Eva Clarke on Volunteering for the Prison project

Why would a Holocaust survivor volunteer to spend time recounting her family history to prisoners?

Eva Clarke gives her reasons

Having been born on a filthy coal truck on the way from a slave labour camp to Mauthausen concentration camp, Eva Clarke and her mother experienced one of the greatest atrocities in documented history. Why would she willingly go into places where people are held in cells, guarded behind barbed wire?

Eva gives four motives for her talk. The first is commemoration: to remember all the people who died or were killed, especially all those who never had anyone to remember them, because whole families were killed and communities lost.

The second is just to tell one survivor’s story, because every story is different and they are all unique. The scale of the Holocaust may be incomprehensible, but everybody can identify with one story.

The third reason is an attempt to enable us all as a human race to learn the lessons of the Holocaust. Eva believes we are not doing well here, with acts of genocide being committed in various parts of the world.

The last reason is to counteract racism. What happened to her family happened only because they were Jewish.

Eva has a story about the first time she spoke for the Anne Frank Prison Project. It was at Peterborough Women’s prison:

I told my story and at the end, one young woman said, “What’s that got to do with Anne Frank?” Everybody laughed, then I said, “You’re quite right.” But I have a link with the Anne Frank story; it’s very tenuous, but a link. Many years ago, a play about Anne Frank was put on in a theatre here and afterwards, the actor playing Otto Frank came to the front to say what had happened to everybody else in the Frank family. And it was on that occasion that I discovered that Peter van Pels, the boy that Anne Frank was friendly with, was in Auschwitz at the end of the war. He was on a death march from Auschwitz to Mauthausen. He died at Mauthausen at the end of April 1945, when I was born there. Life and death…I discovered that, so I said it to this woman in the audience. Now I tend to use that to make a link to the Anne Frank story.

Eva’s mother, Anka, was living in Prague when the Germans invaded and Eva was conceived in Terezin, a ghetto/ concentration camp, primarily used as a holding area for the death camps. Eva never knew her father, Bernd Nathan. He was shot in Auschwitz on 18th January 1945, the week before the camp was liberated by the Russian army.

There are two reasons we survived - the first is that on the 28th April 1945 the Germans blew up the gas chamber at Mauthausen - this they were doing everywhere to try to conceal the evidence. My birthday was the 29th. The second reason is that three days after my birth the American Army liberated the camp.

Eva’s mother is now in her 90’s. Both women know how lucky they are to have survived. Eva also knows how much of this is due to Anka’s resilience during and after the war.

Eva Clarke grew up in Cardiff, where she was educated in a Roman Catholic school. She lives with her husband in Cambridge, where they brought up their family. Eva began telling her story to history and religious education groups at the local college where she worked as an administrator.

What is unique to me is my story. Because I’m amongst the youngest among the survivors, I’ve said to the charities that I speak for that I’m very happy to travel anywhere, because most survivors are getting aged and frail.

Since retirement, Eva travels and tells her story on behalf of four charities, including the Anne Frank Trust (AFT). She has spoken to a wide variety of groups, from older children to prisoners, women’s groups and army officers. Her Mother has also spoken about her past for the AFT and other organisations in Cardiff, where she lives.

Prisoners hear a story from someone who has experienced prejudice, whose family has been in prison, which might help them identify with the fact tha others have gone through hellish things and they’ve come through it.

Eva began working with the AFT when the travelling exhibition came to Ely Cathedral. Soon she became involved in talking to children and other speaking work. She remembers her first experience of speaking in a prison:

On that first occasion, because it was a women’s prison, there were mothers with babies – I was taken round the baby unit. When I go into prisons, my first line is, well, I was born in prison. And they immediately look up and they think, what is she talking about? Usually, with a fairly large proportion of my audience, the story grips them, because everybody likes a story.

Some of the women prisoners have felt discriminated against, so they had a basis for understanding. They also responded to the fact Eva’s mother was imprisoned, asking questions about the birth and conditions in the camps.

I always get a very nice welcome. But I do find the most challenging groups are the young offenders. Their body language can be off-putting – they slouch and seem indifferent. But by the end of the story, most of them are sitting there with their eyes open, and they ask questions.

 Eva’s largest and often most demanding audiences are the students aged from 13-15. She has to work quite hard to catch them - more so in a prison, because they come to listen voluntarily because it’s something a bit different. But Eva hopes she is having a positive effect.

One of the things that surprised me, particularly in the women’s prisons, is that they all looked about 16.

Eva admits to having had the same preconceptions of prisoners as most people; shaped by television and the newspapers. So, being in the unusual position of discussing major issues with prisoners, she has been surprised by the difference between image and reality – men who may appear threatening have shown depth and thoughtfulness in conversation.

I tell them that we did come here legally; my Mother, my Step-father and I, but we might equally have come as refugees or asylum seekers. I say to them, “Racism starts in a very small way. But the logical, horrendous conclusion to racism is genocide.”

This article was written for The Prisoner's Education Trust website and was first published there:

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