As part of the events held to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 on the 27th January 2024 American-based Holocaust survivor Ben Midler has travelled to London between the Friday 26th January to Saturday 3rd February 2024 to do educational talks at schools and colleges and a book signing of his memoirs-autobiography, to be held at The Landsby in Stanmore, London.
Ben Midler is one of the few Holocaust survivors from the Nazi concentration camps who is still able to actively visit and do talks to school children and college students.
Ben Midler, 96, was born on the 27th June 1928 in Bialystok, Poland. When Ben was just 12 years old, his family life was irreparably destroyed in 1940 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and Ben and his family were held in the infamous Bialystok ghetto. It was the start of an ordeal where he ended up being the only person from his family in Poland at the start of World War Two to survive.
The Holocaust was the genocide of Jewish people in Europe during World War Two by Nazi Germany. Some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe were systematically murdered in the Nazi concentration camps, alongside the killing of an additional five million others, also held in the death camps, who included Russian and Ukrainian prisoners of war, Romany people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and physically/mentally disabled people.
From 1943 Ben and his family were transferred to the Nazi concentration camps, where the rest of his then family perished. Between the ages of 15 to 17 he was imprisoned in six Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Maidanak and Treblinka,
At Auschwitz-Birkenau his arm was tattooed with a concentration camp inmate number and he narrowly avoided being selected for either death or medical experiments by the infamous Nazi-doctor Dr Josef Menegle, nicknamed the “Angel of Death”. By standing on his toes to look taller and older he was instead allocated to harsh slave labour and was held in the camps until he was liberated by the Russians in 1945.
Since the 1970s Ben has dedicated his life to educating future generations about the Holocaust. In 1990 he wrote a book ‘The Life of a Child Survivor’ about his experiences and survival in the Nazi concentration camps.
Ben Midler says: “I believe it is my duty to speak up and educate people about the Holocaust. Yesterday is gone, everyone should always live for the future, and what is so important is that there is tolerance, love, understanding and mutual respect between people of different countries, religion and races.”
Ben is remarkable in that he is incredibly positive, humanistic, with a philosophy on life that is both dealing with reality and hopeful. He has been interviewed by the Reagan Presidential Library and CBS News in the US.
In the last few years he has also been honoured with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin at the 80th anniversary of the Bialystok ghetto uprising as the last surviving person from his city which had 250,000 Jews before 1939. He has also been a speaker at the 2021 San Diego Comic-Con as a real-life hero, and he is an unpaid motivational speaker for the US Army. Ben speaks at 30-40 schools a year, talking about his experience in the concentration camps, his message is universal, positive, life-affirming, and personal.
In the UK Ben Midler is speaking at Brighton College on the 1st Feb, at 8:30am at St Paul’s School on the 2nd Feb and at 10am at The Landsby in London’s Stanmore on Tuesday 30th January. At The Landsby, a retirement community by Elysian Residences, Ben will also be doing a book signing of his ‘The Life of a Child Survivor’ memoirs-autobiography.
The event and book signing at The Landsby on Merrion Avenue is special for personal reasons. Ben Midler’s grandson is Gavin Stein, the Founder and CEO of retirement village developer-operator Elysian Residences. It was Ben’s life and times that inspired Gavin in his core vision for Elysian Residences that the retirement communities Elysian created were a way of repaying older generations for their sacrifices, which have enabled those younger to live a comfortable life.
Elysian’s mission to deliver the most engaging, active, fantastic and comfortable lifestyle for homeowners who live at an Elysian community. This is the very first time that the details behind Gavin’s inspiration and his grandfather Ben’s extraordinary and moving life of hardship, courage, hope and positivity has been relayed.
