A retired teacher and Stanmore resident has shared her father’s story in the face of growing Holocaust denial and misinformation.
It wasn’t until Maralyn Turgel was 43 that she learned what her father had gone through during the Holocaust.
For years, all Maralyn knew was that her dad, Sam Gardner, had lost his family and endured terrible experiences during the Second World War that left him suffering nightmares.
It was the release of the 1993 film Schindler’s List that brought change. Stephen Spielberg used the film’s profits to set up the USC Shoah Foundation and invited Holocaust survivors to share their testimonies.
Listening from behind a closed door, Maralyn heard her father say to an interviewer from the foundation: “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t feel the pain that Hitler caused.”
Sam Gardner, born Shmuel Yankel Goldberg, was born in Piotrków, Poland, in April 1925. He lived with his mother, father, sister and brother in a two-bedroom apartment.
In 1939, when Sam was only 13, the Nazis invaded Poland. Sam’s mother, three-year-old brother, and 19-year-old sister hid in the attic, but were discovered in 1942 after being persuaded to surrender themselves.
Maralyn said: “The Nazis had loudspeakers. They said: ‘We know you’re hiding. If you don’t come out, we will find you and kill you. But if you come out, we’ll take you to Germany to work.’”
The three family members were taken to Treblinka and gassed on arrival. Sam’s grandfather was immediately shot, while nine of his cousins were taken to the forest and murdered.
As Sam and his father were working as slave labourers at a glass factory at the time, they were spared. They found out about what happened to their family two weeks later.
In the following years, Sam and his father were moved between concentration camps, before being separated in 1944. His father was transported to Buchenwald and Sam was moved to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, arriving on May 4.
He was one of 42 survivors of the roughly 2,000 people who were forced onto the train from Flossenberg camp to Mauthausen.
On May 5, 1945, Mauthausen was liberated. Sam travelled to Prague, where he joined a scheme sponsored by a Jewish charity and approved by the British government to take 1,000 child survivors from camps across Europe to rehabilitate them in Windermere, England.
Sam would remain in the UK, settling in Manchester and later marrying his wife Hannah in 1950. They had two daughters, Maralyn and Estelle.
Maralyn said: “Unfortunately, survivors are getting older or dying off. We feel it’s our duty to carry their stories forward so that the children understand what happened all those years ago.
“Our aim is to explain to children that everybody has the right to be in this world – no matter who they are. We should embrace our differences and learn about each other; it enriches our lives.”
Sam died 10 years ago, aged 88, after being diagnosed with dementia.
Maralyn works with Generation to Generation, an organisation which arranges visits from decedents of Holocaust survivors to schools and other organisations across the UK. To find out more, visit www.generation2generation.org.uk
She also speaks for the Holocaust Education Trust, which provides opportunities to learn about the Holocaust in schools, colleges, workplaces and communities. To find out more, visit www.het.org.uk
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