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They survived unspeakable brutality and unimaginable loss and trauma - but the men and women in this collection of photographs are far more than the sum of those parts. They are mothers, fathers, grandparents and professionals. And despite the Nazis’ attempts to murder them, they survived.
Ike Alterman, Anne Super, Ruth and Werner Lachs and Marianne Philipps are all Holocaust survivors. Each of them now feature in a new photography exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, which will open on Holocaust Memorial Day this Friday.
Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors is a collection of 60 original portraits of survivors and their families taken by members and fellows of The Royal Photographic Society. The exhibition also features intimate portraits of survivors Steven Frank BEM and Yvonne Bernstein, taken by The Princess of Wales specially for the exhibition.
The exhibition first ran in London and will now be on display in Salford with four new photographs taken by RPS president, Simon Hill.
He hopes the images will ensure these personal stories are never forgotten and allow ‘subsequent generations to celebrate their incredible perseverance in the face of unimaginable horror and suffering’.
Among the people featured is Itzick ‘Ike’ Alterman - who last year told the Manchester Evening News about how he survived four concentration camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau and a death march. His father died in the Buna work camp while his mother, 14-year-old sister and nine-year-old brother were transported to Treblinka in 1942 and murdered.
After the war, Ike came to England as one of ‘The Windermere Children’ and began to slowly rebuild his life. He found stability and happiness with his wife and children and oversaw the creation of a thriving jewellery business in Manchester, eventually carving out a life for himself which defied his oppressors.
“We started to prove in some ways that I beat Hitler and his cronies. I was fortunate enough to survive and start a family. Good things come after hell,” he said previously.
Ike is pictured with his daughters Elaine and Fione and granddaughter Danni in a square in Bury, resonating with the square in Poland where he was separated from his family.
Werner and Ruth Lachs BEM are pictured here with their hanukkiah and three of their great-grandchildren Amaya, Dana and Joshua.
Werner was born in Germany and fled to England in 1939 with the help of British Secret Intelligence Service Officer Frank Foley. Ruth was born in Hamburg and survived the war by being hidden in several locations, including a sand pit overnight in Holland. She was helped by the ‘Underground Workers’ group. The couple married in 1962 and have three children, nine grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.
Marianne Philipps also features in the exhibition, photographed with her two children Frank and Miriam and two of her grandchildren, Samuel and Naomi. She is seen holding the family chronicle on the Hirsch family history, written by her father Martin. He was murdered in Auschwitz along with her younger brother.
Marianne was a teenager when she travelled alone on the Kindertransport to England in August 1939. After the war, the family chronicle was recovered from Berlin, where it had been left when Martin was deported in 1943.
Marianne has two children with her husband Harry, who also travelled to England on the Kindertransport in 1939. Marianne carved out a life as a dressmaker, owning her own business. She has always loved needlework, like her mother, and her grandson can be seen in this image holding one of her tapestries.
Anne Super was born in Warsaw in 1938 and when the Germans marched her family from their home in 1941, her mother pushed her through a hedge into the arms of a waiting milk woman, who saved her life.
Anne never saw her parents again and spent the war years as a hidden child. She is pictured here with her son, Jon, and grandchildren Monty and Elana, sitting among the greenery of her conservatory - which resonates with the hedge she was pushed into by her mother.
Anne later emigrated to South Africa and became an optometrist. She married Maurice, had three children and moved to Manchester.
James Bulgin, content leader of IWM’s Holocaust Galleries, says the remarkable images are ‘a powerful and important reminder that despite the catastrophic destruction of the Holocaust, Hitler’s intention to destroy all Jewish life and culture across Europe was ultimately unsuccessful’.
The exhibition is presented in partnership with Jewish social care charity The Fed - which also runs the My Voice project, documenting the life stories of Holocaust Survivors and refugees living in Greater Manchester in their own voices.
Generations: Portraits of Holocaust Survivors is a free exhibition opening at IWM North on January 27 until the summer.
A third term
Andy Burnham says he will run for a third term as mayor of Greater Manchester - but he’s not ruling out a Labour leadership bid.
The Labour mayor captured national attention during the pandemic as the region battled strict lockdown restrictions and won praise from many for bus franchising plans. But he also felt the wrath of some residents last year amid a row over the Clean Air Zone.
Nevertheless, Mr Burnham has now confirmed his intention to run for the job again in 2024 in an interview with his former Labour MP colleague Gloria De Piero.
"I think what we are building in Manchester is a big part of the answer to make British politics work better. And that is putting more power in the hands of a place like Greater Manchester. You give a place like this more power and it’s unbelievable what it can do with it. So I’m not walking away from that, I’m going to be standing for a third term," he said.
“What the future holds beyond that, I honestly don’t know. I have said I wouldn’t rule out going back at some point, but to make it clear, I would like to see Keir Starmer as the next Prime Minister of this country. I hope there will be a Labour government that really does get power out of Westminster.
"But later down the line, after all of that has happened, I'm not going to say that I'm going to rule that out. I mean having been in Westminster all of those years, and now having done this for almost six years, I feel I know a lot of the changes this country needs.”
'Every week there's something'
Traders in the city centre say they are worried about a ‘bad’ junction.
There have been 20 collisions at the crossroads where Trinity Way and Blackfriars Road meet, in Salford, from the start of 2017 to mid-2022. Of those, two were fatal, and six were classed as ‘serious’ by police.
The other 12 recorded by Greater Manchester Police were seen as ‘slight’, but as Ethan Davies reports, it’s thought many more have gone unreported.
“A car came through and did quite a lot of damage, I think there was a fatality there,” Simon Yardley, manager of the Black Friar pub told Ethan. “Another hit the building not long after.
“You can see the railings now - every part of the junction has been hit. The railings outside were affected in November after a two car crash. Every week there’s something.”
Salford Council says improvements have been made to the junction to prevent accidents happening again.
Close to death
Ambulance staff are on strike for a second day with around 2,000 North West Ambulance Service staff thought to be taking part.
Maisie Lawton has been speaking to NWAS staff on the picket line outside Manchester Central Ambulance Station, on Plymouth Grove.
Among them was Georgia Ward, a recently qualified Medical Technician, who had to wait an excruciating 12 hours with a patient who she said was ‘close to death’ by the time she was seen by a doctor.
"She needed intervention before we got to the hospital, but by the time she was seen to by a doctor, she was in an extremely critical condition. It took 12 hours to get her the medical attention she needed. She almost died.
"If the public were able to see what we do in a day, they would see how necessary the strike is. You have to walk a mile in our shoes everyday to see the necessity of the strikes."
You can read the full piece here.
The fakest side of Manchester
Each week Ethan Davies heads out to speak to people who work in the city centre about their thoughts and views on Manchester.
This week he spoke to Jacob Thompson, who works at the historic John Rylands Library.
He says the Northern Quarter is ‘the fakest side of Manchester’ and he would take visitors to the pub to show them the real side of the city.
“I’d do a cut-through on the canals. You get to go through the Village, which is nice, and you get to go through Deansgate and Castlefield,” he says. “It’s somewhere which has been disconnected a bit from the city centre before, but with Spinningfields and Deansgate getting pedestrianised, Castlefield is getting more and more joined up.”
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Weather etc
- Wednesday: Overcast changing to light rain by lunchtime. 9C.
- Road closures: One lane of the Mancunian Way closed due to roadworks eastbound from A6 London Road to Hoyle Street until January 26.
- M56 Eastbound exit slip road to the A34 closed due to roadworks at A34 Kingsway until 7am on February 5.
- One lane closed due to carriageway repairs on M56 in both directions between J7 A556 Chester Road (Bowdon) and J5 (Manchester Airport) until 6am on February 18.
- Trivia question: What is the name of the neo-Gothic Victorian building which sits close to Manchester Magistrates' Court, off Deansgate?
Manchester headlines
Deterioration: The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has told Avanti West Coast - which runs services between Manchester and London - to improve its timetable release for passengers after a recent 'deterioration'. The regulator said for several weekends in January, passengers have only been able to book tickets at a few days' notice. It added Avanti's plans for February paint a better picture for weekday travel, but 'still fall short of industry norms and your customers' needs for weekend journeys'. Passengers attempting to access timetable information and book tickets have 'faced frustrating and enduring problems in recent months', the regulator went on, saying the position in terms of Avanti 'has deteriorated in 2023'. As a result, the ORR has written to Avanti calling for significant improvements to its recovery plan for releasing timetables to passengers ahead of travel. More here.
Extended: Police have extended stop-and-search powers in Levenshulme as a teenager fights for his life in hospital following a stabbing. The 19-year-old remains in a critical condition after being 'stabbed in the neck' outside a shop on Stockport Road on Sunday night. Police have been granted a 24 hour section 60 order - running until noon on Tuesday - allowing officers to stop-and-search people in designated areas. Today, Greater Manchester Police said the order had been extended for a further 12 hours meaning it remain in place until midnight. A 20-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. A woman, also 20, was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.
Relief: Furious business owners say they haven't seen a penny from the government's Energy Bill Relief Scheme and it hasn't been made clear how the system is supposed to work, since it was announced last September. It’s being claimed that the government has either ‘withheld’ the promised assistance, or that the energy companies have failed to implement what should have been automatic discounts to bills, amid rocketing energy prices - the latest strain on our local businesses. Bosses at Capuchin Coffee, in Altrincham, Heaton Hops and Common all say they have not yet seen any money or discount details were unclear. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy did not comment. More here.
- Strike: Around 2,000 North West Ambulance Service staff are thought to have walked out in another day of strike action today. GMB union members, including paramedics, emergency care assistants and call handlers, began their 24-hour walkout just after midnight. A bitter dispute over pay shows no sign of being resolved, with Rishi Sunak insisting pay rises would come from 'elsewhere in the NHS budget'.
Worth a read
Becky Colley was born and raised in Oldham, but moved to the capital after university.
But when the pandemic hit, she moved home on a whim and ended up staying. "I ended up having a really nice time and it just planted a seed about potentially moving back up north,” she said. “When I was in London I’d always miss Manchester so I was never against coming home, and it just felt like the right time."
Her £49,000 deposit wouldn’t have gone far in London, but in Manchester she was able to buy a a two-bed duplex loft apartment in a Grade II listed 1800s building near the Gay Village.
Becky has been speaking to Phoebe Jobling about her dream home here in Manchester.
That's all for today
Thanks for joining me. If you have stories you would like us to look into, email beth.abbit@menmedia.co.uk.
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The answer to today's trivia question is: John Rylands Library.
