Holocaust survivor: Solly Irving

Solly Irving is 85 years old and is Polish. He was living in Poland at the time when the Nazi's attempted to kill Jew's. Solly was only 9 when this happened and was still in Poland. He told us how he survived in the concentration camps and what it is like for him through the years of the Holocaust and what it has been like since the Holocaust. The German's first made concentration camps and ghettos. Concentration camps were small camps where people are forced to go into and survive on inadequate rations and facilities. Ghettos were similar places which made made every Jew excluded from the outside world. Ghettos were surrounded with barbed wire which made it almost impossible for anyone to escape. Solly quoted 'you can get in but never out'. Solly also said that if you got caught trying to escape by digging underneath the wire you got beaten, Solly knew this because it happened to him. Solly was the youngest of 5 siblings and ended up being the only one that survived. Solly nd his family all got split up when the German's came and Solly ended up being with one of his sisters there was one moment that he remembers very clearly about when him and his sister were being chased by German soldiers. The soldiers got hold of him and his sister. Fortunately Solly managed to get himself free but the soldiers wouldn't let go of his sister, Solly had to leave his sister behind and had to keep running in the hope of finding somewhere safe to go. After this had all happened he passed out for a while and used a flagpole as guidance to safety but the only safety for him unfortunately was a camp. He explained that as he walked into the camp with other children, men and women he saw people hung in the entrance as a warning that if they tried to escape that they would be hung as well. When he got to the camp he hid in a women's dorm and got fed little bits of food he felt that he was safe there because he felt like he was being looked after like a boy of his age should be. He then got sent to another camp but now has perforated ears from where soldiers have beaten him so much and so hard. Solly admits that he doesn't know how he survived the whole of the Holocaust but believes that his mum was watching over him and helping him along the way. After the Holocaust only 742 children survived and Solly was one of them, he was one of the first to come over to London for safety and has stayed in the United Kingdom since.

I found the talk from Solly very useful and an eye opener because I didn't realise how lucky I've been growing up compared to how unlucky Solly was.