MP walks in shadow of family murdered by Nazis

Raina and Isaac Sevilla were captured by Nazi officers in Paris in 1940 and were never seen again – assumed dead by the devastated family of Leeds North East MP Fabian Hamilton.

More than 70 years have passed since the couple, who were in their 60s and 70s, were killed but only this week has Mr Hamilton been able to knowingly pay his respects during a visit to Poland with the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET).

The 58-year-old father-of-three only found out about the fate of his relatives last September after he was contacted by a French second cousin he never knew he had, who had been researching the family’s history.

“After my third time I really didn’t want to go again to see the crematorium, the hair, the glasses and the suitcases any more,” he said.

“I have seen it three times, it’s enough. I found it too emotionally draining and then the added knowledge that my great grandparents had perished there added to that, really.

“But I did feel like I had to pay my respects and I felt I should be there to be with the young people.”

In part owing to his family ties with the camp, he decided not to enter the morbid exhibits during the visit, which feature the hair and belongings taken from the bodies of some of the estimated 1.1million people killed there.

Some of the exhibits, which are situated in the many barracks that housed prisoners of war during the Nazi occupation of Poland, speak of “the selection” where doctors decided which of the latest inmates were young and fit enough to work and which were destined for the gas chambers.

Mr Hamilton said: “A woman in her mid to late 60s and a man in his 70s wouldn’t have been any use to the Nazis and they would have been sent straight to the gas chambers, so I imagine that they ended up in the crematorium that’s still in there.

“I was pretty shocked, actually, but then I should have known they were killed in a concentration camp – so many were.

“It’s always been a family mystery, my father never knew of anything like this.”

Raina and Isaac only moved from their Geneva home to Paris in 1934 and, as French citizens, six years later they boarded a train doomed for Auschwitz at the Drancy internment camp along with thousands of French Jews.

Last year Mr Hamilton went to Paris to see a memorial near Notre Dame Cathedral, where the plight of Raina, Isaac and so many others is commemorated.

Mr Hamilton said: “I knew my blood relatives died there [Auschwitz] and I just wanted to think about that so I’m glad I did go.”

His most recent visit to the camp came as part of the HET’s Lessons from Auschwitz project.

The Government-funded initiative took more than 200 Yorkshire students from across the UK on the trip to the infamous Nazi camp to gain a greater understanding of the Holocaust.

The four-part course, established 14 years ago, also includes a seminar focusing on pre-war Jewish life in Europe, the first-hand testimony of Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Zigi Shipper and a project aimed at sharing the students’ experiences with their classmates.

The Leeds North East MP added: “I think as the generation that survived pass away, people like Iby Knill, who was 90 this year, will probably not be here in 20 years so for those young people to see the artefacts in person is something they will never forget and they get to pass that on.”

The wider extended family of Mr Hamilton has further links to the Holocaust.

He found out in 1985 that relatives on another side of his family from Salonika, Greece, assumed dead after being sent to the Belsen concentration camp, actually survived the war as they were there when the camp was liberated.