UK-based resistance hero and Auschwitz survivor dies, aged 98
Iby Knill, widow of British army officer Bert Knill, described herself as “the woman with no number” as she escaped being tattooed because her captors ran out of ink.
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
Thousands of students and young people all over Britain are mourning the death of Holocaust survivor Iby Knill, 98, a wartime member of the Resistance in Hungary and a survivor of Auschwitz.
Mrs Knill, the widow of British army officer Bert Knill, described herself as “the woman with no number” as she escaped being tattooed at Auschwitz — because her captors had run out of ink.
Based in Leeds, she only began talking about her wartime experiences after her husband’s death. She was awarded the British Empire Medal for her work in Holocaust education, and was described by the Holocaust Educational Trust director Karen Pollock as “formidable”. She was “passionate about sharing her testimony”, Ms Pollock said, “ensuring the next generation learnt about the horrors of the Holocaust”.
Iby Knill was born in 1923 in Czechoslovakia to Jewish parents, though she was baptised as a teenager. Her mother learned that Jewish girls were routinely sent to be prostitutes for German soldiers, and so she was sent across the border to Hungary, where she became involved in the Resistance.
“Her role was to carry messages and codes, but she was caught, tortured and imprisoned for three months. After she was released, Iby was rearrested for being in Hungary illegally and taken to an internment camp and eventually to a refugee camp”.
In March 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary and Iby was classed as a political prisoner and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Iby was then transported from Auschwitz to a slave labour camp in Lippstadt. At the end of March the 750 female prisoners in the camp were sent on a death march towards Bergen-Belsen, but were liberated on the way on April 1 1945, by American forces. After a period of recovery in hospital following liberation, Iby became an interpreter for the British military government.
Iby came to England in March 1947 and began studying and rebuilding her family. She achieved a BA in 1973, an MA in 2002 (aged 79), and an Honorary Doctorate from Huddersfield University in 2016.
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