Eisenhower’s great-grandson meets survivor saved as baby
Merrill Eisenhower and Eva Clarke will take part in March of the Living together
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
British-based Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke, who was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp a week before liberation in April 1945, has thanked the great-grandson of President Eisenhower for the role of American troops in her survival and that of other camp prisoners.
Mrs Clarke, who lives in Cambridge, met Merrill Eisenhower as part of a collaboration between the March of the Living organisation and the Eisenhower family. In 1945 the late president was General Eisenhower, commander of the US Army, whose troops liberated the Austrian camp.
On Monday this week, Mrs Clarke told Merrill Eisenhower how much she owed to his great-grandfather. eating him in Washington DC, she said: “I am the infant your great-grandfather and the American soldiers saved. Had he and his soldiers not arrived in time, I would not be standing here today. General Eisenhower wasn’t just a military man, but a visionary leader. He saw the dangers of Holocaust denial the moment he witnessed the atrocities committed by the Nazis”.
Merrill Eisenhower is continuing his family’s legacy by taking part in this year’s April 24 March of the Living event between the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. He and hundreds of international participants will be joined by survivors, including Eva Clarke.
Merrill Eisenhower declared: “There is no greater privilege than continuing the legacy of my great-grandfather, who not only led the liberation of thousands of Jews from a cruel fate, but also ensured the world bore witness to the horrors of the Holocaust by ordering everything to be documented. To march in the March of the Living alongside survivors, whose lives were saved thanks to him, is a solemn duty. We must keep telling their stories, stand against Holocaust denial, and fight antisemitism and intolerable in all of its manifestation wherever it appears”.
Scott Saunders, founder and chairman of March of the Living UK, said: “As a British Holocaust survivor, Eva Clarke’s story is a testament to resilience and a vital part of our national and collective memory.”
Eva Clarke weighed only 1.3 kilograms when she was born in Mauthausen concentration camp on April 29 1945. Had she been born a day earlier, both she and her mother Anka would have been sent to the gas chambers — but the gas had run out.
Today she is one of only three babies known to have survived being born in Mauthausen.
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