Eva Clarke, one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, travelled to Enniskillen this week ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, to tell her story to over 250 students at Fermanagh County Museum. Recounting her family's story and her own remarkable survival Eva said: 'I am a survivor but only just'.
Eva, who now live in Cambridge explained how her mother, a Czechoslovakian Jew, living in Prague met her father, a German Jew who had moved from Germany to escape persecution.
After the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939, all Jews in Prague had to abide by a curfew, wear the yellow star and were prohibited from being in certain public spaces or at public events. Shortly after Eva's parents were married, they were transported to a Jewish ghetto and transit camp at Terezin outside Prague where they stayed for three years. During this time, Eva's mother became pregnant but her child, a boy, died of pneumonia shortly after his birth.
"His death meant my life," Eva explained.
"After his death, my mother became pregnant again with me and shortly afterwards she was transported to Auschwitz-Birkenhau. If she had arrived there holding a baby, both she and the baby would have been sent directly to the gas chambers. Instead, when she arrived, the Nazis selected her to work at the camp and she survived the selection."
Eva went on to explain how her father was shot dead in Auschwitz in January 1945 without ever learning that his wife was pregnant again. Eva's mother stayed at Auschwitz for only nine days before being transported to an armaments factory at Freiberg outside Dresden. She remained here for six months, working with other prisoners to build V1 rockets for the German Luftwaffe. In April 1945 she was sent to Mauthausen camp. It was on her arrival at this camp, on 29th April that Eva was born. Three days later, the camp was liberated by the US army.
In the last year alone, Eva has given 80 talks about the Holocaust. While she finds it hard to retell the physical and emotional drama of what she describes as 'my mother's story', she said she also feels it is her duty to enhance the significance of the Holocaust for history students.
"One family's story can be easily identified with, but not six million families."
Her story is also one of remembrance.
"I tell my story," Eva said, "to remember all those millions and millions who died in the Holocaust. I tell my family's story to enable us all to remember the story of the Holocaust from an individual's perspective so as to prevent it from happening anywhere else." Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated on 27th January each year.
