Eva Clarke
I was Born in Mauthausen Concentration Camp on 29th April 1945: Eva Clarke Tells her Mother’s Story
Summary
Eva Clarke was born in Mauthausen concentration camp the day before Hitler committed suicide. In this lecture, Eva shares her and her mother’s incredible and moving story.
Eva Clarke
Eva Clarke was born in the Mauthausen concentration camp, Austria, on April 29, 1945. If the camp’s gas chambers hadn’t been blown up the day before and the Americans hadn’t liberated Mauthausen just days after Eva’s birth, neither she nor her mother would have survived. The two were the only survivors of their family, 15 of whom were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eva and her mother eventually went to Prague, where Anna married Eva’s stepfather in February 1948. In the same year they emigrated to the UK and settled in Cardiff. Eva married an academic lawyer in 1968, has two sons, and has been living in Cambridge ever since.
Yes, amazingly so. I’ve only ever had tonsillitis, measles, and chickenpox. I was incredibly healthy and my mother could never understand it. I mean, the doctors, especially gynecologists, have said, “Yeah well, your daughter took her all her strength from you.”
Right, well, I have to tell you that I don’t come from an observant Jewish family. My parents were not observant, my grandparents were not observant. My maternal grandmother would go to the synagogue and the high holy days, but that was all. My maternal grandfather called himself a humanist. He wouldn’t have anything to do with any religion. So, I didn’t grow up in a, a religious household at all. We feel, my parents, my mother, and my stepfather and I, we feel culturally Jewish, but not in any religious way.
Yes. Yeah, my mother eventually had a pension from the Germans and also I did, up to the age of 21, I think it was. I did, yes.