‘G2G made me actually tell my mum’s story, which I’d always promised myself I would do’

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How did the Sabina Miller Memorial Lecture come about?

Despite my mother having been a member of Hampstead Synagogue for 50 or 60 years, no one actually knew her story. I presented my mother’s story there in 2021, and they decided to hold a memorial event annually. The theme is always about embracing differences. Our speaker this year is the author Anne Sebba, whose lecture is called “Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz”.

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Tell me about your mother’s story.

She was in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she had typhus as a teenager and blacked out for a few weeks. When she awoke, her parents were gone and she never saw them again. Many of her relatives were killed in the Holocaust. She went to live with an aunt in Sokolov and then worked on a local farm. After some time, she ran away to the woods in order not to have her hair cut because she thought she would be identified as a Jew. She spent the winter of 1942 hiding with her only companion, a girl named Ruszka, in a trench in the woods. It was freezing cold, they had one blanket between them, in a hole in the mud, where you had to lie flat because you couldn’t stand up.

One day, Ruszka left to beg for food and never came back. My mum went around the farms searching for her friend. She never found her, but on one farm, she met a girl who was crying because she had been called to do forced labour in Germany. My mum offered to swap identities with the girl – if she passed as a Polish slave-labourer she would be safe – and so she was given the girl’s identity papers. But she was covered with lice and her feet were frozen, so she didn’t pass their medical tests. She was sent back to Poland and imprisoned in Pawiak Prison and interviewed five times by the Gestapo. But every time, she stuck to her story and denied her Judaism. After the war, she met my dad in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and they moved to England.

Sabina Miller[Missing Credit]

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How would you describe your mother?

The thing my mum focused on was tolerance and understanding, and how it doesn’t matter what colour people are, what god they believe in, what customs they follow – each and every person has value. That’s what my mum taught me and asked me to continue to share. She was incredibly positive and had a lovely smile. She depended on her wit and the kindness of strangers [to survive during the Holocaust]. She was remarkable, but she wouldn’t have said she was remarkable at all. She was very modest.

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Why is the work that Generation2Generation does so important?

G2G made me actually tell my mum’s story, which I’d always promised I would do. It’s an amazing organisation run by some very feisty people who do a fabulous job. A lot of people don’t know very much at all about the Holocaust, and it’s so important that they do – although we’re not Holocaust educators, I just know my mum’s remarkable story. I’m really glad that I do it.

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Click here to book for the Sabina Miller Memorial Lecture or go to myus.theus.org.uk/events/119409/the-5th-sabina-miller-memorial-lecture/