'This must never be allowed to happen again': Holocaust survivor addresses Black Country church – with VIDEO
An Auschwitz survivor has urged people to learn lessons from the past in order to avoid the horrific persecution carried out by the Nazi regime.
Mindu Hornick, 88, addressed a crowd at a Black Country church ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day tomorrow.
Speaking at the event in The Crossing at St Pauls, in Walsall, she said: "Holocaust Memorial Day is designed as a day for everyone to remember the millions of people murdered under Nazi persecution during the Holocaust.
"We must challenge ourselves and use lessons from our shared experiences to look forward and shape our lives."
Mindu grew up in a small town outside Prague in Czechoslovakia with her family until her father was drafted to dig trenches for the German army in 1941.
A year later she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her mother, older sister and two younger brothers.
Mindu and her sister survived as they were sent to work in an ammunitions factory – but never saw their mother or brothers again.
In May 1945, the concentration camp's surviving women and girls were loaded on to a train to an unknown destination, accompanied by SS guards.
The train was accidentally bombed by the Allies – who did not realise prisoners were on board – but both Mindu and her sister survived.
Along with other survivors they were ordered by the merciless guards to walk to the port of Lübeck where their captors tried to load them into cattle trucks, claiming they were going to hand them over to the Red Cross.
Their real intention was to blow them up once they were all on board – but the group of prisoners refused to move until they were met by their liberators.
Mindu came to the UK in 1948 after the Russian invasion of Prague and now lives in Edgbaston.
When she first moved over she lived with her aunt and uncle who had also survived the war and made a new life for herself. She is now a grandmother and for over a decade has been talking about her Holocaust experiences to young people and adults.
Mindu added: "By the painful sharing of what happened to me and my family in those terrible years, we are reminding people that the unimaginable happened to us and that this should never be allowed to happen again.
"I feel it is my duty to express in my words, what we suffered there and to convey the message that it is wrong to stand by when others are being persecuted.”
Mindu returned to Auschwitz back in 2015 for a memorial service which provided 'some kind of closure'.
Fellow Holocaust survivor Henri Obstfeld was due to speak in Wolverhampton last night, with Eve Kugler talking in Dudley today before Mindu also gives a speech in Sandwell on Sunday.
