Trudy Gold, Howard Jacobson, Susan Pollack, Josef Bar-Pereg, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Joanna Millan, and Dame Janet Suzman
Holocaust Memorial Day

Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.

Born in Manchester, England in 1942, Howard Jacobson is an award-winning novelist and broadcaster educated at Cambridge University. He lectured at the University of Sydney for three years before returning to England where he taught English at Selwyn College. His novel, The Mighty Walzer (1999), set in the Jewish community in Manchester during the 1950s, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing and the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction in 2000. Howard’s recent novels include The Finkler Question (2010), winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction; Zoo Time (2012); J (2014); Shylock Is My Name (2016); and Pussy (2017). His two nonfiction books, Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews (1993), an exploration of his own Jewish roots, and Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime (1997), an analysis of comedy and its functions, inspired related television series.

Susan Pollack grew up in Hungary and experienced antisemitism from a young age. In 1944 Susan was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was separated from her family. Once the war had ended, she found out that more than 50 of her relatives had been killed and that only her brother had survived. After the war, she lived in Sweden before moving to Canada, where she met and married a fellow survivor. Together they had three children and six grandchildren. Susan now lives in London and continues to share her testimony in schools across the country.

Josef Bar-Pereg is a professor of industrial design. After his family was killed by the Nazis, he spent his early years in an orphanage. With no choice but to embrace resiliency, Josef achieved a successful life in academia. Today he is happily married to his wife, Michele, and enjoys the comforts of family that he never had as a child.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, one of three sisters, was born in Breslau in 1925. Her father, who was awarded the Iron Cross in WWI, was a lawyer. Her mother was a violinist and her uncle a chess master. Her sister Marianne managed to escape to England in I939. In April 1942, her parents were deported and murdered. Anita and her sister Renata were working in a paper factory and spared. They began to forge documents to enable French forced laborers to escape. In September 1942 she and Renata tried to escape but were arrested by the Gestapo at the train station and imprisoned. The two sisters were sent to Auschwitz in December 1943. Anita was a talented musician and became a member of the Women’s Orchestra. As she later said, “The cello saved my life.” In the wake of the Soviet advance, Anita and her sister were part of the evacuation from the camp in October 1944. From the hell of Auschwitz, she arrived in the hell of Bergen Belsen. On April 15th, 1945, the British army took the camp. Anita was a witness at the Belsen Trial of I945. She came to Britain in I946 and cofounded the English Chamber Orchestra. She married the pianist Peter Wallfisch and has two children, four grandchildren, and three great grandchildren.

Joanna Millan was born Bela Rosenthal in Berlin in 1942. When she was 8 months old, she and her mother were deported to Theresienstadt. Her mother died of typhus, leaving Joanna on her own until she was liberated and brought to the UK. Adopted at the age of six, Joanna was told to forget the past. Hers is a story of reconstructed memory. For the past 30 years Joanna has been telling her story in schools and universities both in the UK and abroad, particularly in China.

Janet Guzman, DBE, is a South African/British actress who enjoyed a successful early career in the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). She has always kept strong links with the country of her birth, South Africa, where she began her directing career with a production of Othello with John Kani, seen as a protest play, in 1987 at the Market Theatre. Her films include Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), and A Dry White Season (1989). Her television series include Clayhanger (1976), Lord Mountbatten: The Viceroy (1986), and The Singing Detective (1986). Janet was made a Dame in 2011. She has honorary doctorates from among others, Cape Town, Warwick, and London (QMW) Universities.