Mum was born in Vienna. She used to juggle as a child. I am not sure at what age but I assume it was after she arrived in the UK. One day she started playing with some tennis balls and it went from there. She always said she juggled because she liked the attention she got when she did it. She used to travel to music events around London or wherever there was a large crowd of people, and then she would find a ‘spot’ to stop and just start juggling while the music was playing. She used to tell us stories of how people would come up to her and take photos or videos. If they offered her money, she always refused it. I remember she said that once a policeman came over and wanted to have a go so she let him but he wasn’t very good. I think she found it enjoyable and fun and it also was great exercise.

She liked visiting stately homes and watching celebrity chat shows on TV. She liked to have an insight into the lifestyle of the rich and famous. She asked a lot of questions about people and liked to hear that people were doing well at school or work and especially if they passed important exams. She was very proud when my brother got his accountancy qualification because it meant he had “letters after his name”. The family threw a party for him on a boat that went along the Thames in Windsor and invited friends along. She liked to know her children and grandchildren were doing well. I think she saw it as an extension of her achievements.

She never talked about her experience in the camp but was still in touch with the people that brought her to the UK and those that survived with her. We used to meet up with some of them including those that went to live in Israel and Australia. Alice Goldberger was the person that first brought mum over along with the other children. Many of the children went on to live happy lives and got married and had children of their own. Mum considered them to be her family. My sister and I were bridesmaids for one of the other girls and she used to babysit for us when we were much younger.

Sue, Ann and David Cohen

Our darling father, Wolf (Johnny) Gutman was born in Lodz, Poland, on 23rd October 1927. He suffered in various concentration camps before being brought to England in 1945, where he started a new life.

In The East End of London he met his love Sylvia whom he married. They had 3 lovely daughters named Rosalind, Yvonne and Annette, whilst building his factory business making ladies coats and jackets.

Despite losing his father, mother, sister and brother in terrible ways, suffering horrific experiences, he still managed to survive and make a wonderful life.
This Quilt square represents his family, from the top, starting with a photo of himself, his parents and his wife. Then his daughters with their husbands, grandchildren with spouses and great grandchildren…. so far. Some of the many happy occasions shared together.

Annette Freeman

This image was from a photograph of Hugo, our father, as a boy, with his younger brother Gaby, mother Bella and father Geza. This image conveys a sense of the wonderful life the Grun family had before the world they knew was shattered. It is a place that we would like to have known – and should have known – had the war never happened. Our uncle Gaby was killed as soon as he entered Auschwitz, whilst Hugo and Geza survived several camps, only for Geza to die soon after liberation due to typhus and starvation. Bella managed to escape from a work party at a smaller labour camp and died from breast cancer in 1964. The Gruns were leading lights in their community in Berehovo in Czechoslovakia (then becoming part of Hungary and now part of the Ukraine), owning a profitable timber business, vineyards and interests in the famous Moser glass factory. Our father, Hugo, became a leading reform rabbi and was much loved as a broadcaster on national radio.

We second generation siblings Gaby Massey, Naomi Gryn, Rachelle Brettler and David Gryn and our third generation children – Adam and Clio Massey, Sadie Gryn, Joe and Zac Brettler, Isaac and Jacob Gryn – will always think of this corner of the world and this family as an intrinsic part of the fabric of our lives and chemistry, and something that still feels as if it’s missing from our present.

Gaby, Naomi, Rachelle and David

Pinchas Gutter was born in the early 1930’s in Lodz, Poland. The family then moved to Warsaw where they ended up in the ghetto. After the ghetto uprising, the family were transported to Majdanek concentration camp. Pinchas spent the rest of the war in several different work and concentration camps, until he was liberated by the Russians. He was then brought from Theresienstadt to Windermere in England as one of ‘The Boys’. After further travels he settled in South Africa where he worked in finance and raised his family, eventually retiring to Canada.

The square for Pinchas refers important themes in his life. These include the importance of family, memories of life before the war, his love of music, his ongoing commitment to Israel, Jewish life and Holocaust education. Pinchas is a much loved husband, father and grandfather, who is generous to friends, family and community, and an inspiration to many who have encountered him over the years.

Tanya Gutter

Jack (Jacob) Hecht (b. May 14, 1929) has a strong life force and gusto even now in his mid 80s. His grandsons Josh and Noah Hecht wanted to make the quilt patch a tribute to his geographical journey as he crossed Europe in severe hardship—to show the many miles he travelled from his home in Ruscova, Romania, and the stops he made through several camps as the Nazis neared the end of the war. Yellow felt has been used to recall the yellow badges that Jews were made to wear to identify them, but this time it is a badge of pride. Survivor! On the quilt patch, Jack is shown doing his trademark exuberant dancing as he celebrates freedom.

Jack’s early life was on a large family farm in the Carpathian Mountains where he was the 7th of 8 children in a religious family until the Hungarian Army first stopped them from attending school and then forced the family to abandon their property. He was held at the Viseu de Sus ghetto, a gateway for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was then encamped with 3 brothers who worked the stone quarries and trains (they called themselves ‘The Brake Boys’) and moved westward to other work camps by the Nazi’s quest to build roads. Jack was liberated (with one younger brother, Martin) from the Death March in 1945 and walked to Munich, where he was rehabilitated at Kloster Indersdorf. He was transported by air to Southampton in the UK with The Boys. He lived for a time in Salford, then made his way to London, where he met his wife Maureen and had a daughter (Nina) and a son (Sam), both named after perished family members.

Jack is a proud member of The Boys and his social life has always been filled with his long-standing friendships with many of his fellow survivors.

Kim, Colin, Josh and Noah Hecht

I was born in Ruscova, Romania in 1931. During the spring of 1944, together with my parents and brothers and sister we were sent to the ghetto of Viseu de Sus. After a few weeks we were transported to Auschwitz. After the separation from my parents (they died in the gas chambers), my brothers and I were sent to several slave labour camps, then to the concentration camp Flossenbürg, followed by death marches. I was liberated in 1945 and sent for rehabilitation to Indersdorf near Dachau, Bavaria.

After a few months, I was transferred to England to a hostel in Manchester. I then eventually moved to London.

The square shows me has a young boy after the war and my favourite football team, Arsenal!

Martin Hecht

Roman Halter was born in 1927 in the little town of Chodecz, Poland, the youngest of seven children. When the Second World War broke out he was 12. From 1940 until the spring of 1945 he was in the Lodz ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Stutthof concentration camps and then was in a slave labour in a factory in Dresden. Early in 1945 he escaped a death march and was hidden by a German couple on the outskirts of Dresden till the Liberation.

Along with other young survivors, “The Boys,” he was brought to England in 1945. Roman went on to study architecture and always painted incredible pictures. This painting for the quilt was from his memory of his grandparents and shows the haunting eyes amidst the beautiful vibrant colours that the Impressionists loved to use.

Roman is well known for his stained glass windows that can be seen at Alyth Gardens Synagogue, Central Synagogue, Sternberg Synagogue, Beth Shalom, and Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. His 10 Holocaust paintings are now in the collection of the Imperial War Museum.

Aviva Halter-Hearn

I have been absorbed with many charitable activities for many years but none of them have been more important to me than my involvement with the ’45 Aid Society. I am so very proud of all that The Boys have achieved.

The quilt honours my parents Moishe and Sara Helfgott and my younger sister Lusia, all of whom perished in the Holocaust. Included in the square are my parents, sister Mala, wife Arza, three sons Maurice, Michael and Nathan, their wives Danielle, Thea and Laura, and my grandchildren Sam, Alex, Nicky, Lucy, Amy, Jessica, Reuben, Oscar and Noah. Incredibly, despite all that my family suffered in the Holocaust, here in 2015 are three generations of the Helfgott family. To me this is “triumph over adversity”.

I was born on 22 Nov 1929 in Pabianice and grew up in the town of Piotrkow, Poland. Between the years of 1939 – 1942 I lived in the Piotrkow ghetto with my family. In 1942 I was working in the Hortensia Glass Factory in the Piotrkow ghetto and then in DitrichFischer (Bugaj). In Dec 1944 I was sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany followed by Schlieben and Theresienstadt concentration camps. I was liberated from Theresienstadt by the Russian Army and brought to England in Aug 1945 where I started a new life in Windermere. I was lucky enough to attend Plaistow Grammar and pass A level exams before going to Southampton University in 1949.I had always been strong and was a very good gymnast as a young boy. In 1948 I discovered weightlifting by chance and by 1950 I was good enough to enter the Maccabiah games and I won a gold medal. I then went on to win the British Weightlifting Lightweight Championship and was British Champion from 1954 to 1960, going on to become Captain of the British Weightlifting team at the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956. In 1958 I was the Bronze weightlifting medallist at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff. In 1960 I was Captain of the British Weightlifting team at the Olympic Games in Rome.

All my adult life I have spoken openly about the important lessons to be learned from what happened in the Holocaust. My purpose has been that all people should better understand and fight against the destructive forces of intolerance, discrimination and prejudice. In 1994 I received the Polish Knights Cross of the Order of Merit, in 2005 the Commanders Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. I was also honoured to receive the Honorary Fellowship of the University of Cumbria in 2014. In 2015 I received the Prime Minister’s Points of Light Award in recognition of outstanding individual volunteers and in January this year I was made Freeman of the City of London.

Ben Helfgott M.B.E., D. Univ Southampton, D. Litt UCL

David was born on 6th September 1926 in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia. In April 1944 he was transported to Auschwitz, separated from his family, and then taken to Buchenwald where this black and white photograph was taken of him in prison uniform aged 17 – it is the earliest photograph we have. He survived slave labour in Gleina and Rhemsdorf and miraculously met up with his younger brother, Abe. They kept each other alive on the harrowing death march to Theresienstadt where they were liberated. More than 40 members of the extended Herman family were lost in the camps, but amazingly all three of David’s siblings survived.

From an orphanage, Belgická 25, in Prague, David came to Montford Hall in Lancashire in March 1946 with other Boys for rehabilitation, before moving to London to start again. In 1954 David married Olive, his inspiration and the love of his life, and they built a new family.

We all discussed what to include in the square and Julia brought our ideas to life. The Carpathian mountains and the Latorica river form the backdrop to an idyllic childhood. The pear and walnuts are from stories of David’s childhood – many revolved around climbing trees. The roots of the walnut tree are intertwined with the names of David’s grandparents, parents and three siblings. David and Olive’s names are inscribed on the trunk, their children and families’ names on the leaves, along with jewels. David said his four children were his jewels, his ten grandchildren were his diamonds.David’s grandfather owned a brick factory, represented by the brick border containing names of family members who perished and words representing David’s interests and things he loved – sculpture, chess, backgammon, swimming, sunshine, nuts, bagels, gnocchi, Israel, The Boys.
On the right, David is seated behind a chess board waiting for Abe to make his next move. On the left are sketches of his designs for Herwa Fashions, the company he built with Olive. David was incredibly artistic and a genius with scissors, cutting designs first out of paper which were then sketched.
Whenever he walked into a room, he always used to say: “Hello, you lucky people!”

Charles, Rosalind (Gelbart), Julia (Burton) and Paul Herman