Auschwitz survivor fears the ‘world hasn’t learnt from WWII’ ahead of 80th anniversary of camp’s liberation
Auschwitz survivors have told Sky News of their pessimism that lessons have not been learnt from history, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp.
“I hope I’m wrong,” says survivor Ivor Perl. “But there’s […] a saying that if one doesn’t learn from history, you’re cursed to live through it again.”
Ivor is nearly 93 years old and it took half a century for him to feel able to talk publicly about his time at the Nazi concentration camp.
“When I was younger I thought to myself, ‘I arrived in this world in a terrible time, 1932, at least when I leave it the world will be in a better place’,” he says. “But I’m doubting it very, very much.
“It’s not my job to cure the problem – my job is to tell you what the problem can be.
“I haven’t got any sign to see that the world has learnt [any lessons from] the Second World War.”
More than a million people, mostly Jewish, were murdered at Auschwitz – just one of the numerous death camps the Nazis built across mainland Europe. On Monday, world leaders will gather at Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark 80 years since its liberation.
People lined up on the railway station after arriving at Auschwitz in the early days of the war. Pic: AP
Ivor was deported to Auschwitz from Hungary at the age of 12. He pretended to the Nazi guards that he was older and found himself sent to do slave labour. His lie almost certainly saved him from the gas chambers.
Out of his parents and their nine children, only Ivor and his brother Alec survived.
“You know why I’m alive today? Because I spoke Yiddish,” Ivor says. “Yiddish is very akin to German.”
Ivor (left) and his brother Alec were the only two people from their family of 11 to survive
When the cattle trucks arrived at Auschwitz, one of the first things Ivor saw was “people working in striped uniforms”.
He explains: “They were Polish Jews and they kept saying [in Yiddish] ‘eat all the food, don’t save any food’ and ‘if they are asked, children must say they are 16 years old at least’.
“We started marching and I went over to my mother’s side. And she said, ‘no darling, go back to your brother, don’t come to me’. I said: ‘Please mum, let me stay’.
“An officer with white gloves, who later said he was Dr Mengele, pointed people, right or left. The ones on the left, for death.”
Dr Mengele asked Ivor how old he was. “I said, ’16’. I can see his face even to this day.
“He said: ‘Okay, go to the right’. If I told him I was 12 years old, I wouldn’t be alive today.”
Ivor Perl shortly after the liberation
‘How could I tell my children what happened?’
Sky News is meeting with Ivor at the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre in north London, run by the health and social care organisation Jewish Care. He’s joined by another Auschwitz survivor, Susan Pollack.
Susan’s recollections of the camp have not faded over the years. “The memory of Auschwitz and the train to Auschwitz will never lose itself in my mind,” she says. When Susan arrived at the camp, her head was shaved and her clothes were changed.
“My mum was sent to the gas chamber,” she says.
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Susan Pollack and her husband, a fellow survivor, chose not to tell their children what happened
Susan, now 94, lives in London and spent years giving her testimony in schools.
After the war, she moved to Sweden and then Canada, where she met her husband Abraham, also a survivor. They had three children.
She says her husband was reluctant to discuss what they saw during the Holocaust. “He didn’t want to talk about it, he said we have to start a new life – we had the children, we didn’t want to poison [their lives].”
Sometimes, her children would ask why they didn’t have a wider family, including grandparents. “I couldn’t tell them that they were gassed, as they were,” she says. “I said they died natural deaths.
“They would ask us why they didn’t have uncles or aunts, [and] ‘why don’t we have a normal life?’
“How could we tell them what happened?”
The last blast furnaces left operating in Britain could see their fate sealed within days, after their Chinese owners took the decision to cut off the crucial supply of ingredients keeping them running.
Jingye, the owner of British Steel in Scunthorpe, has, according to union representatives, cancelled future orders for the iron ore, coal and other raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running.
The upshot is that they may have to close next month – even sooner than the earliest date suggested for its closure.
Read more: Thousands of jobs at risk as British Steel consults unions over closure
The fate of the blast furnaces – the last two domestic sources of virgin steel, made from iron ore rather than recycled – is likely to be determined in a matter of days, with the Department for Business and Trade now actively pondering nationalisation.
The upshot is that even as Britain contends with a trade war across the Atlantic, it is now working against the clock to secure the future of steelmaking at Scunthorpe.
The talks between the government and Jingye broke down last week after the Chinese company, which bought British Steel out of receivership in 2020, rejected a £500m offer of public money to replace the existing furnaces with electric arc furnaces.
The sum is the same one it offered to Tata Steel, which has shut down the other remaining UK blast furnaces in Port Talbot and is planning to build electric furnaces – which have far lower carbon emissions.
These steel workers could soon be out of work
However, the owners argue that the amount is too little to justify extra investment at Scunthorpe, and said last week they were now consulting on the date of shutting both the blast furnaces and the attached steelworks.
Since British Steel is the main provider of steel rails to Network Rail – as well as other construction steels available from only a few sites in the world – the closure would leave the UK more reliant on imports for critical infrastructure sites.
However, since the site belongs to its Chinese owners, a decision to nationalise the site would involve radical steps government officials are wary of taking.
They also fear leaving taxpayers exposed to a potentially loss-making business for the long run.
The dilemma has been heightened by the sharp turn in geopolitical sentiment following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The incipient trade war and threatened cut in American support to Europe have sparked fresh calls for countries to act urgently to secure their own supplies of critical materials, especially those used for defence and infrastructure.
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Gareth Stace, head of UK Steel, the industry lobby group, said: “Talks seem to have broken down between government and British Steel.
“My advice to government is: please, Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, get back round that negotiating table, thrash out a deal, and if a deal can’t be found in the next few days, then I fear for the very future of the sector, but also here for Scunthorpe steelworks.”
British Steel declined to comment.
UK
Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace branded ‘crude attempt to enrich himself’ as Chinese spy documents set to be released
Prince Andrew’s efforts to make money from his Pitch@Palace project have been branded as a “crude attempt to enrich himself” at the expense of “unsuspecting tech founders”, as new documents may shed more light on what he and his team have been attempting to sell.
Today is the deadline for documents to be released relating to Prince Andrew‘s former senior adviser Dominic Hampshire and his interactions with the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo.
In February, an immigration tribunal heard how the intelligence services had contacted Mr Hampshire about Mr Yang back in 2022. Mr Yang helped set up Pitch@Palace China, a branch of the duke’s scheme to help young entrepreneurs.
The alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, has links with Prince Andrew
Yang Tengbo. Pic: Pitch@Palace
Judges banned Mr Yang from the UK, saying his association with a senior royal had made Prince Andrew “vulnerable” and posed a threat to national security. Mr Yang challenged that decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Since that hearing, media organisations have applied for certain documents relating to the case and Mr Hampshire’s support for Mr Yang to be made public. SIAC agreed to release some information of public interest. It is hoped they may include more details on deals that he was trying to do on behalf of Prince Andrew.
So what do we know about potential deals for Pitch@Palace so far?
In February, Sky News confirmed that palace officials had a meeting last summer with tech funding company StartupBootcamp to discuss a potential tie-up between them and Prince Andrew relating to his Pitch@Palace project.
The palace wasn’t involved in the fine details of a deal but wanted guarantees to make sure it wouldn’t impact the Royal Family in the future. Sky News understands from one source that the price being discussed for Pitch was around £750,000 – there are, however, reports that a deal may have stalled.
Photos we found on the Chinese Chamber of Commerce website show an event held in Asia between StartupBootcamp and Innovate Global, believed to be an offshoot of Pitch.
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Who is alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo?
Documents, released in relation to the investigations into Mr Tengbo, have also shown how much the duke has always seen Pitch as a way of potentially making money. One document from 21 August 2021 clearly states “the duke needed money at the time, and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.
But Prince Andrew’s apparent intention to use Pitch to make money has led to concerns about whether he is unfairly using the contacts and information he gained when he was a working royal.
Norman Baker, former MP and author of books on royal finances, believes it is “a crude attempt to enrich himself” and goes against what the tech entrepreneurs thought they were signing up for.
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He told Sky News: “The data given by these business people was given on the basis it was an official operation and not something for Prince Andrew, and so in my view, Prince Andrew had no right legally or morally to take the data which has been collected, a huge amount of data, and sell it…
“And quite clearly if you’re going to sell it off to StartupBootcamp, that is not what people had in mind. The entrepreneurs who joined Pitch@Palace did not do so to enrich Prince Andrew,” he said.
Rich Wilson was one tech entrepreneur who was approached at the start of Pitch@Palace to sign up, but he stepped away when he spotted a clause in the contract saying they’d be entitled to 2% equity in any funding he secured.
He feels Prince Andrew is continuing to use those he made a show of supporting.
He said: “It makes me feel sick. I think it’s terrible – that he is continuing to exploit unsuspecting tech founders in this way. A lot of them, I’m quite grey and old in the tooth now, I saw it coming, but clearly most didn’t. And a lot of them were quite young.
“It’ll be their first venture and you’re learning on the trot, so to speak. So to take advantage of people in such a major way – that’s an awful, sickening thing to do.”
We approached StartupBootcamp who said they had no comment to make, and the Duke of York’s office did not respond.
With reports that a deal may have stalled, it could be a big setback for the duke – especially with questions still about how he’ll continue to pay for his home on the Windsor estate now that the King no longer gives him financial support.
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