In an emotional encounter, two 100-year-old Holocaust survivors met last week in London, retracing their harrowing journeys through life.
Germany-born Kindertransport survivor Walter Bingham, who holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for the world’s oldest working journalist, met Hungarian-born Auschwitz survivor Lily Ebert, also 100, at her London home last week on the heels of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27.
The Kindertransport was a British program in 1938–1939 that saved the lives of more than 10,000 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Europe.
“The past is gone. We mustn’t dwell on it,” the Jerusalem-based Bingham said. “But if you don’t know the past you can’t make the future any better.”
He noted that one major difference between the Nazis and the Hamas-led massacre of Oct. 7 in which some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed was that the Nazis tried to hide the systematic extermination of six million Jews, whereas the Islamist terrorist group openly filmed and distributed their murderous attack.
The centenarian journalist was visiting London to speak at the March of the Living UK premiere of the film “MOTL-Journey of Hope: Retracing the Kindertransport After 85 Years,” which tells the story of three child survivors of the Shoah.
“We have to live, every day, with the pain of what we went through,” said Ebert. “We share that understanding, and it is for that reason that meeting the inspirational Walter was so special.”
Scott Saunders, CEO of the International March of the Living, said: “Lily and Walter not only bring together 200 years of life but decades of Holocaust education that has ensured future generations will be witnesses to the atrocities of the Holocaust, too.”
