Nazi terror recalled on website by Yorkshire survivors

Iby had no idea what was going to happen when the police took her away at 5am. She was not alone – many people living in communities where information was controlled by the Nazis, had no knowledge of its horrors.

She said people just disappeared and it was unclear where they went: "I certainly did not know of the horrors and existence of the concentration camps."

Iby, 86, who grew up in Bratislava, then capital of Czecholsovakia, worked for the resistance. She spent six weeks in Auschwitz on starvation rations before she and her friends answered a call for volunteer nurses.

They had no idea if this offer would lead them to the gas chambers, but in fact they were taken to work in the hospital of an armaments factory. In the dying stages of the war, the Germans evacuated them and Iby and others were taken on a forced march, anyone lagging being shot.

While walking they saw American tanks in the distance and were eventually liberated.

Iby met and married a British army officer and later moved to Leeds, where she still lives.

She has been determined to get on with her life and hasn't spoken much of her experiences. However, she has now contributed to a new educational website, telling of her experiences, in the hope that a lasting message of the horrors will resonate with younger generations long after survivors of the atrocities are gone.

She said: "However painful it is for us to bring back these memories, they need to be told, they need to be heard."

Yesterday a Leeds charity, the Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association, launched its new website at an event a Guiseley School, in front of pupils, staff, other survivors and invited guests.

Its new website www.holocaustlearning.org is especially aimed at schools, colleges, universities, organisations, community groups and government and features the stories of Yorkshire survivors, told through their own eyes.

Chairman Lilian Black said: "We hope that their visual testimony now available on-line will be well used so that together we can work towards a more civil society.

"We hope their testimony gives others courage to speak out and act when injustice occurs.

"Never have the lessons of the Holocaust been more important than for the world today.

"The visual testimony and the remarkable reflections of the survivors who settled in Yorkshire after their terrible experiences illustrate very clearly how the stages of persecution led to the genocide of a whole people.

"The hope that they inspire through their indomitable spirit is the legacy for the future," she added.

Ms Black's father Eugene, 82, is another of the survivors who speaks about the horrors of the Nazi period.

Eugene was a 16-year-old happily living with his family in Munkacs, Hungary, until they were forced into a Nazi ghetto in 1944.

His mother and father and the wider family were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Eugene worked as a slave labourer until liberation from the Bergen Belsen camp.

His two sisters were killed in an allied bombing raid while working as slave labourers in Germany.

Also attending yesterday's launch was Trude Silman, 81, of Leeds, who escaped from the atrocities to England with her aunt and a cousin when she was nine years old.

Initially she was homesick as she adjusted to the food and a different language but gradually became more settled.

To this day, 72 years since she left Bratislava as a child, Ms Silman is still searching for information on what happened to her mother. She has discovered that her father died in Auschwitz.

She is a regular speaker, especially in schools, where she talks about her experiences.

The project, has been supported by a grant of 50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. For more information visit: www.holocaustlearning.org

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