BBC film focusing on Holocaust survivor trauma wins BAFTA award

A BBC Two documentary that followed some of Britain’s last Holocaust survivors won a BAFTA television award this weekend.

‘The Last Survivors,’ which aired last year, won best stand-alone documentary on Saturday, with the award accepted by survivor Maurice Blik, who was taken to Bergen-Belsen aged five and who featured in the programme.

More than a year in the making, the 1.5 hour documentary by Arthur Carey also told the wartime stories of Manfred Goldberg, who remembers Hitler waving from a car as Nazis cheered from the streets, and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who only survived Auschwitz because the orchestra needed a cellist.

In his acceptance speech during an unusually quiet ceremony owing to continuing coronavirus restrictions, Blik said: “It demonstrates how people can go through the most awful atrocities and adversity, and still come out at the end with a view of life that is worth living.”