Holocaust survivor tells of ‘anger’ over comparisons between Israel and the Nazis
Eve Kugler BME, 92, spoke to Jewish News ahead of sharing her testimony at the Foreign Office Holocaust Memorial Day reception
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Holocaust survivor Eve Kugler BME has spoken of her anger at hearing comparisons made between the German Nazis and Israel in the Jewish state’s long-running conflict with the Palestinians.
Speaking to Jewish News ahead of testimony at the Foreign Office Holocaust Memorial Day reception in Westminster, the 92 year-old said:”To have Israelis and the Jewish people put in line with the Nazis – it makes me very angry.”
Kugler, who was born in 1931 in the German city of Halle, gave a vivid and moving account at Tuesday’s event, at which David Cameron spoke, of the impact of the Nazi’s rise to power, including the frightening events of the Kristallnacht, her father’s detention in the Buchenwald camp, and further turbulent times in France, until she, and one of her sister’s Ruth escaped to America.
Earlier Kugler had been asked by another journalist, “How do you think Israel should try to solve its relationship with the Palestinians?”
Calmly, she responded:”I am often asked about Israel, about what I think.
“I generally tell people that I am not here to talk about current affairs. What do I think personally? I don’t think that matters. Whatever my personal views are of the situation in Israel, I don’t feel I should comment, because I don’t feel I am speaking for them. That is my own personal view.”
But Kulger, who in her testimony recalled as a child six nazis had rampaged through the family home destroying possessions and her Orthodox grandfather’s sacred Hebrew textbooks before marching her father out of the house under arrest, was insistent that the conduct of Hamas who she said were “indoctrinated” could be compared to the way Hitler “indoctrinated the German people.”
She added:”In that sense, it’s on a smaller scale, but it’s happening again. The Holocaust was all over Europe, north Africa, the Middle East. Whereas at the moment, we hope it doesn’t spread. But Jewish people have been attacked for five thousand years.”
A prolific speaker about her experience surviving the Nazis at schools and at synagogues, Kulger said that in her view when speaking to children the curriculum ensured that “a good part of the time they will have had some background.”
Kulger added:”The teacher’s are quite good” but she said taking questions afterwards from pupils “they do seem very interested in what I tell them.”
She said she felt pupils could relate to her because she was able to tell them what had happened to her under the Nazis when she was the same age as the children.
In the Nazi roundup of Jews in 1942 the French Resistance had hidden her other sister Lea, then aged five, in a Catholic convent while her parents survived the war in French concentration camps.
Kulger’s family were reunited in New York in 1946, and she worked as a journalist before moving to London in 1990.
She met with foreign secretary Cameron at Tuesday’s foreign office event, where she shared stories of her remarkable life.
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