,000 people had been deported
to the extermination camp of Treblinka,

where they were murdered immediately.

And what came to be called
"the big ghetto" was liquidated.

The remaining inhabitants,
mainly those with work permits,

were confined to a much smaller area,

and when it felt safe,

my father arranged for me to return
to what we called "the small ghetto."

When I arrived, I found that although
the valuables had been collected,

Idzia had not been returned.

There was nothing my distraught uncle
and aunt could do about it,

and we never found out
what happened to Idzia.

Then, after only a few weeks,
in early December,

more than 500 women and children,
including my mother and younger sister,

were rounded up and imprisoned
in the desecrated synagogue

for about a week

without food, water,
warmth or hygienic facilities.

And at dawn, on Sunday,
the 20th of December, 1942,

they were marched in groups of 50
to the nearby Rakow Forest

and brutally murdered
in front of newly-dug mass graves.

Only my mother's quick thinking
saved me from being among them.

Then my aunt Irene Helfgott,
whose husband had been shot,

was deported to a labour camp,

and I was left
to look after my cousin Ann,

my aunt's five-year-old daughter.

Then, there was the final selection.

Everyone without work permits,
which included me and Ann,

were lined up outside the ghetto,
waiting to be loaded onto trucks.

We were guarded, none too gently,

by police and soldiers with rifles

supervised by a German officer.

I don't know what gave me
the idea or the courage,

but I stepped out of line,

walked up to him,

explained that I had been separated
from my father and brother

and asked if I could go back
into the ghetto.

He looked at me with amazement,

then smiled

and told one of the policemen
to take me back inside.

On the way, after an argument,
I managed to collect my cousin Ann too.

All those remaining had work permits
and were sent to two local labour camps,

and the ghetto was liquidated.

My father and brother were allocated
to the local plywood factory,

where, through an unbelievable
stroke of luck,

I also managed to go together with them.

So at the age of twelve,
I became a slave labourer.

For almost two years,

I was working with machines that made
plywood huts for the German army.

We did not live together as a family;
men and women were housed separately.

While I was out at work, other women
in the barracks kept an eye on Ann.

Living conditions were grim,
and food was at barely subsistence level,

but somehow we managed to keep going.

Then, towards the end of 1944,
the final deportation took place.

My father and brother were sent
to Buchenwald with the men,

Ann and I, two aunts
and a number of my friends

were deported with the women
to Ravensbrück concentration camp,

which was in Germany, north of Berlin.

Although conditions
had been constantly deteriorating

and at times we felt
that they could not get any worse,

somehow we managed to retain our hope.

But when we arrived in Ravensbrück,
we felt that we would not survive.

We had to queue up
and all our details were recorded.

Then we had to undress,

everything was taken away from us,

our heads were shaved,

we went through cold communal showers

and were given
the concentration camp garb,

which consisted of a thin striped skirt,
jacket and a pair of clogs.

When we emerged at the other end,
we could not even recognise one another.

We all looked the same.

Our personalities, our very souls
had been taken from us.

And at that moment, we lost hope.

One of my aunts, Frania Klein,
died within a few days,

and my best friend, Pema Blachman,
died soon after that.

People were just giving up.

I was in Ravensbrück
for a little over two months,

and my main memories
are of the interminable Appells -

when we had to stand on the parade ground
and be counted repeatedly

until the numbers were correct -

and the meagre daily rations -

half a slice of something dark
called "bread,"

some grey liquid called "soup"

and some brown liquid
called "ersatz coffee."

But little did we know what was to come.

In February 1945, as the Russian
army was approaching,

the Germans became anxious
to hide the evidence of their evil deeds.

So we were marched
to the cattle trucks again,

and at the end of that journey,
we found ourselves in Bergen-Belsen.

When we arrived, the place
was so overcrowded

that we were put up
in a large tent on bare ground,

and this in mid-winter
with temperatures well below freezing.

Next morning, we entered the main camp,

and the scene that faced us
defies description.

It was like something out of hell.

There was a kind of smog and a smell

and skeletal figures shuffling around
aimlessly like zombies.

There were dead bodies everywhere

and large piles of twisted,
decaying, decomposing corpses.

Typhus and other diseases were raging.

Food was almost non-existent.

We were allocated to a hut,
but the accommodation was so overcrowded

that the hut which would have held 80
might contain hundreds of people,

as many as a thousand.

Then, quite by chance,

I heard that there was a children's hut
somewhere in the camp,

so I set out to find it.

This is the hut, 211, the children's hut.

When we got there, we were interviewed
by the people in charge,

Doctor Bimko and Sister Luba.

And although at first
they would not accept us,

because they also were very overcrowded,

with some persistence, I managed
to get my cousin and myself admitted.

The children were mostly Dutch,

but there were some
other nationalities too.

I still have a vivid picture

of the view from my window:

there was a shed for dead bodies
right opposite us

and a constant procession all day.

At first, bodies were brought
in rather dilapidated carts,

but after that, they were
dragged along in blankets,

and then it finally degenerated into
a body being just dragged along by a limb

and just thrown into this hut.

Just as awful was that the people
who were forced to do this

were barely alive themselves.

Although the conditions in these
children's homes were marginally better,

I went down with typhus
and was extremely ill.

I was unaware of my surroundings
for quite some days

and must have been starting to recover

when one day,

in an upper bunk by the window,

I saw some emaciated people
running towards the gate,

and all I could think of was,
How did they have the strength to run?

That was the moment of liberation,

when the British troops entered the camp
on the 15th of April, 1945.

Within two days, a hospital was set up,

and the medical nursing and relief teams

under the command of Brigadier Glyn Hughes

gave themselves body and soul
to the task of saving lives.

Thanks to their dedication,
commitment and compassion,

I was nursed back to health.

I still remember their kindness

after suffering years
of cruelty and deprivation.

When the British took over,

the German commandant Kramer
was immediately arrested,

and the guards were forced
to collect the bodies,

which could only be buried in mass graves.

Then, all the huts were burnt,

and a temporary memorial was set up.

In July 1945,

Ann and I were sent to Sweden
with a group of children

for rehabilitation,

and subsequently I learnt

that my brother Ben was the only
other survivor of my immediate family.

He was among a group of children survivors

who had been flown
to England in August 1945.

And from him,

I heard that our father had been shot

trying to escape from a death march,

and that was only four days
before the end of the war.

Ben and I were reunited
when I came to England in 1947.

There was no financial support
for immigrants in those days.

I was sponsored by
a Jewish charitable organisation,

and my first task
was to learn the language

and sufficient skills to support myself,

which I was able to do within 12 months.

I joined a social club

which had been set up to help survivors
to integrate with the community,

and through friends, I met Morris Tribich,

a young architect

who had spent five and a half years
in the Royal Engineers,

some of it in the front line
in North Africa

and at Montecassino, in Italy.

We were married in 1950,
had two children, three grandchildren

and enjoyed a happy life
together for 43 years

before he sadly died.

Once my children were at school,

I set about working
at the education that I had missed

and took O and A levels

and eventually obtained a degree
in sociology from London University.

Some years ago, to help me prepare
a PowerPoint presentation,

my friend David, a retired doctor
and a very old family friend,

did a computer search
for information about my hometown,

and he found the original typed list

of the names and ages of transport 132

of 277 Jewish women and 9 children

who had deported
from Piotrków to Ravensbrück

at the end of November 1944.

And on that list, he found my name
and the names of my aunts, my cousin Ann,

and he told me that although he had heard
me tell my story several times,

to see the actual physical evidence
of what had happened to us

left him in tears.

Yet there are still people
who say that it never happened.

About 20 years ago,

I started to speak in public
about my experiences during the war,

mainly at schools under the auspices
of the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET)

and at Beth Shalom,
the Holocaust Centre in Nottingham.

More recently, since the appointment
of HET ambassadors,

I find that I'm speaking
quite often at universities.

So contrary to the rumours
that come back to us from overseas,

Holocaust education
is very active in the UK

and is strongly supported
by the government.

When we speak about the Holocaust,
we have to remember

that is was not only the Jews
who were the victims.

The extermination programme
started as early as 1940

with the mentally and
physically handicapped,

on whom, by trial and error, the man
who became the notorious commandant

of the extermination camps at Sobibór
and Treblinka, Franz Stangl,

learned his trade
and how to square his conscience.

And when it was in full swing,

the victims included also
the Roma, Jehovah's Witnesses

and other groups who did not conform
to the Nazi ideal.

One would have thought that the revelation
of the hideous crimes against humanity

that took place in Germany
and the occupied countries

during the Second World War

would have been such a shock to humankind

that any resurgence of such destructive
racial and religious hatred

would be inconceivable.

Yet, in spite of the Holocaust being
the best documented atrocity

in the whole of human history,

there are people who claim
that it never happened.

So this, to me, is the value
of what we remaining survivors are doing:

remembering the victims and teaching
the generations that follow us

to be ever on their guard

against the denial
and the repetition of such evil.

When I did my first trial run
of this talk, David said,

"You can't finish with that slide,
you need something more upbeat.

Would you ever have dreamt
when you were queuing up and shivering

when you arrived at Ravensbrück

on that freezing November day in 1944,

that almost 60 years later

you would be doing
what's on the next slide?"

And I said, "Not in a million years."

Thank you very much.

(Applause)