27/01/2022
Holocaust Memorial Day: Highlighting Survivor Testimony (by Abigail Harrison, 2d year Sociology student).
The role testimony plays in Holocaust education is invaluable. Today, on Holocaust Memorial Day, I would like to share the story of Mala Tribich.
Mala was born in 1930 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, but she and her family were forced to flee in 1939 following the N**i invasion. When they returned to their hometown, they were met with the first ghetto to have been formed in Poland, where just under 3000 people lived within two streets and conditions were unhygienic. Aged 12, Mala faced the dilemma of saving her 5-year-old cousin, Ann, or joining her father within the ghetto – a German officer allowed them to return to the ghetto, where she was reunited with her father.
Briefly after Mala’s return to the ghetto, there were further roundups of Jews, when her mother and sister were taken and murdered in a nearby forest. This left Mala to take care of her cousin, whose mother had already been deported to a concentration camp. The ghetto was liquidated in 1942 and Mala became a slave labourer until November of 1944, when she and Ann were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she was separated from her father and her brother. After 10 weeks, they were moved again to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where the conditions were horrific, and Mala caught typhus. Mala recalled being so devoid of energy when suffering from the disease, that she could not understand why people in the camp were running – but this was the 15th of April 1945, when Bergen-Belsen was liberated.
Mala was transferred to a children’s hospital to recover. Three months later, she was sent, along with a large group of children, to Sweden where she spent nearly two years. Not expecting any of her family to be alive, Mala was surprised to receive a letter from her brother Ben in England, the only other member of her close family to have survived.
In March 1947, Mala came to England to be reunited with Ben. She learnt English, attended secretarial college and within a year was working in an office. In 1949, she met Maurice, whom she married in 1950. Whilst her children were growing up, Mala studied and gained a degree in Sociology from the University of London. Today, Mala has two children and three grandchildren.
Holocaust Memorial Day allows a time to tell the stories of the past, and remember what happened, keeping the Holocaust within our nation’s collective memory. Survivors of the Holocaust, like Mala, are an incredible group of people, who show bravery in sharing their stories, and educating people on what happened – for this, as a HET Ambassador, I am incredibly grateful! I had the absolute honour of hearing Mala tell her story at the end of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s annual Ambassador Conference in 2020 and it has stayed with me ever since. Mala is without a doubt an inspiration to me and, knowing Mala studied Sociology like myself, her story feels even more moving.
Please tell someone about Mala Tribich on Holocaust Memorial Day.
