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Date:  23 January 2008

Holocaust survivor to receive award for her valuable work

Trude Levi, 83, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, will receive the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of her work lecturing about the Holocaust. She trained as a public speaker through a programme organised by Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors’ Centre and has spoken extensively in the UK, Germany and Austria, addressing people of all ages including school children and university students.

Mrs Levi said: “I was absolutely taken aback when I received the letter [from the President of the Federal Republic of Germany]. I don’t think of this as a personal achievement, it is an achievement that the state recognised this as a valid topic - it will make people more aware of the issues surrounding the Holocaust.

“When the Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944 I was made to buy a yellow star and sew it on my clothes. I was nearly 20 years old at the time and working as a nursery teacher in Budapest. My Christian friends tried to hide me but I wanted to return to my family. I found my mother in a collapsed and confused state and my father had been taken as a political prisoner.

“On 7 May 1944 my mother and I were moved to a single room with four other women – and we each had only one piece of luggage. We were moved to a concentration camp in Sarvar but two days later we were put into cattle trucks, it was very hot and there was no water. We arrived at Auschwitz and my mother was immediately sent to the gas chamber.

“From Auschwitz Birkenau, I was transferred to one of the Buchenwald Camps and I became a slave worker. I worked in a factory that made butterfly bombs and I was part of a sabotage group that produced bombs that wouldn’t explode. I was careful not to get caught.”

Trude was transferred to camps in Leipzig then on 12th April 1945 and went on a death march where anyone who couldn’t walk was shot. She adds: “I collapsed, I could hardly walk. The guards looked at me and said: ‘Oh leave her, she is not worth a bullet.’”

For information on Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors’ Centre visit www.jewishcare.org or call Jewish Care Direct on 020 8922 2222.