Holocaust survivors feature in BBC film exploring impact of trauma on family
search

The latest Jewish News

Read this week’s digital edition

Click Here
HMD 2019The Last Survivors

Holocaust survivors feature in BBC film exploring impact of trauma on family

Coinciding with Holocaust Memorial Day, 'The Last Survivor' reveals their personal stories and how their experiences affected them

Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist

  • The Last Survivors -  Susan Pollack, - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Susan Pollack, - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors - Maurice Blik with one of his sculptures - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Maurice Blik with one of his sculptures - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors - Manfred Goldberg- ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Manfred Goldberg- ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors - Ivor Perl, - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Ivor Perl, - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors -  Manfred Goldberg holding a painting of his brother. ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Manfred Goldberg holding a painting of his brother. ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors -  Maurice - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Maurice - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors -  Ivor Perl, - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Ivor Perl, - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors - Sam - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Sam - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • Manfred Goldberg ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    Manfred Goldberg ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors -  Sam - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Sam - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
  • The Last Survivors - Frank - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)
    The Last Survivors - Frank - ((C) Minnow Films Ltd - Photographer: Richard Ansett)

The faces loom at the viewer out of the dark, captured in almost too much detail, the experiences of a lifetime etched on their skin. Some of the faces are familiar, some could be any senior citizen.

But they are not just any senior citizens. They are Holocaust survivors, and not just any survivors, but among the last living witnesses to the six year-long attempted complete annihilation of the Jewish people.

These are the people who have been inexorably damaged by what happened to them, and their testimonies shudder from the screen in the BBC documentary, “The Last Survivors”.

The 90-minute film is the result of months of painstaking work by producer and director Arthur Cary, who was commissioned to make the feature by the BBC to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day.

Alison Kirkham, the Controller of BBC Factual Commissioning, told a preview screening audience at London’s JW3: “We believe that there are shared moments in our collective history that merit re-examination, and it is our role as broadcasters to preserve them for posterity. That is absolutely the case with this film”.

In drifts and fragments, the personal stories of some of these men and women, all now in their 80s or even 90s, weave in between depictions of their lives today. Here is Ivor Perl, walking his dog in apparent domestic harmony.

We believe that there are shared moments in our collective history that merit re-examination, and it is our role as broadcasters to preserve them for posterity

He sits on a bench and looks out at a chocolate box view of parkland. “That’s the trouble with being a survivor,” he reflects.

“Everything tends to remind you of something”, as his mind’s eye takes the viewer back to his time in Dachau, with barbed wire in front of him instead of a tranquil tree line.

The Last Survivors – Ivor Perl: “That’s the trouble with being a survivor. Everything tends to remind you of something. ((C) Minnow Films Ltd – Photographer: Richard Ansett)

Or here is Frank Bright, pottering about in his Suffolk home with his wife Cynthia, admitting that he cannot really communicate with many people “because they don’t know what I’m talking about. I mean, how many people in England see their parents murdered, or see a gas chamber in action?”

Ivor Perl: That’s the trouble with being a survivor. Everything tends to remind you of something”

Arthur Cary, perhaps like the viewer, wonders what effect the Holocaust has had on the Brights’ married life. “I’ve no idea,” retorts Cynthia. “I don’t know what he would have been like if he hadn’t been through all that”.

Upstairs Frank’s fingers hover over a school photograph, taken in 1942. He points to each classmate: “Did not survive, did not survive, did not survive…”

Showing the film crew around his garden, dotted with statues he has made, Maurice Blik, with an unexpected Cockney accent, turns out to have a tragic hidden story behind his overtly “can-do” exterior.

Today a former president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, he was born in Amsterdam in 1939 and ended the war being liberated from Belsen.

The Last Survivors – Maurice Blik with one of his sculptures – ((C) Minnow Films Ltd – Photographer: Richard Ansett)

And it was in Belsen, he tells us, that his baby sister was born and died, a heartbreaking memory as he remembers a first “sculpture” that he tried to give her as her birthday present. She didn’t even make it to one year old, Blik recalls.

“The Last Survivors” is unusual in its attempt to explore the effect of the survivors’ experiences on their families.

Judy, Ivor Perl’s daughter, is at times exasperated with her father but also intent on showing him bottomless love and affection — and of attempting to explain the events to her own daughter, as the family goes to Auschwitz together.

Manfred Goldberg, who swore never to return to his home town of Kassel, does so, with his wife, as he unveils a Stolpersteine (memorial stone) in the name of his little brother, Herman. Tears run down the faces of the onlookers as he recites Kaddish.

The Last Survivors – Manfred Goldberg holding a painting of his brother. Manfred swore never to return to his home town of Kassel, does so, with his wife, as he unveils a Stolpersteine (memorial stone) in the name of his little brother, Herman. Tears run down the faces of the onlookers as he recites Kaddish. – ((C) Minnow Films Ltd – Photographer: Richard Ansett)

We meet, probably for the first time on screen, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s daughter Maya Jacob Wallfisch, and get some sense of the survivor mother’s desperate attempt to recreate “a normal” family from the ashes of her destroyed one. Anita, a cellist, smokes heavily throughout the film and pours cold water on sentimentalising the choices she made.

And we see Susan Pollack, born in Hungary, another Belsen survivor who is seen, incongruously, dancing in her flat towards the end of the film. It is, she says, “a warning film, it tells people, beware”.

It is a warning film. It tells people, beware

Do the survivors have anything in common?

On the face of it, very little. In fact, this remarkable film shows that they do, summed up, perhaps, by Maurice Blik.

“Here I am, take note!” he declares. He didn’t want being a survivor to define him. But he, like the others, now feels a need to retell his story.

The Last Survivors – Susan Pollack, – ((C) Minnow Films Ltd – Photographer: Richard Ansett)
Support your Jewish community. Support your Jewish News

Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.

For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.

Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.

You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.

100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...

Engaging

Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.

Celebrating

There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.

Pioneering

In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.

Campaigning

Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.

Easy access

In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.

Voice of our community to wider society

The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.

We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.

read more: