Good morning,
Last week, on the 27th of January, it was Holocaust Memorial Day – a day when we remember the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of others persecuted and killed by the Nazi regime. Holocaust Memorial Day is not only about remembering what happened in the past. It is about understanding how it happened, why it matters now, and what responsibility we carry today as the next generation of witnesses.
Bridging Generations
This year’s theme is ‘Bridging Generations.’
As time passes, we face the reality that very soon there will be no Holocaust survivors left alive to tell their stories first-hand. When that happens, we risk losing something vital – not just historical facts, but human voices, emotions, and lived experiences.
So the question becomes: how do we ensure these stories are not lost?
The answer is through those who come after.
I am standing here today as part of that bridge. My great-grandparents survived the Holocaust, and their voices now live on through the generations that followed. Today, I want to share with you the story of my great-grandmother, Rae – not because her story is unique, but because it represents the experience of millions whose lives were torn apart.
Life Before the War
Rae grew up in a city in southern Poland called Częstochowa. She lived with her parents, grandparents, older brother Mendel and her younger sister Lilah in a family home above their family bakery. Rae recalls how they made all kinds of bread. Now rye bread became something our family would always associate with them. Even after the war, in England, they always had rye bread in their home – a small, quiet reminder of the life they had before everything was taken.
Rae lived a comfortable, stable, and happy life. They lived in a Jewish area of the town and spoke both Yiddish and Polish. Rae loved school. She had friends, routines, ambitions – a future she assumed would unfold naturally.
Rae was fifteen years old when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. From that moment, everything stopped.
The Invasion and Separation
Jewish families were immediately targeted. Rae was forced to wear an armband with the yellow Star of David and eventually Jewish property and businesses were confiscated. Rights were systematically removed. Dignity was stripped away.
One day, German soldiers (the SS) burst violently into the family home. Rae described shouting in German, ‘OUT’ ‘OUT’, boots on the stairs, doors being forced open, and complete chaos. People were screaming. Everyone was terrified.
In the middle of this chaos, Rae’s father desperately wrote down the name and address of Rae’s youngest sister, Lilah, on a piece of paper. He believed they would be allowed to return and wanted her to know where home was. Rae recalls, that moments later, overwhelmed, her father fainted and was kicked and dragged down the stairs by the SS officers.
They were given five minutes to leave their home forever, unable to take anything with them.
In the town square, families were lined up. An SS officer stood with a stick, deciding who would go left and who would go right – who would live and who would die.
That was the last time Rae saw her family together.
Her mother was selected and sent to the gas chambers. Her brother Mendel was sent to Auschwitz, where he later died of typhoid just days before liberation. Her father refused to abandon Rae’s little sister, Lilah at 8 years old. He refused to let her go and save himself. They were murdered together at Treblinka, in gas chambers.
Rae was fifteen years old and completely alone.
The Ghetto
Rae was then sent to the ghetto, only a few streets away from the home.
She arrived with nothing. She was still wearing the skirt and blouse she had on when she was forced out of her home. She wore those same clothes during the day and slept in them at night. She did not change her clothes for over a year.
She was placed in a single room with between ten and fifteen other people. She described it as living “like animals.” There was no privacy, barely any food, and constant fear. At night, several girls would share one bed. Rae said the nights were the worst – terrified, unable to sleep, listening for footsteps.
Every morning, Rae was forced out of the ghetto to work. She was made to clear Jewish homes that had been taken over by Germans – removing furniture, personal belongings, religious artefacts such as Shabbat candlesticks – often from houses she knew and recognised.
She said that the Polish population would watch them walk past, but no one was allowed to speak to them. If anyone tried to take food or possessions, they were shot on the spot. In Rae’s words, “Life meant nothing.”
Food was almost non-existent – just rations, a small piece of bread and water. Rae said she cried day and night. She was fifteen years old and completely alone.
She described scenes she said never left her: SS guards giving children chocolate, watching them play with it and eat it, and then taking them by the hair and shooting them. She said, “What would you think after seeing that?”
There were days, she said, when you did not want to wake up in the morning. You just wanted it to end.
In 1942, after around a year in the ghetto, Rae was sent away again.
The Labour Camp: Hasag
Rae was transported to Hasag in a lorry – the kind you would use to transport animals. Hasag was an ammunition factory in an isolated, unpopulated area. There were no civilians nearby. No escape. Barbed wire surrounded the camp.
Rae said the labour camp was worse than the ghetto.
Selections happened constantly – sometimes daily, sometimes several times a day. A man with a small stick would point, and those selected would be taken away to be killed.
Rae worked long hours producing and inspecting bullets. She explained that every bullet had to be perfect. If even one in a hundred was damaged, she would be beaten until she fainted. Cold water would be thrown over her to wake her up – and then she would be beaten again.
She said that sometimes the girls would laugh together at their bruises. Not because it was funny – but because laughing was the only way to survive.
Food was barely edible. Often their dinner – water and potato peelings – was thrown onto the street. At night, twenty to thirty people lay side by side on wooden boards. In the morning, Rae said, people around you were often dead.
She described standing outside every morning for roll call, in the snow, with no shoes and barely any clothing. Disease was everywhere. Typhoid spread quickly. People who were taken to see the camp doctor never returned.
Rae said that each morning you woke up in a worse situation than the day before – weaker, hungrier, exhausted, and more afraid.
Survival and Liberation
In early 1945, something changed, yet they remained determined to kill as many Jewish inmates as they could up until the very end.
Towards the end of the war, just before the camp was liberated, Rae was selected to be killed.
She remembered standing near the camp toilets and somehow managing to escape inside. She lay there, in human excrement, for hours, drifting in and out of consciousness. She said she does not clearly remember how long she was there.
When she eventually came out, everyone from her barracks had been murdered.
She asked her cousin what to do, who was in a different barrack. If she returned to the barracks, the guards would know she had escaped the mass shooting. Her cousin told her to go back to work and act as if nothing had happened.
When Rae arrived at work, a female SS guard – known for her extreme brutality – saw her. She beat Rae violently across the face, nearly knocking her teeth out, and told her, “You will be next. I will put you on the truck myself.”
Rae’s courage and determination saved her life, without he even realising.
After this, the guards began to disappear in the next few days. Rae recalls literally seeing the SS officers running into the forest, fleeing the camp. Shortly after, trucks arrived carrying Russian soldiers. They shouted, “You are free.”
The Russian soldiers brought food – bread, butter – and medical supplies. Rae had survived nearly three years in the camp. She said she could not believe she was still alive.
Rae recalls this moment and she explained that she just thought what does that even mean.
Rae said that even then, people were afraid to leave. They had no homes to return to, no families waiting for them. Freedom came with fear.
Rae said the hardest question was not “Have we survived?” but “Where do we go now?”
After the War – Harry
After liberation, Rae met my great-grandfather, Harry.
Harry’s story was different but equally devastating. After his death, we discovered that before the war he had been married and had a baby – a wife and child he never spoke of, because the pain was too great. They were murdered during the Holocaust, and he carried that grief silently for the rest of his life.
Rae and Harry married in 1946. They moved across Europe before eventually arriving in England as refugees. Rae and Harry chose to tell their stories in the years after the war. They recorded it so that it would not be lost.
Why This Matters Today
That is why I know this story. And that is why you now know part of it too.
When you leave school today, you will go home. You will eat dinner. You will sleep in your own bed. You will plan for your future.
All of that was taken from Rae at fifteen.
Holocaust Memorial Day reminds us that hatred does not appear overnight – it grows when people stay silent.
Today, you are part of the bridge between past and future. The responsibility to remember now belongs to all of us.
Thank you for listening.
