Politics
Anna Vanaga
396
Staff and students are being invited to hear the testimony of Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich as part of the Politics and International Relations Making Politics Matter series.
Born in 1930, Mala was liberated from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945, having spent five years in the ghettos and camps under Nazi persecution. Mala’s family fled Eastwards when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, and on their return were forced to live in the ghetto which was established in her hometown. Mala’s family decided that she would be safer in Czestochowa and to try and pass as a Christian child, but Mala missed her parents and eventually returned to the ghetto.
Shortly after Mala’s return, there were further round ups of those living in the ghetto, and her mother and sister were taken and murdered in the local forest. When the ghetto was liquidated, Mala became a slave labourer until the remaining Jews were deported. She was separated from her father and her brother and sent to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, before being transferred to infamous Bergen-Belsen camp where conditions were appalling and Mala contracted typhus. When it was liberated by the British army, Mala was very ill and took many weeks to recover. Three months later she part of a group of children who were sent to Sweden where she spent nearly two years. It was whilst she was in Sweden that she received a letter from her brother Ben; the only other member of her close family who survived.
The event is being held in association with the Holocaust Educational Trust, a charity established in 1988, which aims to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust especially amongst young people.
You can hear Mala’s testimony on Wednesday 12 February, 4.30 to 6pm in Pg09. Refreshments will be provided
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