Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is the 70th Aniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army in 1945.  Many people suffered at the hands of the Nazis and families were ripped apart.

My grandmother's family was one of them.  Her grandmother Gisela Löwenstein was shot in 1942 in Riga and her mother Hulda Frankenbusch was captured by the Germans in France in March 1944.  Initally she was sent to Drancy and in April 1944 Hulda was transported to Auschwitz.  As a family, we don't know if she survived the journey, but if she did, she would have been sent straight to the gas chamber as her health was not great.

My grandmother did not know for sure what had happened to her mother and was forever haunted by the fact she could not help get her mother to safety.

My grandmother's fathers family did not fair any better.  Although her father Rudolf Frankenbusch survived by coming to England, the rest of his family perished and their names are commemorated on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague.

So today, we remember all those who died, and those who survived and not just by the hands of the Nazis in World War 2.

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