Kitty Hart Moxon One woman shares her extraordinary story as a concentration camp survivor. Kitty Hart Moxon was 1. Nazi death camp. Against all odds, she survived there for almost two years. To mark Holocaust Memorial Day Louette Harding discovers how Kittys eyewitness account of the horrors has the power to transform attitudes nearly 7. Kitty today, near her Hertfordshire home. A crumpled photograph shows Kitty Hart Moxon at the end of the war, looking cheerful enough at a refugee camp near Brunswick in northern Germany. Her left forearm is bandaged. Oh, that was where I tried to excise my tattoo myself, she says, with a gruff laugh. In the end, she had it removed after she came to England. People asked, Is that your boyfriends telephone number or whispered behind my back. If she told them the truth, that it was her concentration camp number, an awkward pause ensued as if she had said something offensive. And one day I had had enough. No one here really wanted to know what had happened and you couldnt get any help. Eventually, it was the stubborn efforts of people such as Kitty, who was awarded an OBE in 2. Holocaust educational work, that changed popular attitudes, with the subject included on the school curriculum and Holocaust Memorial Day this years theme is, aptly, Speak Up, Speak Out commemorated on 2. January. Ostensibly now a Home Counties widow, living in a comfortable flat in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, Kitty remains vigorous at 8. Most who survived Auschwitz entered the concentration camp just a few months before the end of the war. Kitty endured it for almost two years my Auschwitz career, she calls it, with another ironic chortle. She was 1. 2 when war broke out and her family left behind a comfortable home in western Poland and fled the advancing tanks. With her parents, she got as far as a town called Lublin in the east while her 1. Russia. She remembers watching the German bombers with childish fascination. But after the Nazis entered the town, herding the Jewish population into a ghetto, she lost her innocence. I was walking down the street with a boy from my home town. We met a patrol and I stepped off the pavement into the gutter. The Asahi Shimbun is widely regarded for its journalism as the most respected daily newspaper in Japan. The English version offers selected articles from. The Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, or Jewish exodus from Arab countries, was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of 850,000 Jews. Proper 13AOrdinary 18APentecost 9 August 6, 2017 Please consider your sponsorship or support of The Text This Week. Please help support The Text This Week Top VIdeos. Warning Invalid argument supplied for foreach in srvusersserverpilotappsjujaitalypublicindex. The Story on how Fire Prevention Week became a National effort. Music on this site is best experienced with the Crescendo Midi Plugin. Streaming Crescendo is paid. My friend didnt and this German pulled out his gun and shot him in the head in front of me. It was her introduction to terror. Conditions in the overcrowded ghetto worsened the family needed cunning to survive the hunger, disease and casual brutality. It was often children who kept life going men were grabbed off the street. It was easier for children to get around. My father would give me bits of jewellery and I would go down the sewer and out on the non Jewish side to barter for bread or potatoes. The family made several escape attempts, at one point living in a forest for three weeks on berries and rainwater until eventually a Catholic priest provided them with new identities. Prayer Of The Refugee Midi File' title='Prayer Of The Refugee Midi File' />Kitty front, second from right at a displaced persons camp in 1. Auschwitz tattoo. SS soldiers dividing prisoners into two groups at Auschwitz, 1. It was too dangerous for the three of them to remain together. Audaciously Kitty and her mother Lola would pose as non Jewish Poles and join those conscripted to work in factories within Germany itself. That was the last I saw of my father, at the vicarage, Kitty says. My mother and I found ourselves in Germany. We thought we could survive the war there because we didnt look particularly Jewish and the Germans thought our documents were in order. But we came under suspicion among the Polish women working next to us. Twelve Jewish women were betrayed to the Gestapo and sentenced to death. The night before our execution the 1. I sat next to it all night, my last chance to look at the night sky. Lola prepared her daughter to die bravely. Led out at dawn, they lined up facing a brick wall with the machine guns behind them. There was an almighty explosion. Even today, Kittys hand flies to her chest. Then a laugh. They had shot high. Our death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Auschwitz. A quick death for a slow death. Kitty was 1. Nazi death camps. She arrived on 2 April 1. No one here in Britain really wanted to know what had happened at AuschwitzArrival in Auschwitz is a defining moment in your life. The doors open, you are thrown out, greeted by barking dogs, screaming figures with whips, a stench of burning flesh and a glow of fire. Everything happens at breakneck speed. Out, out, out You are driven off running. MN0095074.gif' alt='Prayer Of The Refugee Midi File' title='Prayer Of The Refugee Midi File' />You are taken to a building, stripped, put under cold showers, driven into the next hall where they shave off your hair. There are no towels so you are still wet and cold. Then women prisoners smear your body with a mop dipped in green fluid which stings. In the next hall you are thrown some rags and wooden clogs. In the final hall there are women sitting at tables with funny pens in their hands and before you know it needles are piercing your skin. That is when you become a number 3. Whistles blow and there is a roll call. Thousands of women are rushing to stand in line. For hours you stand in the rain and people fall to the ground dead. Then you are driven into a hut and you think, At last, I can lie down. But you cant. There are 1,0. You are lucky to find a corner to cling to. Welcome to Auschwitz. Welcome to hell. Kitty on holiday with her parents, brother and grandmother in 1. She would. later lose 3. Holocaust. From left Kitty visiting a memorial for the Salzwedel camp, where she was finally liberated, in 1. England in September 1. Most newcomers faced selection on. The rest slaved for the Third Reich until they became too weak. Some died of starvation. Qt Update Gui From Thread. The average survival period was. That first morning, Kitty discovered the woman next to her had died during the night. I said to my mother, She has clothes, she may have a piece of bread. Weve got to have it off her. I realised that everything in this place had to be paid for. The kapos ruling prisoners who helped run the camp were your worst enemy, your first enemy. My philosophy was, I will pay them with whatever is available from the dead. But I never took anything from the living. She has never suffered from survivors guilt. My conscience is clear. My good friend committed suicide ten years ago. She had a high position in Auschwitz as a messenger for the SS. She didnt do anything bad to anyone, but she could have done more to help. It was a lot worse for women than men. Many men had some kind of skill but girls were used for hard labour. Embed Flv Powerpoint File. Yet women formed little families for mutual support. Outside it, there had to be bribery within there was help. Arrival in Auschwitz is a defining moment in your life. The doors open, you are thrown out, greeted by barking dogs, screaming figures with whips, the stench of burning flesh and a glow of fireA payment of bread won Lola a job in the so called hospital. Sophos Will Not Update Could Not Contact Server Administrator. Kitty was chosen for hard labour, constructing a railway. You couldnt survive unless you had a pair of shoes walking to the site, the clogs rubbed and the wounds got infected. The main thing was staying clean, which was difficult. Lice burrowed under your skin but if you scratched you risked infection again. During my Auschwitz career I had all kinds of occupations. She paid for a uniform as worn by a group of prisoners who worked in a factory, and smuggled herself among the night shift while they slept during the day. So I spent some weeks doing nothing.