Concentration camp survivor to give lecture

Watch Holocaust survivor Martin Stern tell his story to ITV news

Dr Martin Stern will present the lecture at the University’s City Campus on Wednesday, 20 January 2010 at 5pm.

The University hosts a lecture each year to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27. This year, Dr Stern has been invited to Wolverhampton to talk about his experiences in a lecture entitled The Holocaust: Do we understand the lessons?

The organisers of the Holocaust Memorial Lecture are Professor Dieter Steinert, Professor of Modern European History and Migration Studies, and Dr Karin Dannehl, Research Fellow, both at the University.

Karin Dannehl said: “Martin Stern is a child survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. Testimony from those who suffered as children is also an opportunity for us to understand how the experience affected them later in life. There are child survivors of adult crimes the world over - the better we understand how they are affected, the better we can hope to help.”

Martin was born in the Netherlands in 1938 to a Jewish architect and his non-Jewish German wife. His father’s rights progressively vanished following the Nazi invasion until he had to go into hiding, eventually being captured in a gun battle and sent to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald concentration camp, where he died.

Martin was hidden by friends of his parents in Amsterdam near the Anne Frank House over almost the same period as Anne.

Arrested at school when he was five, Martin was sent with his one-year-old sister Erica to Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands and then to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. Martin and his sister survived, looked after by a resourceful Dutch woman who kept them in the women’s dormitories.

Martin eventually returned to the Netherlands after the war, and then lived in Manchester. He later studied Medicine at Oxford and became a Clinical Immunologist.

All tickets for the free lecture at the University’s City Campus have now been allocated. Pupils from local schools and members of the public will be attending the event.

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is the legacy of hope.

Further information

For media inquiries, contact Vickie Warren in the Media Relations Office on 01902 322736