Bride of Belsen

It takes a lot to survive a concentration camp, so to survive three is practically miraculous. All the more so if you live through a death march as well. If, finally, you turn that experience into a life-enhancing event, rather than a crushing blow, then you’re a remarkable person indeed.

That was the case of Gena Turgel who died earlier this month.

Gena Turgel meets the Queen at Buckingham Palace
on 28 May 2015

She was born Gena Goldfinger, on 1 February, in Krakow. That’s a wonderful, vibrant, exciting Polish city even today. Back then, it was little different, though in those days some of that vibrancy was doubtless supplied by the city’s large and active Jewish community – then some 60,000 strong but down to 500 today.

When the Nazis occupied the city, Gena’s family was forced to give up its textile business and move into the newly designated ghetto. One of her brothers was shot there and another escaped, but no one heard from him again. From the ghetto, the survivors in the family were moved to Plaszow labour camp, made famous – or infamous – by the film Schindler’s List.

Her sister and brother-in-law were caught by the Nazis trying to smuggle food into the camp and executed by them.

From there, Gena was marched in 1944 to the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but instead of being gassed was sent on a death march to the camp at Buchenwald. She survived that too, and was finally moved to Bergen-Belsen.

There she nursed Anne Frank through the typhus that killed her.

Appalling experiences that no human should suffer, especially when they are completely unnecessary and merely inflicted by other humans. That is, humans who have lost their humanity.

Fortunately, she didn’t lose hers. Among the first allied soldiers who liberated Bergen-Belsen was a young Jewish sergeant in the British Army, Norman Turgel. I assume he was really a Nathan, like my grandfather, who was also often called Norman by his gentile friends (or non-friends). Norman met Gena in the Infirmary. He apparently found her attractive enough to want to invite her to dinner.

The dinner was in a British Officers’ mess. The tables were covered with crisp white linen, shining cutlery and vases of flowers. For someone who had spent over five years in concentration camps, the sight was difficult to take in. But Norman had an explanation ready. 

‘This is your engagement party,’ he told her.

As Gena would tell the story, he had decided on first meeting her that they would marry. As indeed they did, within six months, and, by special permission, inside the Bergen-Belsen camp. That won her the title she kept ever after: the Bride of Belsen. She even had a silk wedding dress, made from a British army parachute.

Norman and Gena Turgel
He in battledress, she in the parachute-silk wedding dress

She spent the rest of her life working constantly to spread awareness of the Holocaust, its causes and its victims.

She died on 7 June this year, at the age of 95. Having lived a long life marked by early and terrible suffering. But which she turned to great value.

My thanks to the BBC, via my wife, who heard it on the radio. At a time when we have an Italian Interior Minister prepared to leave people to drown in the Med rather than let them land, and a US President who sees nothing wrong in forcibly separating children from parents and keeping them in cages, we badly need to be reminded of humans who kept their humanity.

It’s a wonderful relief.

The parachute-silk wedding dress
Preserved in the Imperial War Museum, London

What has the EU ever done for us?

It was quite an experience, spending a weekend in Cracow – or perhaps I should write Krakow? And pronounce it so the second syllable rhymes with cough and not with bough? Or am I being too political correct?

Well, no, actually. I’m just enthusiastic about the visit and that just makes me a little shamefaced about using an old-fashioned spelling, and German pronunciation. Somehow, I feel that such a vibrant place deserves better from me.

Vibrant it certainly was. Even when the temperature dropped to -16 C, the night was alive with revellers wandering from restaurant to bar to club and back. Even the shops were open, apparently most of the night. The place just breathed vitality.

Krakow: as lively as it’s attractive. And it’s both

You can’t possibly build a serious view of a country from 48 hours spent in one of its cities. But, hey, politicians make ridiculously sweeping generalisations in that way, so why shouldn’t I? After all, out of 330 mass killings in the US last year, one was committed by a pair of lunatics claiming allegiance to ISIS, but that was more than enough for Donald Trump to call for the exclusion of all Muslims from the US, and be applauded for it.

So based on the experience of an entire weekend, I’m happy to proclaim that Poland is young, dynamic, thrusting and going places. Interestingly, 100% of our sample (an old friend – old in terms of time since we first met her, not actually old, I hasten to add – talking to my wfie but, hey, that’s a sample, isn’t it?) pointed to a feeling among Poles that the country is doing remarkably well, and this is due above all to membership of the European Union.

It’s well known, on the other hand, that others have gone off the European project. They resent the loss of national independence it implies, and don’t realise that this is the price they pay for the prosperity. Nothing new there, though. People quickly forget a benefit they’ve already secured, and focus only on what they gave up for it. In Britain we’re seeing the same phenomenon. The Guardian today, for instance, reports on an analysis produced by one Michael Burrage for the British anti-EU campaign. He reckons the country grew much more quickly from trade with the old Common Market than it has from trade with the single market that replaced it.

But isn’t that the way of things? The quickest benefits come in the early days. And the wealth that came from that initial growth has never been lost. We gain less now, but we’re still gaining. As Britain Stronger in Europe replied, for the other side of the debate, membership of the EU was worth about £133bn in 2014, which is no trivial sum. But easy to forget if you only focus on what the country has had to give up to obtain it.

It was fun being Krakow. It was encouraging to see what a lot of good EU membership can do. And that sent me home more than ever determined to resist the trend to take Britain out.