The Good Morning Britain studio took a very emotional turn on Thursday morning, as presenters Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard interviewed a survivor of the Holocaust.
98-year-old Lily Ebert appeared on the ITV programme alongside her 18-year-old great-grandson Dov to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
Lily arrived at Auschwitz in 1944, aged 20, alongside her mother and five siblings, but she was the only one who survived the concentration camp.
During her appearance on the ITV morning show, the conversation turned to the prisoner number A-10572 that was tattooed onto her left forearm upon arrival at the camp.
Co-host Kate asked Lily whether she had ever considered having the tattoo removed, but Lilly replied saying she has not.
She said: “I want to show it, because to see it makes a big difference and the world should know how deep humans can go.
“The fellow humans give a tattoo - so you are not a human, you are a tattoo, a number. Nothing more or less. Another human can take away my humanity.”
Dov said it was only when a friend of his asked Lily if he could see her tattoo from the camp that he began to realise the significance of her experience during the Holocaust.
Ben asked Lily whether this was something she remembered happening, which she said it was, adding: “Up to then I’d thought nothing about it.
“Then I saw what it means for humans to give tattoos - they put a number on animals.”
Dov decided to set up a TikTok for Lily and she now has more than 1.6 million followers, with clips on subjects such as “questions a Holocaust survivor gets asked the whole time”.
Dov said on Good Morning Britain: “It was my mission to sit alongside her and share her story with the world and ever since two years ago when we’ve been working together, we’ve been able to educate millions of people across the world.
“Holocaust Memorial Day is one day. One day in the future there won’t be survivors amongst us and it will be our responsibility to ensure that the Nazi’s crimes against humanity are never forgotten.”
Lily also told hosts Kate and Ben about meeting Prince Charles and showing him her Auschwitz tattoo at a ceremony at the Queen’s Gallery in London to commemorate National Holocaust Memorial Day.
Lily is a mother-of-three, grandmother of 10 and great grandmother of 34 - and has written her story in a book co-authored with Dov entitled Lily’s Promise.
In December, for her 98th birthday, she received more than 2,500 birthday cards from well-wishers around the world inspired by her story.
