Eva Schloss | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union

[Music] [Music] all right thank you so much for joining us and I you've prepared some opening remarks to those you have already done with the introduction huh yeah well good good evening it's a honor for me to be have been invited to speak here in the Oxford Union I've read all the famous speakers who have been here so I feel really very privileged to be able to talk to you as well here well one question which I always get asked and in especially in America but in other places as well how was it possible that the men like Hitler was able to influence cults of people like America and yes is of course an explanation and I'll just going shortly going to tell you about this what happened really in Germany because you have to really go back to the first world war which Germany and Austria I come from Austria from Vienna and Austria was a very very the most powerful country in Europe before the First World War and they where they lost the war of course with Turkey and and Italy and Germany and unfortunately the Allied poor terrible terrible condition of the Treaty of Versailles a peace treaty and those countries Austria and Germany became very very very poor you can't imagine my grandparents and my parents lived through this and they told me you know there was really no food no work people were barefoot in the snow and people were desperate it was a king Empire Austria became a republic and in Germany as well they the surveyman Republic who tried all kind of governments to put Germany went back on its feet but she never succeeded and so a man came and said I've a solution I can help I will put things back again and will become a very powerful state again and people were sold I said well we don't lose anything let him try and funnily enough he had a few good ideas like say Autobahn the motorway and the Volkswagen he said everybody will have a cars a beetle for expanding car for the people and things started to get better he probably had a lot of debt but it seems to to work a bit but to get his people behind him even more was there were a lot of Jews in Germany and Austria quite you know they say is every Jewish race which is of course not true at all but a lot of Jews had good position there were lawyers and doctors and surgeon and and actors and writers same in Austria and so Hitler thought if I accuse it use of episode say guilty of everything going wrong then I will get more people following me and that really did happen because deep down in most people unfortunately is still a little bit of anti-semitism and the other point was and that was very important Russia big powerful country had become communist and when a country super like Germany and Austria a lot of people were communists and there were street fights with the Nazi Party but Hitler said he's going to fight communism and that was a very important point because the Western world was really more afraid of communism then of the National national Hitler party and so even England's royalty at the time supported him and the Vatican supported him and everybody really admired Hitler and so this was a reason why instead of fighting Hitler they said let him come to powers and he will fight communism so in 1935-36 they could still have really got rid of Hitler the world but they didn't want to so this was really how he was able to succeed and in Austria so as I said I come from Vienna we had them we were Jewish but we were not really religious we did go to the High Holy Day but you know and in Austria as well you had to have religious education it was compulsory in school so everybody knew the Jewish children were called out from the class and we had Jewish education in our class and then we went back to the general class they had at the times of our only Catholics and Jewish people and so everybody knew who was a Jew and the minutes and Nazis marched in in in nineteen sin March 1938 the Austrians became phonetic nazis who stood in the street with a Heil Hitler salute and suddenly they all had swastika flags and you know Hitler promised them that they will be powerful and as I said Austria had become a tiny tiny country and so they were quite keen to join in Germany and become as powerful as Hitler promised them so we were lucky we were able to get out said was really against a problem where Hitler was able to kill the Jews because the world didn't one especially in 1938 when already many German Jews had left Germany and were settling in England and America when the Austrian Jews wanted to flee people didn't want them anymore so we lost many many of our family members some of them did get waves up to England some to America but my father had business in Holland and we left sent to come stir damned because in the felt war the First World War Holland was not in the war they bypassed it and many Jewish people thought well that will happen again nobody had imagined that Hitler was if you look on a map you will see but by 1941 really had more or less conquered the whole of Europe quite amazing and but in this time of course Hitler did go to Holland so we came to Holland actually quite late in February sooo Belgium live F us living in Belgium then we went to Holland in nineteen in February 1940 during the war the war was already declared but there was not much fighting actually going on because the fighting was really in Poland and so I settled we settled sir we lived on the Mavi de plan which has a big open square and the small apartments and no gardens and after school all the children came out to play in the street and I was 11 years old and one day a little girl came to me and said her name was Anna Frank and of course at that time she was just one of my playmates the Frank family had come from Frankfurt from Germany and Otto Frank her father told me when in 1933 the Nazis walked through the streets singing when Jewish blood drips from our daggers then things will get better he realized this is not a country where I want to bring up a family and they were able to leave early in 1933 so Anna had not experienced any prejudice any discrimination she was quite different from me I had already experienced for several months in Austria very very bad anti-semitism and as well first in Belgium I was treated as a refugee you know at that time that was not so popular refugees didn't really exist like now people beaks from all kind of country in London specially you know you have people from all over the world but that was not at the time in the thirties and forties people stayed in their country if at all if they were possibility for that so refugees as if you came from the moon especially if you couldn't understand the language so at experience already a lot of prejudice had become very shy and withdrawn and Anna was very outgoing she was very popular I had an older brother when I told her I'm a process of 15 years old she said when can I come and meet him because she was already if you read her diary she was already very interested in boys and I had their brothers or boys was nothing special for me you know so but we came big became friends but not best friend because I said you know I was quite a different at said time quite a different type from her and but unfortunately the Germans started their conquering of Europe and in May 1940 so after we had been only a few months in Amsterdam at night we heard aeroplanes and guns and we put on the radio and the news was terrible the announcer said the German are trying to invade our country but don't worry we are going to protect it but of course they had no ideas and might of the German army at the time and as well you know the war had changed the landed with lots of parachutes behind Holland is under sea level the flooded part of the country that's how they got out in the First World War the flooded it and then that army just passed the country but this time they landed behind the water land and they occupied there was a five-day war and it was the first time said the civilian city in this war had been bombed Rotterdam 10,000 casualties and the news came if you are not going to capitulate we are going to bomb all your cities of course the Dutch government couldn't accept that so after five days aside the peace treaty and the German army marched in we still try to get the boat that's a harbour to escape to England but it was late so we thought well we'll see what happened nothing happened so he's very happy we thought well perhaps nothing will happen in an occupied country said that said don't worry we'll protect you but slowly the measures against the Jewish population started to come it was imposed as it was in the newspapers it came over the radio and it was not life-threatening there were no attacks on Jews you were not allowed to go out in the evening late or in the morning you were not allowed on public transport well everybody had the bicycle it didn't really matter then you were not allowed to go on to cinemas or swimming pools and things like say not in theatres but you know we lived was not too bad but then we had to leave our schools and go to Jewish schools and it became a lot a much more difficult we were not allowed really to mix with non-jewish people not allowed to visit them not to go in their shops to back only in Jewish shop and then in the Jewish schools that started to becomes a real danger the Nazis came with trucks to a studio a school said to the kids not to the whole school but to some classes we have a track go down and the kids went on and in the evenings a parent's weight that was a children to turn up didn't turn up so when to say Abdurrahman police tried to find out where as a children didn't get an answer so shieldon were never ever seen again only after the war we heard such ever sent to Mauthausen i don't know if you've heard of that camp that was a very very terrible Austrian death camp and they were just thrown down from the cliffs but luckily we didn't know that at the time but nevertheless the children disappeared and then in 1942 10,000 young people got the call-up notice to be deported to work in German factories and that was a time when many specially refugee parents decided you know forsake kills a killed German Jews and sends him to ghettos and then suddenly they once and back in Germany and they didn't trust said so my father called us together and he said I have spoken with some wonderful Dutch people you know every occupied country had the resistance movement meaning the people didn't want to be occupied and the formed groups and they did particular dangerous things but as well of the printed ration cards but as well the shot particularly bad Germans they blew up trains or cars where German was sitting in and all kinds of things but as well many of those people from the resistance offered their homes to keep Jewish families safe so my father said his contact made made with people from the resistance and they are willing to keep us safe there as long as the war will last at that time you know America already come in the war and my father said it won't be long perhaps just till Christmas and so he said but nobody's there apartments are quite small norther what he can take a family of four so we have to split up he said I will go with my mother and my father will take hands and I started to cry over 13 years at the time and I said no I don't want to be separated because we had been separated before and my father explained if we are in two different places the chance said two of us will survive is bigger he bends and survived and with 13 that was the first time that I realized it might be a matter of life and death and when you're 13 that was actually quite scary but this is what happened we moved to this safe house and we were for two years in hiding at the same time when the Frank family because unless older sister Margot got the same call of notice as my brother he was 16 so already was 16 they wanted to kill those people young people and because they were never sent those people who did go were never sent to Germany to work in German factories but server-sent again to mount housing and just murdered Sarah they were never ever seen again said that chef actually if ever you go to this camp if a huge huge monument for all those 10,000 and many more young that's Jewish people who were executed Celso down from the cliffs actually so we were for hiding in two years same as the Frank family we changed about seven times hiding places because the Germans knew that not everybody had appeared when they were called up and they really wanted to catch every Jew so at nights and knocked on doors people had to open they made house searches and tried to find said Jewish in hiding so in every hiding house we had them hiding place within the house again the people from the resistance came and made the false partition or sometimes under a floorboard so when the knock came we quickly went in there and hoping they wouldn't find us but you know the people who hid us if this happens very often they were nervous he didn't dare to sleep they said you have to change hiding place we can takes attention any longer so we moved around perhaps seven times in those two years the Frank family if you've read the diary they stayed in the same hiding place in Otto Frank's office nevertheless they're betrayed and my father and brother were living in the country at that time and the woman where they were staying that was in 1944 force blackmailing them for more money well if you can't earn any money we had some savings and it was running out after two years and so my father said for my massive even attached on telephone and he said you must find us a hiding place because we can't stay with this woman and it was very very difficult to find hiding places because many people have been arrested many didn't want to do it anymore even that's young people were picked up from the street and went into hiding and so it took my mother touch with the resistance about three weeks to find a safe place and it was at that nurse he came forward saying she has a safe high her house and it turned out she was actually a double agent and she got my father and brother to his house but two days later they were arrested the Nazis came in via own keys in this house his nurse betrayed 200 Jewish people and after the wars of us a court case against her and she only got four years but what happened was because we were betrayed at the same time I had been very very miserable in hiding and occasionally my mother and mean we looked very Dutch blond hair and blue eyes so the occasionally Witek such a chance to visit my father and brother and sister place where we're now in Amsterdam was very near where we were staying so on the Sunday we went to visit them said they went yet God Sarah and on Tuesday Elevens made lost my 15th birthday and we were sitting down at breakfast and there was a knock on the door in the morning morning was always safe and manatsu stormed in and went straight to us and took us away so it turned out of course when we had been with it knows it at the time but what had happened that followed us when we had visited my father and brother and so the new wave events it took us away so it was on a Wednesday we were in Eva's intergate that they were speeding up really very hearts I wanted to know for me who had helped us those two years but ever since shock and I didn't really say anything eventually they let me go then we were up the first few nights within a prison which was terrible and then we were take it to a holding camp and on Friday we were already put on a list to be deported eastward and that really meant really bad news because we knew about the camps in Germany and Poland the BBC had sent broadcast out you were not allowed to listen to foreign radio only to Dutch radio and German radio because they told lies about the war but the British radio the BBC of course told about what was really going on and I remember all the people were hiding had a little bakelite radio hidden in the cupboard so that nobody would hear and at nine o'clock said Dutch language broadcast came out and it started always we started that that said this is a BBC from London and we were glued on to so he is a news and one things they're always mentioned that 300 des camps in Germany and Poland and our streets was always mentioned as the biggest where Jewish people were systematically began guests so we were taken in a cattle truck you might have seen pictures of sets it's really good trains we're not from human transportation at all but I'm about 80 people were pushed in there and there's a tiny little arms opening for air two buckets one for toilets and one for clean water and so the train was set in motion and it was terrible but was the last time but we are together as a family and my father with tears in his eyes it was for him you know for a family men said he couldn't really protect us anymore he said you'll be on your own now he killed us how he should look after each other and hygiene and you know later had to laugh talking about hygiene you know was no possibility to keep anything clean or whatever and but he you know we didn't know where we were going and severe labor camps a chance that we would go peps to a labor camp was still a possibility and my brother tell you a little bit about him he was actually a wonderful musician already as a four year old he could play piano and he composed but in hiding yet to be very very quiet so he started to paint and he created some amazing paint work and he told me that was actually the last conversation that with him said before they escape from this womanhood blackmails them he hits the paintings under the floorboard with a notice on it that belongs to the Henson age Gallina and after the war is coming to pick it up again and he said to me you'll be amazed what I've done for oil paintings and then eventually the train stopped and the doors were thrown open and we saw we went out streets well we really thought this is the end of our lives you can imagine how you feel the next command was men and women anybody have you been in Auschwitz at all Mecca Nam it's a huge huge area perhaps ten square mile and about several camps our sweets versa that's a well-known name that was a big man camp but be a canal was a women camp said was with small wooden barracks our sweets was the Polish officers used to live here before the war but beer Canal was a women where was a new bit which they built actually for Russian prisoners at first and it was just wooden barracks nothing in it and they built some banks banks there but I'll tell you a bit later about that so um and the first so the men had to walk away to them through our streets and we've NB a-- canal and you can imagine the saying goodbye to people perhaps you will never ever see them on earth again so that was of course a very very emotional moment and my father I will never forget said he took me by the hands and looked at me and said God will protect you and it made an impression on me because you know it was not religious but I suppose at this moment that was the only thing he could hand me over to God to look after me and then they walked away and then there was big silent and then we heard whisper dr. mengele dr. Mengele he was a Kemp doctor a proper medical man but he wasn't there to help people but he was there to decide who was going to die and who was going to live and the next commanders rows of five so we had to everything was row so fast had to stand in a hall so fast and he came and just with a fraction of a second he looked at you and he decided society as they said life or death and that was the first miracle that happened my mother had a head and coat and she gave it to me and I didn't want to wear it was a very hot May Day and she said yeah perhaps it will come in handy come in handy you know when we're going to be killed because that's what we really saw still she to me and that had a big limb and when this Mengele looked at me he didn't really see how young I was and that's what saved my life at the trust election many many girls who were over 16 and 17 were taken to the wrong side and then we were marched into a big big barrack and the next command unless completely naked and the Nazis a young SS Becerra guns pointing at us laughed about our embarrassment and then we had to of go in front of a table with the altitudes we were told you're not a human being you're just a kettle who gets a number and if ever we need you we want you you're going to be called out bad number forget you have a name then our our head was shaved and that there about six hundred people and well this happened that took all long and we were registered name and everything the documentary exactly everything was written down and actually ever a few years ago in Auschwitz I never shown those books because their names were when I came in but had said and as wellif found their names they showed me that of my father and brother his number which barracks aware but work so we're doing everything was really registered quite amazing of course all those records when the Russia invaded the Poland took them but most of its have given back and if you go there and you have contact you have family then you can go and look at all those the barracks I aren't use not administration and everything is there it's the records and then there are people who denies that it has happened where there's so much proof that it all has happened anyway and welts all this happened said told us and this is what they object most and that was extra loyalties it didn't have to do that she told us with much laughter that's a family who went to the other side we're told they were going to have a shower and some segue even given soap and a towel and the stood there and of course no water came but gas and within 15 minutes of a dead so can you imagine a mother who had just been separated from a toddler or from her even teenage daughter or a daughter who had been separated from a mother how they felt when they knew what had happened to them and then when all this was then all our hair was shaved still make it they told us then and now it's your turn to go to the shower where we didn't want to go but they called reinforcements and if they're pushed it into a barrack but this was a shower block so we had our shower and then we were taken out to our barrack and as I says this was only built for temporary that was just low wooden barracks with bunks on each side three high just wooden structures about as big as his platform and ten people had to sleep in there you had now no procession oh yeah before when we came out of the shower we passed a big heap of clothes and we were sold one garment which never fitted you could have been a winter coat overnight dress and on the next hip you got two shoes that was all the possessions we ever had in the morning we were got our breakfast which was a little mark of liquid in the evening we got a chunk of bread that was all you ever got you got no lunch you had to make do and some people wanted to keep this bread for the morning so that they would have for the day but you had nowhere to keep anything so the only place fast asleep put your head or Nathan's a night but what happens not not the first week or so but afterwards people were so hungry said say under your head said just ate it away so that was no solution so you had only in the evening you had a piece of bread and that is what you had to keep going it is a miracle that my mother and me survived the many more little miracle happens I've saw my father at one occasion on the other side of the fence oh I knew that he hadn't been selected at Bourassa he told me my brother was safe but the worst time what happened to me was the worst worse expiry for get any even little detail about what has happened that we were full of lies and once a week with a deal oust having a shower and so we came out of the shower naked and there was Mengele and the selection was taking place it happened from time to time and that might have been we didn't know of course which months it was it no it was starting to be cold or it must have been back to October and so I walked naked in front of Mengele and he let me sue and then my mother she was a rather tall lady and like any mother would do she variate often give me a piece of obliteration and she had become quite Sidon and she really didn't look very well and so he looked at yet to turn around in front of him and his forties at vasila or Dutch transport but 40 women from our dance dance but she was selected out to be guests and I still run to her to say goodbye and one of those copper sauce rather poorly supervisors beat me with a stick over the back you are not allowed to say goodbye and we were separated but so a miracle my mother was saved but I didn't know that and it became winter and I was very very desperate I had frostbite on my toes I was starving I was freezing and I was called out and I thought well this is now someone a couple wants me or you know a Nazi wants me for something and I went trembling outside and just took my father this is SS boss he told me his boss took him over can you imagine there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people many many camps ABCD with many barracks how he knew where I was I have no idea and the first question he asked me of course is where is mu T mother and I told them she had been selected you should have seen his face he crumbled in front of my face and we both cried and you know it was terrible to tell him that but he gave me then a little bit of hope he said bye brother was okay the war will soon finished will soon be together again and mummy mu T will protect us and you know it so and we cried and cried and then and so he came still twice and then I never saw him again and in the meantime of course the Russian way approaching and the Germans took everydays emptied barracks of people and they marched out on foot it was winter it was snowing there was peaks Lloyd was one of the coldest wind on records and people were marched into Germany or Austria and again by luck my mother and maybe very United again sort of a very miraculous stories we were together and we decided we wouldn't go on those marches because we were too weak we would never have made it and this is because we stayed in Auschwitz so to stay in Auschwitz really saved our lives one morning that must have been January we woke up in and it was very very quiet no dogs barking no shouting and we went outside and the Germans had left fled because the Russians were approaching actually they were not set near so we are about ten days away we've had 10 days on our own many many people still died from starvation and from the cold and I was one still of the strongest people you know we couldn't bury people we had to just carry them out from the barrack and heaps him up behind the back you can imagine everything was frozen the snow was set high there was a little pond outside we have event two hectares to get a bit of water we found bits of food bit of bread there was the barracks where a lot of things were stored so we were not starving but it was just uncooked cold bits of food and every day we lost many many of our people and then it was 27 I mean we didn't know it was 27 of January which is Holocaust Memorial Day which is a day which to say liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians and indeed the Russians came and put up a field kitchen their state reserve troops with their horses and their gardens and everything and that was the first time we got the proper food and they gave us or metal containers and filled it up with very greasy cabbage soup but the smell nearly drove us met can you imagine we had no had no food just bits of bread for nine months and you know food was people ask me of what did you talk when you were talking only about food what we would eat if ever we get out again and there we ate that ate this greasy greasy cabbage soup and in the morning many people had died from eating because the body had just had not such things to digest the food and I spent a terrible night on a bucket because the food just ran so me and then the Russians left again and we're pursuing the Nazis and so I decided I would go to Auschwitz men came to try to find my father and brother and so events was a snow it was about three miles walking and I found it it was all very treacherous journey and then there's a rush air that sort of made the headquarters and looked all around in the barracks and I found two people who looked familiar and I went to the one and I look he looked very acid and kidney but there was something familiar and I said I think I know you and he said well I'm Otto Frank and his father and then you Eva gaving uh said yes have you seen my father or my brother he said yes but they've gone with the Germans because when the Germans fled they took most of the people with them still after the war Scioscia called said des marches because most people perished you can imagine under faith to walk perhaps days perhaps weak people couldn't make Seth but I didn't that knows that you know I said well the war will soon finish and my father and father will still be all right and then the Russians took us away from there and that we travelled for four months mr. Russian going eastward we couldn't go back yet the war wasn't finished and I must say the Russians treated us very very well with respect to fed us they gave us Koshien uniforms and looked after us very very well till we ended up in odessa eventually which is not the oak rain and there we waited for the end of the war and when that came of course service great you belay shion's that we had made it but we were still very anxious to get back home and eventually became a New Zealand tube transport ship and we travel through the Mediterranean to Marseilles then up so so the whole of France and back into Poland again and there we waited for news and when that came that was of course very very bad it said and we got set in July so we got back in June so we traveled from end of January till June we really travelled around all over Europe really and and Russia and the letter forms that had cause said very we're not very emotional we have to tell you that your husband is gay and your son hands getting perished in Mauthausen this terrible Austrian death scam several days before the American army came to liberate that camp well this was the last straw I had really hoped that we would be a family again and eventually life could go back to normality we're men that would never ever happen I became very very depressed and Otto Frank came as well to tell us about theater tow-ready ons he was with us on this transport all the time and he had heard that his wife had died but he had great hope for two girls and he got as well he met actually two people who had been there when his daughter's they were taken away from Auschwitz if they would have stayed in Auschwitz they would have been liberated in January where they were still okay and they would have survived but if they were taken outside were taken to back in Belgium and the diet said in April the sing in April are not sure of course exact date as well a few days before the British people with these soldiers liberate that set camp he was 57 years old at the time and after he left us telling us his news my mother and me said how can this man carry on with his life he has nothing nothing left and he always used to say the only thing I have is the clothes on my body have nothing else everything is lost and a few days later he came again with a little parcel on his arm and he said I must show you something and unless daddy had been safe that's another little story and and he said can I read you something and he opened it and he was very very emotional he started to read the sentence but he always burst into tears it took him three weeks to read it through and he said you know I didn't know my own daughter he was very surprised about what Anna's written about not about what happens a daily cig but about and that is as personally I think the interesting part of that she had an opinion of humanity of woman's right about religion you know she really was already a little philosopher but I'm running out of time I just want to tell you that Otto and my mother became great friends and when I finished school I was still very depressed and I didn't know what to do with my life and Otto and my mother decided I should become a photographer and I didn't really care and Otto knew somebody in London who at the photographic studio and they came here for a year become an apprentice and I met a young man who had come from Israel to study economics and we fell in love and after six months he said to me Eva will you marry me and we can start a new life and go to Israel and I said no thank you and I said I didn't tell him who I was I didn't tell him I'd be in a camp or anything and I told him ever stats which I wasn't ever actually still stateless he told me he was an Israeli he was a German refugee as well but so otto fake kept an eye on me and he came over one day and I told him this young man has asked me to marry him but I said no because I'm going back to my mother and he was a bit embarrassed and he said well your mother and me have fallen in love as well and once you get married we like to get married so I went back to this young man and I said you can marry me now and that's what we did we came to Amsterdam fear we went to Amsterdam and got married here in Amsterdam but my mother asked him not to take me to Israel because you know at that time you had to go by boat or you didn't fly and was expensive my mother said that I'll never be able to see of us the only member of the family so we decided we would stay in England so that's where we were still here and we have lost three daughters and five grandchildren who of course born in England and so this is part of my life but I never spoke about my experience till 40 years afterwards it was really too difficult and that is what most Holocaust survivors you know at first when we came back I wanted to tell people how terribly it was but people didn't want to know people said we all have suffered let's just move on but then later after 20-30 years people started to question but then we were not ready but I think I started to speak when I realized that the world hadn't really learned anything there's still a lot of wars and discrimination and we really have to change our ways and this is where I really started to speak and about three books in the meantime and speak a lot now spent most of my time actually talking all over but I'm getting on and most of the I was 15 I was ever sorry when from the youngest survivors really and every day I hear about somebody dying so we are not here forever and so it will be used a young people the students who are here to carries a story on to tell future generation of what has happened well thank you very very much for your thank you thank you for joining us and thank you for telling such a powerful story we'll move straight questions from the audience in interest of time I'm so the first question I'll recognize that lashes on was actually the president of the Oxford about Society thank you so much miss lot yeah thank you so much for presenting this is quite a amazing story and I wonder now when you would call it back and you analyze the future why do you think is the Jewish people relation to the non-jews gonna be the next 10 20 and 50 years well you know I hope that people would come to their senses and realize that we're all human beings we can all live very very well in harmony together and what our personal religion or personal opinion is it's nobody's business we can live our own life and still be a wonderful community and share our thoughts but obviously we are not ready till now to accept this but I think you know the young people have have great hope for the new generations that things will change so so but Beth experience I'm still an optimist settings is going to go better and everything's really improved relationship between different people thank you next question we'll go to the member just over there in the third row just a few sentences we are both I am here from I'm here with my husband and we are post four children but our parents went through Holocaust so we understand very well through what you went and the other sentence will be can I congratulate you is today your 90th birthday no not mine and just rest so very shortly well at an 89 18 and and but in 11th of May first my 18 and stress okay so next now okay congratulation anyway but tomorrow would be enough thanks 89th birthday and it's actually in London a little well I don't know if it's a party but they event for Annan thank you I'm even the past decade has seen the rise of populism characterized by nationalism in xenophobia in the West with the right-wing governments in Austria Italy being the latest examples political opponents regularly charge populist movements and their leaders are being fascist sometimes even drawing comparisons 12 doff Hitler in this party how do you view the rise of populism in the West well I think it it has become a danger but I still think they are not powerful enough yet to take over and you know as I say I'm an optimist and I think people really are less at sea I'm not really changing the world was a better and people will amines are in power but they're not all-powerful and this is important you know one sam adds a majority then there might be of danger but they are not and the thing people say also parties are still powerful enough to I mean there's no government who is no government is racist anywhere it's a moment and that is importance this is for the Hitler time it came from the top and the people followed and now it is the people but as long as the government will forbid like here where there is anything at all in America wherever is anything anti-semitism it is being punished thank you so one of your most recent efforts to ensure the Holocaust will not be forgotten by future generations constituted the recording of you for virtual reality answers to numerous questions using holographic technology a little bit about that before how did this initiative come about and how does holographic technology enhance the impact of yours and other people's stories well in California a part from the Spielberg organization realized that we won't be around much longer and people have wallets at them the story will be watered down or even eventually be forgotten and so they decided they would get as many as possible all of our victims from different camps from different ghettos from different kind of not not just Jewish people from all the genocides to take them to a hologram technically I don't quite know how it goes but I was in California sitting in a huge huge globe with hundred and sixteen cameras and Evers asked a whole week I was asked a thousand questions about my experience which have all been recorded and I'm sitting now at the moment in New York in a museum just sitting still like that and schools and people come in and can ask me a different question but it must be any of the solid questions which have answer so it must be questioned about my experience in the Holocaust and they have as I says they have many many people already interviewed so from different different places in the world and so those people will be able to repeat this answer like when you ask me questions now but I was just saying before of course they have to know first the story of the Holocaust so it has to be taught in schools and I hope it will happen in America friends have just heard only six states in America it's compulsory to teach the Holocaust so that's not really enough so I hope it will be a general world all of and I mean I just got from the uh no Frank house in Amsterdam said seventeen million people have sis year looked at their website so that is an enormous amount so now with all this website and with all that of course you can tell a lot of things but people have to be interested people have to look at it and you know it's not going to saver let's say you have to it's not as if to go to school and they're taught so they have to have the initiative to be interested in it so - technology of course as sings the story can be kept alive which is very very important thank you um we have time for one final question so we'll go to the lady all the way in the back you mentioned your brother's paintings that he left in the house did he ever have the opportunity to go back and have a look whether they're still there and in general to revisit those places that were influential for your life during the war well after Auto God said diary I realized the only thing we have from hands are his paintings and but we were reluctant to go to his house to this woman who will really sue her blackmailing all this has happened to us but luckily she had disappeared and other people moved and yes I did get the 30 paintings and I had them for a long time but a few years ago I donated them to the resistance Museum in Amsterdam and they made a big exhibition and but I have copies made and in South Africa's I made an exhibition now about his life and his paintings and we have we have got a copy here in Britain now in the Jewish Museum and if you're a teacher so you can it's a traveling exhibition you can ask for it and you can get it and the university can get it as well and it's a not just his painting but his life and as well he wrote many poems very emotional and yes so that I keep his life that he hasn't lived for nothing and that is really a saying but we all want that when we die that we haven't lived for nothing's that we leave something behind and in yatris MZ Israel Holocaust Museum they really tried to find the six million names at least so that at least the name of everybody is recorded who perished at this terrible event thank you unfortunately that's all we have time for this evening please join me in thanking Eva schloss for joining us today you

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 29,362

Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University, Eva Schloss

Id: fcEZj3mD21w

Length: 56min 41sec (3401 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 10 2018