My dad is a hero. That’s a term thrown around a lot, and it is not surprising to hear a daughter call their dad a hero. But what makes my dad different is that tens of thousands of other people think my dad, Harry, is a hero too.
Harry Spiro was born in 1929 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland. He was 10 years old when the Nazis invaded, and it would not be long before he and his family were forced out of their homes and into the first ghetto established by the Nazis in Poland. He is now 94 years old, and he is a Holocaust survivor.
As a young boy my father worked as a slave labourer in a glass factory in the ghetto. While he was at work one day, his mother (my grandmother) and family, along with 22,000 other Jews, were taken from the ghetto and sent to their death at the Treblinka death camp. Harry never saw them again.
Harry went on to survive Buchenwald and Rehmsdorf concentration camps before enduring a death-march to Terezín in Czechoslovakia in May 1945. Only 270 people survived that ordeal, and Harry had no one left.
Harry came to the UK later that year as one of “the boys” – 732 boys and girls who came to the UK and settled in Windermere after the Holocaust. Among this small, disjointed group of survivors, he made friendships that shaped his life and endure to this day. Many of those survivors went on to dedicate their lives to Holocaust education and remembrance, Harry included. They toured the length and breadth of the UK, week in, week out, sharing their experiences and paying tribute to those family members who did not survive. This is why Harry is seen as a hero by tens of thousands of people across this country who have heard him speak.
I am fortunate that Harry is still alive, that I can see him and my mother, Pauline, every day. But Harry is no longer able to speak to schools, much as he would love to. He is too frail, but his determination for the world to learn from the past is as powerful as ever. And Harry has two very simple messages – Hitler did not win, and do not hate. Yes, all of Harry’s family – my family – were murdered in the Holocaust, a family that is part of the incomprehensible statistic of six million Jewish men, women and children. But Hitler didn’t win. Through Harry, my family are here today. Harry has three children, nine grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. And Harry always told us, and the thousands of students he met, do not hate. He firmly believes that hatred never leads to anything good. The fact that he says this after all he has been through remains remarkable to me.
Today, sadly, the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling, and the void they leave is immeasurable. In 2023 we lost Zigi Shipper BEM, Auschwitz survivor and one of Dad’s closest friends. We also lost the indomitable Sir Ben Helfgott MBE – Holocaust survivor, advocate of Holocaust remembrance and Olympic champion. These titans of our history won’t be here for ever.
But I am full of my dad’s determination to tell the world what happened, to ensure young people across the country learn where antisemitism, hatred of Jews, can ultimately lead. It is my role, as a member of the second generation, to speak to schools, week in, week out. To tell the next generation of students about my family, Harry’s experiences – and crucially, that antisemitism did not end in 1945. Today, we see it once again in our schools, universities, workplaces and public squares. There is still work to do.
This Holocaust Memorial Day, I will once again speak to different communities, urging them to remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. And if they can’t do that, urging them to remember my family. But this year I will also ask them to look around and to see the antisemitism that blights the United Kingdom and our world at large. I will ask them to do this for me, for Harry, for Zigi and for Sir Ben. I will ask them to do this for the next generation and for the sake of us all.
Tracy Moses works with the Holocaust Educational Trust to share her experiences of being a second-generation survivor, and the testimony of her father, Harry Spiro BEM, in schools and colleges across the UK.