Holocaust survivors share their story

Young people from across the capital came to hear Ben Helfgott and Eva Schloss, Anne Frank's step-sister, share their experiences from the Holocaust. Over 120 people packed out UJIA's Camden Town offices for the Young UJIA event on 25 May 2010.

Eva Schloss was one of the youngest survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Her mother was married to Anne Frank's father, Otto, for 27 years. Eva was just one month older than Anne, but says that "Anne was much more mature and grown-up than me." Eva will never forget her 15th birthday when she and her mother had just moved to a new hiding place in the Netherlands - their seventh - but the Dutch nurse who had led them there then betrayed them. She was a Nazi double agent. Eva then spent nine months in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and lost her beloved father and brother during the Holocaust. For 40 years Eva did not speak about her experiences.

Ben Helfgott was born in Pabianice, Lodz, Poland. Ben was only 10 years-old when the Nazis invaded the country in 1939. In 1942, Ben convinced the Nazis that he was Polish and not a Jew. During the war he survived the Piotrkow Ghetto, labour camps and concentration camps including Buchenwald. He was eventually sent to England with 732 other youngsters after being liberated from Theresienstadt. He and one of his sisters were the only members of his family to survive. Ben is the chairman of the Board of Deputies of British Jews' Yad Vashem Committee, former chairman of the Central British Fund-World Jewish Relief and a member of the Council of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Ben is the only known survivor of a Nazi concentration camp to compete in the Olympic Games.

To see more pictures from the event visit our photo gallery.