 Hello, my name is Jonah Albert, and I'm a cultural event producer at the British Library, and I would like to welcome you to this special event to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. It is our pleasure to have Ava Slosh in conversation with Tim Robertson this evening. We would like to extend a warm welcome to those of you joining us from the Living Knowledge Network, a network of libraries across the country. But before we start, we have some housekeeping. Above me, you will see three tabs. You can use one of them to buy Ava's book. The other to donate to the British Library. The British Library is a charity. And the third to send us feedback, particularly on our virtual events. Below the video, you can see a form that will enable you to send questions which Ava will answer towards the end of the event. The event is being speech to text captioned. You can turn this on by clicking on the tab below the video. Please welcome Tim Robertson, who has been the Chief Executive of the Anne Frank Trust UK since 2018. His previous roles included director of the Royal Society of Literature and Chief Executive of Kessler Trust for Arts in Prison. He's also been a children's social worker in the London borough of Camden. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tim Robertson. Jonah, thank you very much indeed for that welcome. Everybody watching is going to be my great honour this evening to introduce you to Ava Schloss. As Jonah said, I am the Chief Executive at the Anne Frank Trust UK. And it's a real personal pleasure for me to be at the British Library again. I live just across the street on Judd Street. And I've had a long connection with the library in my previous role at the Royal Society of Literature. We set up an event partnership with the library, which is still flourishing. It's a great pleasure to be here. And the library also has some connection with Anne Frank. You may know that in the forecourt there is a tree planted in Anne Frank's memory. And there are no fewer than two statues of Anne Frank inside the library. I pray God for the day when we can all actually get into the building again. Both of them, one near the Education Centre, one downstairs, both of the bronze statues of Anne Frank. Now, Anne Frank was and her family were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. And they fled in the mid 1930s to Holland. And only to find that Holland was invaded by the Nazis in 1940. And a couple of years after that when anti-Semitism had completely taken over the society around them, they were forced into hiding. And they hid for with four other Jewish people. So Anne and her parents and her sister for nearly two, for over two years, the time in when Anne Frank was aged 13 to 15, during which time she wrote a diary about her experiences. But the Franks were betrayed and deported by the Nazis to concentration camps. And all of them died apart from Anne's father Otto. And they were among the six million Jewish people who were murdered by the Nazis in a Holocaust, along with millions of people, others whom the Nazis deemed to be unacceptable human beings. And the worst of those death camps where the Nazis sent people was Auschwitz, which was liberated by the Soviet Army on the 27th of January 1945. And the 27th of January is the date that we mark as Holocaust Memorial Day, which is actually in a couple of days time. And in fact, this year, the National Event Holocaust Memorial Day run by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is open to all of us. You can go online to see that event if you want to. And Holocaust Memorial Day Trust have asked for all of us to light a candle in our windows at eight o'clock on Thursday evening to remember those who perished in Holocaust and subsequent genocides. Anne Frank, though, after the war, her diary was discovered and published and it's gone on in three ways to become quite astonishing, culturally, politically and educationally. Culturally, the most astonishing world phenomenon, 36 million copies sold. One of the most beloved books in the world, radio programs, TV programs, films, an astonishing array of different cultural manifestations. Politically an inspiration to JF Kennedy, to Barack Obama, to Nelson Mandela, to Baclav Havel, to all kinds of liberal and liberating thinkers and leaders. And educationally. And there are Anne Frank educational organizations all around the world and at the Anne Frank Trust UK. We are the one that's the British branch. And we take Anne Frank's story into schools across Britain and use that as a means to educate about all forms of prejudice and discrimination. We have workshops on antisemitism, homophobia, Islamophobia, sexism and so on and now Anne Frank Young ambassadors become amazing spokespeople for a fairer and more equal world. But they're always grounded in that knowledge of the Holocaust. We were founded by a survivor of the Holocaust by Schloss and Eva's story as you will hear this evening intersects in various ways with Anne Frank's and is different in some other ways. And Eva will is going to talk for about 40 minutes to tell her story, and she will then answer some questions which you have on your screen the details of how to submit your questions to us. And if you want to know more about Eva you'll see also that you can buy her book she's written three books actually but the latest and the fullest of telling her story is called After Auschwitz. And so it's my very great pleasure as always to welcome the co-founder and honorary president of the Anne Frank Trust UK Eva Schloss Eva. Where will you begin your story I would imagine in your childhood in Vienna in the 1930s. Well, good evening everybody. It's an honor for me to be speaking in the British Library. And yes, I have a big story. Unfortunately, as I said, I actually usually start like you say in Vienna, but as this is a different kind of talk, because we remember the liberation of Auschwitz. I am one of the very, very few if at all any more people who were there and have survived till this day. And so I really would like to start with sort of the end of this terrible part of my life. But it wasn't quite the end because you will hear it my story. It was February. Sorry, it was January 1945. The camp Auschwitz had been partly evacuated already. Many, many days Nazis took empty barracks in the men camp and the women's camp. I was actually in Birkenau. If you have ever been to those complexes of camps, so there are many, many camps. So the Auschwitz men camp is a big one. Then was Birkenau, which was very, very big, but it was different. It was constructed just until 1940 for more prisoners. And it was very basic, just wooden barracks with no furniture, no toilets and no water in it. And very, very primitive. Quite different from Auschwitz, which was proper brick buildings with single bunks and as well washrooms and tables and combats where people could be the epilogics. So we realized it was winter. It was very, very cold. The snow was perhaps a meter high. And very often we walked without shoes. I had terrible frostbite on my feet that could hardly walk. I was at the time in a barrack together with my mother. Later I will tell you that it wasn't always the case. And we didn't know what was going on. Sometimes we were called to work. Sometimes we were stayed in the barracks. It was chaos. And then one night the Nazis called out again. We were in the barrack trying to sleep and said, everybody out. We are going to leave the camp. We are going to march. And so everybody got out of the barrack. My mother was very, very weak. We stood in the cold, shivering, hardly with any clothes on. And then there was an air raid. The Russians obviously were near and were investigating this area. So they said, we are not marching. We can't march in an air raid back. And this was the whole night in and out, in and out. After about five, six attempts like this, my mother said, I just can't get out anymore. We'll just stay. We take a chance on it. And I said, okay, I was as well exhausted. And we fell asleep, deep sleep. And in the morning we woke up and it was very, very quiet. We went to look at outside. The camp was practically empty. So there were about three, four barracks where there was still some people. And that was it. So the gates were open. We could have gone, but where are we going? The population outside was not welcoming to us. We knew that. So there were some Polish prisoners who did go, but most people stayed. We were 10 days still on our own. And many, many people died. I was one of the few people with a Polish woman who had still the strength to take those dead bodies out. We just had to eat them up outside in the snow. We couldn't do anything else with them. And then one day again, we were looking around, see if we can find some bits of food on the ground. And just to the enormous creature at the gate. And it was the first Russian soldier coming to investigate. He came into the camp. He had no idea what he was going to find. And some Polish people could speak to him. He explained he was just a scout, but the army will follow. He's going back to tell the army that there are no Nazis here anymore, that it is safe for them to advance. And this is what happened. Within the next day, suddenly the Russians came with their field kitchen, with tanks, with horses. And states at night put the field kitchen up and fed us. You can't imagine what this meant for us. We haven't had food for many months, even just bits of peas, a bit of bread, but now hot, wonderful cabbage soup. And they gave us as much as we wanted. And we ate and ate and ate. The soldiers were singing. It was wonderful. We said, well, now it's the end. We will go probably home soon and everything will be good. But of course, it wasn't at all like that. In the morning, the Russians were gone. I sat the whole night on a bucket. My food went just straight through me because I just couldn't digest it. And in the morning again, many people had died from overeating. So we stayed again for a few days. And then I said to my mother, well, we can't stay like this. We'll all die. And I'm going to go to Auschwitz to the main camp to try to find my father and brother. So there was a French girl. He said, I come with you. So we did. And that was about three miles. We went in the dark because there was still fighting around. Bullets flying around and shooting and all that. So we went eventually. We arrived in Auschwitz and the Russians had made a headquarters there. That was more civilized with proper barracks like I told you. And I asked permission if I can look in the barracks to try to find my father and brother. So very again, many barracks where we saw a few people sitting outside, standing, walking. They didn't know what to do, where to go. And I looked all over the place. And then I saw a man standing there. Very pale, very old, looking lost. And I went to him and I said, you look familiar to me. He said, yes, I'm Otto Frank. I'm his father. And you, I see you're even going on his friend. I said, yes, yes. Have you seen my girls? Have you seen my wife? No, I never saw them. Have you seen Hans and my father? Because he knows them. He said, yeah, they were here. But a few weeks ago, they left with the Nazis when they were evacuating the camp. So good news. The war can't last long. They'll be all right. So I went back and fetched my mother. And so we had to stay a few weeks in Auschwitz. And then the Russians decided the wooden levers there. So that would take us eastward safe. And that is what happened. We traveled for four months with the Russians till May. Can you imagine? Still in Kettle Truck, the same. The doors were left open a little bit. There was a stove there. They gave us food. There were no toilets. So when the train stopped, we could go out and relieve ourselves. We went through different villages. We saw unbelievable devastation. Wherever we went, the Germans had ruined everything. We went partly through Russia, sent to Romania, and eventually in May. So from February till May, we traveled this way. And we ended up in Odessa. We still had only the clothes which we had left Auschwitz with. And the Russians gave us Russian uniforms. I was very proud of this. This was actually photographed after we got back. But this is what it was. Very solid, very well made. Because a woman's uniform. Because there were a lot of women in the Russian army at the time. So anyway, this is the 27th of January, how it started. And it was not the end of the world. It was not the end of the war either. And then of course, a long journey till eventually we got back to Amsterdam in June. And there we were very lucky we were able to get into our apartment. But I just want to tell you something. Otto Frank was one of the survivors. And if he wouldn't have been survived like me at the time, the diary would never have been published. So you know, this was really a wonderful for Otto to be surviving and be able to get the diary. And what he did with it was really another miracle. Well, I hope we'll have time to come to this towards the end of my story. So I go back now to the beginning Vienna, where I was born in 1929 in a very young, wonderful family. I had an older brother. We had grandparents and uncle cousins. Our family has been in Austria for generations. It was a beautiful country. And as well, it used to be one of the, I think it was the most powerful empire in Europe for many, many, many years. The Austrian Empire. But after the First World War, they lost most of their power. And Austria became a very, very small, simple country, quite poor. But nevertheless, the Kaiser invited from all this big empire, artists, doctors, musicians, poets, painters. So it was a very, very cultured, wonderful country. And beautiful, with mountains and lakes. So my father and me, we were the daredevils. We were always going in the mountain doing dangerous excursions. My brother and my mother were anxiously waiting for the little restaurant in the neighborhood. That is one of the pictures. There are very few pictures of my father, because my father usually took the pictures. But in this case, probably my brother took it. So we were very, very happy. But all this changed in March 1938. I just turned nine years old. Hans was 12 years old. Without permission, without announcing, the Nazis marched into Austria and occupied the country. And we were amazed and shocked. Because even our friends stood in the street waving swastika flags at the Heil Hitler's Award. My first experience of antisemitism after school, I went to my best friend who was a Catholic girl. And when the mother saw me, she said, we never want to see you here again. And she slammed the door in my face. I went home crying. I said to my mother, we didn't have a quarrel. What is the matter? My mother said, well, for Jewish people, life is going to be very hard and very difficult. My brother came home from school, 12 years old. His clothes were torn. His face was covered in blood. And then my parents asked, Hans, what happened to you? He said, my friends did that. And the teachers watched it happening. Can you imagine? So my father, who had inherited a shoe factory from his father and had connections with Holland because there was a big shoe industry in the south of Holland, immediately left. That was still possible. But of course, a whole family couldn't really leave. He said, I will try to fight accommodation. And then hopefully you can all follow. But by the time that was 1938, already many countries had taken in refugees from Germany. But so in 1938, it was very difficult, practically impossible, unless you were a very famous person. England, America accepted famous people, but ordinary people just didn't give any visas to those people. So we couldn't go. So eventually we heard we could go illegally to Belgium. So that's what we did. And we ended up in Brussels in 1939. My father still lived in South Holland. And so he came to visit his weekends. But in the meantime, Hitler went into Czechoslovakia and Poland. And the war started, 1940. And my father tried desperately to get a visa for us to come to the Netherlands. Eventually, in February 1940, during the war, we got a visa for three months to visit my father in Holland. And we moved to a big square. I don't think I have a photo of this, but it is well known because other refugees lived there. And one of them was a Frank family. And we were both 11 years old at the time. And if you live in apartments, there were no gardens to play. So all the children played in the street. So one day a little girl came to me, introduced herself. Her name was Anne Frank. And she took me right away up to her apartment because she could speak German anymore. And she was four years old when she came to Holland. And she introduced me to her dad who could speak German to me. And I right away liked him. He was in my mind at the time an elderly gentleman because my father was just 40 and Otto was already in the 50s. But very, very kind. He spoke German with me. He said, anytime you want to come and have a conversation with me, just tell Anne and we'll be friends. So that was all very nice. We settled down. When I told Anne I had an older brother, she said, oh, where can I come and meet him? Because already with 11, she really liked boys. So nothing came of this, actually. But anyway, we were very happy in Amsterdam. My brother, he got a guitar in this furnished apartment as a piano. He right away started to play again. And life seemed good again. And the Dutch were very welcoming. We enjoyed life. That is on the steps where we went into their apartment and then we made a plan. And yeah, we were happy, but very short because in May, the Germans invaded Holland as well. I won't go too much into that. It was a short war, five days, and the Dutch capitulated and we tried still to escape, but there was no chance that we were occupied. Occupation, the first year was not too bad, but the second year in 1941, it became already very, very bad for Jewish people. We had to wear the yellow star. We had many restrictions. We had to give in the bicycle. We were not allowed to have a radio. We had to be in at eight o'clock and people started to disappear. So it was very scary. Then we had to leave our school that goes into Jewish schools, which by itself, nothing wrong with that. But again, the Nazis wanted to kill the young people first. So they went into the schools with trucks, told the children to go on the truck, and the parents waited in the afternoon for the children to come home and they didn't turn up. So they went to the police. No answer. And the children were never ever seen again. Only after the war, we heard that they were sent to Mauthausen, a terrible Austrian death camp, and just thrown down from the cliffs. The Dutch have a big beautiful monument there for all those hundreds of young Dutch people and as well, refugee children who perished there quite early in the war, really. And so life went on. And then in 1942, about 10,000 youngsters between the age of 16 and 20, 25, 26, got the call-up notice to be deported to Germany. That was for Hans Gotzett and Margot Anders, older sister. And that was the time when both parents and many, many other parents decided we would go into hiding. So my father called us together and said, Hans, you're not going. I found some wonderful Dutch people who are willing to keep us, staying with them as long as the war lasts and to keep us safe. But you know, the apartment are quite small. I couldn't find people who were going to take it for people. So we have to split up. And I will go with mother and Hans will go with my baby, my father said. And I started to cry. I didn't want to be separated. And my father explained, if you are in two different places, the chance that two of us will survive is bigger. Survive. That was the first time that I realized it might be a matter of life and death. And that is pretty scary. Well, Hans being so gentle and so sensitive, he was very afraid of dying. And he asked Papi, I'm afraid of dying. What will happen when we die? And my father said, well, this is what happens. We all have to die. But, you know, if you have children, you will live on in your children. And then Hans said, what if I die before having any children? And my father thought for a moment and he said, well, whatever you've done in your life, even in a short life, somebody will remember because we are all in a link in a big chain which goes from generation to generation and nothing get lost. So you won't be forgotten. Well, that is what he had to accept. And me too, of course. And so then we went into hiding. We were two years in hiding with different people. I won't tell you too much about it because Papi is running out. There's so much to tell. And after two years, we were betrayed by a Dutch nurse who was a double agent. She pretended she worked for the resistance, but she was really working for the Nazis. It was in 11th of May, 1944, my 15th birthday. And we were taken away. So we were two different places. It's a complicated story. I can't go into details, but anyway, we were both betrayed and sent to Westerburg and put a transport. So Carlson never told you what is going to happen to you. So we had no idea where we were going. It could have been a work camp. It could have been a desk camp. It could have been in Poland, in Germany. We had no idea. You know, of course, it were cattle trucks, terrible transportation, about 80 people, two buckets, one for toilets, one for clean water. Once a day we got chunks of bread thrown in like you would feed wild animals. So terrible. But it was probably the last conversation I had with Heinz. He told me, because in hiding he started to paint and write poetry. He said before they escaped from this woman who black, that's a long story, black made him, he hits the paintings under the floorboard with a note on it. This belongs to Heinz Geieringer and after the war I'm going to pick it up again. And then he said, Eva, if I don't make it, please go and pick the paintings up because they're really very, very nice. You will be amazed what I've created. So, and then we arrived in Auschwitz. First selection, men and women to different sides. So this is when we had to say goodbye. Which you can imagine was a very, very emotional thing. And then the women standing in rows of five and Mengele came, looked you over in a fraction of a second, he decided life or death, right or left. Eva, could you just explain Mengele, just explain who he was, would you? Mengele was officially a medical doctor and he was supposed to look after the ill people because he wasn't. There was in Birkenau a big barrack which was the hospital and people if they were ill because within days people got typhus, dysentery because the water which we got was unclean. So you can imagine in the fields and as I said in our barracks there was no washing facilities. So forget about washing. We were full of lies. But first of course people who were still not going to be killed went into huge barracks. The next thing was Andres completely naked. We were shaved, we were tattooed. We had to register what job we had, what age we were, from which country we came, all kind of things. They took many, many, many hours and we stood there naked, shivering so it was hot and not knowing what's going to happen to us. And while this happened they told us with lots of pleasure the people who had been selected, all the people, of course all the children there were about I think 46 children in our transport and that was researched later and only six of those survived. And I was one of the six. So they told us the family you've been separated from went for a shower and then just started to laugh and pushing each other. But of course it wasn't a shower. They were guests. Can you imagine a mother who had been just separated from her child, how she felt. So people started to cry and to scream and it was awful. And then eventually we were let out, still naked and we marched to a heap of mounted of clothes and we got one garment. Could have been a winter cone or a dressy gown, no underwear, nothing. And the next heap were shoes, two shoes. A boot that is slipper, whatever. And that was all our belonging. We worked from morning to night. We got only in the morning a little bit of liquid in the evening a chunk of bread. We were full of lies. We worked very, very hard. People collapsed where we were 10 sleeping in a bank on wood. There was nothing, no blanket, no straw, no pillow, nothing. And very often you wanted to keep your bread for the next day so you put it under your head to sleep on. And very often in the morning the people slept next to you and ate it away from under you. So very often we woke up and the person next to you had died in the night. And the condition was unbearable. Many, many, many people died all the time. And then it became kind of autumn, very, very cold. And once a week we had a shower and we were deloused because we were full of lies. And when we came out Mengele stood there, still naked, and we had to parade in front of him. And he decided who was still able to work or who wasn't. And I passed, my mother followed and she was like any mother she had very often shared her little bit of bread with me. And she was very thin and didn't look too good. And he with 40 other Dutch women from our transport was selected to be killed. I watched out naked and I thought I will never ever see my mother again. So this was for me the worst moment in the camp. It became winter. I had snow was high. I had very often lost my shoes. I had frostbite on my feet. I could hardly walk anymore. And I must admit I was on the point of giving up. I said my mother is not alive. I have no idea if my father is alive. What on earth should I do alone if I should survive? I was desperate. And I was starving and ill. And many people from the Dutch transport had already said it was already the time when the Germans had started to evacuate the camp. So I sat at my work and I saw a couple and they went out and they stood by my father. Unbelievable. Never happened to anybody that a man came in to ask for a family member. He came with his S-boss. My father was a big charmer. He told me he works in a timber factory and he has done very well. So he was respected by the Nazis. So obviously he got this privilege to but how they could find me where they were. They had actually an amazing administration. But still, but of course it was wonderful. But the next question of my father was where is Muti? And I burst into tears and I told him he was just a guest. Well this strong man who never gave in to anything started tears were rolling down his eyes and he said well first he was speechless but then he said the war will soon be over hence he's okay, please, please hold on we'll be together still. And then I never saw him anymore. And then another miracle happened because this is what I have to point out there were many, many miracles otherwise I wouldn't sit here. Obviously I told you the Germans started to leave already there was no organization very often there was no work and so I walked around not knowing if I found a bit of food perhaps on the ground and I saw some Dutch people from our towns but coming from another part of the camp and they said to me they've seen my mother of course I didn't believe it but it was true. And that is of course a long story my mother actually write it herself in my first book Eva's Story she was saved and brought back to the living and she was still alive and so eventually was able to go to the same barrack where she was because I said there was not much supervision anymore and so that is I go back now to the beginning of 27th of January that what happens then when the Russians came and as I say Otto was with us and when we were in Odessa then eventually we celebrated the end of the war it's of May and then what now we are middle of Russia in Odessa how do we get back but it was all organized there was a New Zealand troop transport ship came and it brought us back to Marseille and then up to Holland and eventually in June we got back to Amsterdam again and what now we didn't know where to go and they didn't look after us they just dropped us there and that was it the first time after so long we had to look after ourselves so my mother said well let's just go in the tram and let's go to friends who was a mixed marriage perhaps they are still there the husband was a Jew and his wife was Christian perhaps they are still there took a tram nobody bothered we couldn't pay we had nothing of course and went to this address and yes they were still there the Rosenbalms and he let us in and welcomed us and said we are Heinz and Eric they were best friends of us and they said well we are waiting for their return but eventually we decided we will look if perhaps we can go back into our apartment because it was not our apartment it was furnished belonging to a person and this woman let us back in again that was very exceptional because Otto when he came back other people had lived in his apartment all the furniture was sent to Germany all the things which was there to help the cities who had been bombed and then Otto came to us one day and he told us the terrible news that this whole family had perished after he left I let sat on my mother's lap and we cried and I said to my mother how can this poor man carry on with his life he has nothing to live for and a few days later he came again with a little brown parcel under his arm and guess what it was? It was an hysteria and he opened it very carefully and he said can I read a few sentences and he read that he always burst into tears it was too emotional well you know what happened then he published it and it became eventually not immediately when it was published in America in 1952 he became a best seller and from then on it just grew and grew and grew and we got as well the notice that Heinz and my father on the death march perished my father in March and Heinz on the 16th on the 26th of April just 10 days before the Americans came to liberate that camp and it was something I just couldn't cope with I became full of hatred I became depressed and I wanted to listen to that I wanted to commit suicide I was so desperate so I survived because I thought life will go eventually back to ordinary life but I realized that will never ever happen I found it very very difficult to make a life again and Otto came to us very often and he who had lost everything had no hatred he had long discussion together I told him how I hate everybody and he spoke to me he didn't hate not even the Germans he expressed everything to me and he became very helpful for my mother my mother became very helpful to him and my friends he looked after me he was a good sort of replacement father for the time being he always told me stories about Anne and eventually when I finished school Otto and my mother decided I should become a photographer and Otto got me a job in London and I went to London for one year to become an apprentice and in London I met a young man in the boarding house who had come to London to study economics from Israel and you know we were poor we didn't have money we didn't know England we didn't know anybody in England and so we went for long walks and after six months he said to me Eva I fall in love with you will you marry me and when I finished my studies we can go to Israel and start a new life and I said to him no thank you he was a little bit shocked but I said well I have a widowed mother in Amsterdam and you know we were very close I could not imagine I would just go off and leave her and then Otto who kept an eye on me came to visit me one day and I told him I met this young man I quite like him and he asked me to marry him but of course I'm not because I go back to Amsterdam to Mutti and then he got a bit embarrassed and he said you know we have fallen in love as well and once you get settled we like to get married so I went back to this young man and said you can marry me now we did we went to Amsterdam in 1952 and got married and Otto and my mother got married a year later in 1953 and I must say I've never seen a happier couple than those two they really loved each other and helped each other to get through this difficult period of their life and then when we got three little girls they became the best grandparents you can imagine so we had to get a family so this is my story in a very very small nutshell I wrote three books, The Promise is a book which I don't think you will see it but I think you probably all the books are in the British Library The Promise is a story about Heinz and recently I have decided you know Anne everybody knows about Anne but to make Heinz as well a known person that people remembered who he was because that was my father promised him I made it with an American filmmaker an animation film which we are working on now and I hope it will be finished at the end of this year so thank you very much and please read the books if you want to know more about it because there's a lot lot more and I'm now 91 years old and I spent from the end of 1980 I spent my life going around many many countries to talk about the atrocities that happened and that people learn from it that it will not happen again so there's a lot more to be done for everybody and Anne Frank trust is one of those organization who tried to change the world for a better world thank you very very much I can't see you but I'm sure you have listened to my story and hopefully you're seeing some of the paintings of my brother Eva I've listened to your story I don't know how many times now I've moved and hear new things and really the thanks are from all of us too to you Eva we do have some questions coming through from the audience if that's alright we have about 10 or 15 minutes for those questions the first one I'm going to take is from Sarah and she says thank you for sharing your story and have you ever returned to the camp? yes and had the intention never ever to go near anything like that but in 1995 when Auschwitz was for the first time open to the western power there was a big memorial service there and the Dutch television asked me to go there with my husband I could go and make a program and the first said no way and they said well we thought so but think about it before again and I was discussing it with my mother and I said perhaps I can let go once I go and see it and there was one attraction that said some of the soldiers who had liberated your camp are going to be there and you could go and say thank you to them and this is really what I wanted to do and so I did go but it was horrible my husband as soon as he said foot there burst into tears and the whole filming through it he was crying and it was for me it was hard but I thought at least I could try to forget about it from now on I've seen it and that's it I have to have to let go Thank you either the next question is from Leon who's aged six and Leon asks do you remember the song that the soldiers sang to you in that field kitchen oh yeah was there a song is that right when they was there a song in the field kitchen when you were at Auschwitz I don't remember you mentioning one but I thought I'm sure there might have but no I don't remember anything like that I'm afraid no do you remember perhaps that you described the food do you remember other as it were moments of hope joy just after that liberation well there was no music food food if I remember food or other things what started to bring you some joy a song well the Russian gave us cabbage soup that I do remember very clearly yeah and in Auschwitz no there wasn't there wasn't really much any sick which no I don't remember really any food besides the cabbage soup and I know I found once when we were in Auschwitz I found on the ground a liver sausage a whole liver sausage which probably the Russians had lost I don't know and I took it and I wanted to eat nearly the whole and my mother said don't don't don't you get you get ill of it but I ate too much and I was pretty ill thank you Eva I have a question from Jane also thanks you for sharing your story did you go to find your brother Heinz's paintings and how did it feel when you found them what made you go and look for them yes yes of course of course we did go there and it was a very very emotional moment to go in this house and where they've been betrayed I knew exactly where they were and people didn't want there was a different people living there and they didn't want to let us in first they said just nothing in our house but eventually they let us in and I knew exactly where it was it's a loft there was a plank that I could see a little space and I opened this and we found 30 paintings with a whole heap of poems as well and I looked at everyone and the favourite of it was Heinz sitting at his desk with his back facing the audience well done that painting is on the screen now Eva yes a lot of books around him a globe on top and on the side is a calendar with 11 on it that was my birthday so when he painted this lovely painting he was thinking of me that made me of course and my mother burst into tears yes the paintings are saved and a few years ago I donated them to the resistance museum in Amsterdam where they made a big exhibition so to see what Heinz has created and here's the on the screen now is the painting of the bell free and the bell and looking out over a beautiful flat Dutch countryside it looks like and what is so nice you might not see it if it's so small there's a little bird sitting on the window sill and he wrote a beautiful poem little bird where you're going and it goes on you know how he's wishing to be out in freedom so beautiful poems as well and the painting of a woman Eva who is the woman in the painting that is my mother and Heinz was of course not a painter never had done anything with oil painting so my father to encourage him started to paint as well he had never painted either and this is a portrait of his wife my mother and it is really a very very good likeness beautiful and I have a copy the origin is of course in the resistance museum and I have a copy in my living room and then there's one of the final pictures yes this is a beautiful picture and it is very amazing the uncle my mother's sister and her husband and her little son were able to come to England to Lancashire to Darwin a tiny little town and they lived there with my grandparents and when my grandmother was still alive of course when she saw the paintings and she said but this is the room where I slept with my grandson and I have never been there never knew anything about this and it was exactly the room amazing completely there were 30 artworks 30 paintings Eva I have a question from Susanna she says I cannot imagine how anyone could live in such terrible surroundings and be able to deal with it in Auschwitz how do you think it has defined your life well that's a difficult question like I said when I came back I was very depressed and afterwards when I got married but I wanted a big urge to start a family and unfortunately it didn't work and that is I must tell you in the camp nobody had a period because in the liquid we got bromide which means that our female functions didn't work so I couldn't conceive so I was desperate and eventually I had treatment and I got pregnant and my first daughter was born and that was for me a big change in my attitude it was in 1956 in my attitude in my hope and this helped me a lot to get over this terrible experience and two years later I got my second daughter and like I said we were a family again and this really helped me to get over this terrible experience Yes we have a question from Neve who says how incredible it is that Otto did not express hate and how did you deal with the anger towards the evil of what happened about your family How did you deal with the hatred How did you get through that After 40 years I had nightmares till I started in 1986 so after 40 years was the first time I spoke openly about what has happened actually in an Anne Frank exhibition I was the first one who came to England and I was allowed to speak there and it was difficult for me I must say very very difficult but it helped me, I could let go so I lived another 40 years after this but you know so 40 years were really difficult I tried to live a normal life but I was very shy I was very nervous if you go through something like this as a young person you can't just get over it but as I say the last 40 years of my life I did good work I realized after I came back people said never again Auschwitz but of course in the 80s it started again the persecution, the prejudice and so I decided after I spoke up I am going to try to teach people that we have to change our attitudes and this is what I've done for as well for 40 years now I know I'm stuck at the moment but I hope that eventually I can carry on and it is unfortunately still necessary to work personally and do as well very much individual work to try to change people's attitudes and Eve you've been locked down in your flat in North London haven't you but you've had both your vaccinations now aren't you so we're very glad to know that you're safe I have the vaccination but other people haven't got yet so we are still a bit stuck but we've got a way to go I have hope you know you must never give up hope in any situation there's always an end to every situation thank you Eva can I say to everybody watching we've got lots of questions and I'm so sorry we haven't managed to get to all of them I do have one last question if I may Eva from the audience which is from Benedicte what would you advise us to do to prevent hatred, bullying and discrimination what would you advise the world to do to stop hatred and bullying and discrimination well the advice is not to feel this way you know I mean we are all human beings my husband always used to say and I think that if he's so right we are just one race to human race we are yellow or pink or black we are all people we all have the same mechanics our bodies are all the same we do the same work we have the same birth we have everything the same and the same with religion religion is there to help people make a better life to become better people we all want the same all people with the Jewish people the Muslims the Christians the Hindus the Buddhists there are so many kind of ways you can have a God but it's all for the better of people people hate each other if they are different this we have to learn we have to learn to accept each other for human beings which we are wonderful words to end on and that we are all human beings friends, visitors, guests at home can I just say to you that some of Eva's stories some of the facts about the Holocaust are deeply disturbing you may find yourself dwelling on this in the next day or two if you do just talk talk to somebody do be in touch with a friend a member of your family and just make sure that you tell somebody else I heard Eva Schwarz speaking the other night and this is what I heard just so you share it don't let those things dwell in you too grimly we need to both remember the seriousness of this and remember that extraordinary humanity that you embody Eva so remarkably thank you as ever for telling your story so beautifully so frankly to all of us really you are quite remarkable human being thank you very very much indeed as soon as I can I come to your schools just ask me I'll be there I'll do get in touch with us at the Anne Frank Trust we will we will always make that introduction if we can thank you very much for joining us this evening and a special thank you to our guests Eva and also to Tim do remember to click on the tabs above in order to provide us with some feedback and also to buy Eva's book to find out more about the events that we're running do have a look on our whats on pages thank you very much for joining us from the Living Knowledge Network thank you and good night