Duchess of Cambridge: Why these pictures are so important to me

Pick up your copy of Jewish News’ special
commemorative edition for HMD today.

The harrowing atrocities of the Holocaust, which were caused by the most unthinkable evil, will forever lay heavy in our hearts.  Yet it is so often through the most unimaginable adversity that the most remarkable people flourish.

Despite unbelievable trauma at the start of their lives, Yvonne Bernstein and Steven Frank are two of the most life-affirming people that I have had the privilege to meet.

They look back on their experiences with sadness but also with gratitude that they were some of the lucky few to make it through.  

Their stories will stay with me forever.

While I have been lucky enough to meet two of the now very few survivors, I recognise not everyone in the future will be able to hear these stories first hand.

It is vital that their memories are preserved and passed on to future generations, so that what they went through will never be forgotten.

I recall reading the Diary of Anne Frank as a young girl. Her sensitive and intimate interpretation of the horrors of the time was one of the underlying inspirations behind the images.

I wanted to make the portraits deeply personal to Yvonne and Steven – a celebration of family and the life that they have built since they both arrived in Britain in the 1940s.