To mark Holocaust Memorial Day, Prime Minister met with Renee Salt (a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau
and Bergen-Belsen) and Ian Forsyth (a WW2 veteran and one of the
first to arrive at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as it was
liberated).
In a moving conversation, Salt recalled being separated from her
father at Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of Josef Mengele’s selection
process.
Salt said “We arrived at the station [in Auschwitz-Birkenau]
amongst so many screams, people screaming, shouting, ‘get off the
train, be quick’. My father jumped off the train first, I jumped
after. By the time I jumped off the train I didn’t see him
anymore. He disappeared like into thin air. I never saw him
again. Without a kiss or a goodbye he disappeared and I never saw
him again”.
She added “All the children, old people, pregnant women,
invalids, all went to the right. I went to the left… left to
live, right to die. I was together with my mother, for which I
was very grateful and so was she… without my mother, I would
never have survived”.
Salt also remembered the cramped conditions at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, “The hut was already overcrowded before
we got in. We had to sit against the wall, five in a column…
packed like sardines. In this position we sat day and night. Once
a day they came in with two trolleys, one with a cauldron of
soup, on the other were saucepans. Every first person in the
column received a saucepan of soup which we had to share amongst
five people”.
The Prime Minister asked Forsyth about his memories of liberating
Bergen-Belsen. In an emotional exchange a tearful Forsyth said
“No one told us what to expect… I still dream about what
happened on that day… You wouldn’t have believed what we
saw”.
Forsyth recalled how liberators were advised not to feed or touch
those inside the camp, for fear of contracting disease.
Forsyth (who alongside Salt has received his first dose of the
Covid-19 vaccine) said “we are going through a time just now
where you don’t want to touch people, to get to close to them,
that’s exactly what it was like. The only thing is typhoid was
the big problem there”.
He recalled his personal struggle between desperately wanting to
feed those starving in the camp, but knowing that if he did their
bodies would not be able to cope. Forsyth explained how some of
his colleagues couldn’t help but give their rations to the
survivors “we didn’t know that whoever ate the food would die
because they hadn’t eaten for long enough. You try to do your
best and you’re doing your worst”.
On meeting Renee, a survivor from the very camp he liberated,
Forsyth said “I would love to have a couple of hours just to
talk, but perhaps we will meet one day” to which Salt
replied “I would like to thank him very, very much for what
he did in those days. Without them we wouldn’t have
survived”.
Prime Minister said:
“It’s a great privilege to join Ian and Renee on Holocaust
Memorial Day, a very important day in the life of our country.
“People get complacent about anti-Semitism. I think in the UK we
can get complacent about it and we mustn’t.
“It’s so vital that you both have had the courage to continue to
share with everybody, with me and the world, your memories of
what took place. We can never forget it.
“Your personal memories have been perhaps the most powerful
things I’ve ever heard.
“What you saw and experienced is horrifying and we must make sure
nothing like that happens again.”
Video:
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwyr6Y4c7Xo
Download: https://we.tl/t-xaRPgYbtl3
