A wedding dress worn by a Polish woman who married the British soldier who helped free her from a concentration camp in 1945 is set to go on permanent display at the Imperial War Museum.
Gena Turgel was hailed the ‘Bride of Belsen’ when she wed Norman Turgel, less than six months after he and his fellow troops liberated her from the Bergen-Belsen Nazi internment centre in northern Germany, where around 70,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, had perished.
Still recovering from starvation, Gena donned the cream gown fashioned out of a British Army parachute by a local tailor, which featured puff sleeves and a skirt adorned with gathered silk.
Today, on Holocaust Memorial Day, it emerged that the Imperial War Museum in London is putting the dress on permanent display for the first time this autumn, when its new £30million Holocaust Galleries opens to the public.
Gena Turgel was hailed the ‘Bride of Belsen’ when she wed Norman Turgel, less than six months after he and his fellow troops liberated her from the Bergen-Belsen Nazi internment centre. Pictured with the dress in 1995
Gena’s daughter Bernice said her mother ‘would be ecstatic’, adding: ‘When she was asked to have it at the museum, she thought it was unbelievable. She was incredibly proud that people would see it and realise that out of the horrors something wonderful happened.’
She told the Daily Telegraph the dress was ‘sacred’ while she was growing up and remained carefully wrapped in her parents’ wardrobe.
Gena, who comforted Anne Frank at Bergen-Belsen before the Dutch girl’s death just one month before the camp was liberated, died in June 2018, aged 95.
She dedicated her life to sharing the horrific experiences she endured during World War Two to ensure the atrocity was never forgotten.
Months before her death she attended Britain’s annual Holocaust remembrance service at London’s Hyde Park, where she announced: ‘My story is the story of one survivor, but it is also the story of 6 million who perished.
Gena donned the cream gown fashioned out of a British Army parachute by a local tailor, which featured puff sleeves and a skirt adorned with gathered silk, for her wedding to Norman Turgel
The dress is set to go on permanent display for the first time this autumn, when the Imperial War Museum London’s new £30million Holocaust Galleries opens to the public
‘Maybe that’s why I was spared – so my testimony would serve as a memorial like that candle that I light, for the men, women and children who have no voice.’
Born in Krakow, Poland as Gena Goldfinger on February 1, 1923, the youngest of nine children, Gena had to move with her family in 1941 to a Jewish ghetto with only a sack of potatoes, some flour and a few belongings.
One brother was shot by the Nazi SS police and another disappeared after trying to escape, according to the Holocaust Educational Trust in London.
A sister of hers was shot while trying to smuggle food into a labour camp. In January 1945, Gena and her mother were forced onto a death march from Auschwitz, leaving her remaining sister behind.
It was in a hospital at Bergen-Belsen, where the 22-year-old Gena arrived in February after talking her way into working as an un-trained nurse, that she cared for Anne Frank as the 15-year-old girl was dying from typhus.
Gena and Norman married in Lübeck in October 1945, at a synagogue that had survived because the Nazis used it as a stable. Pictured on their wedding day
‘I washed her face, gave her water to drink, and I can still see that face, her hair and how she looked,’ Gena once told the BBC.
Norma, then 24 and a Jewish sergeant in the British Intelligence Corps, invited Gena to a dinner in the officers’ mess days after they met, and called it their engagement party.
Bernice recalled: ‘She just said, “Of course it’s not”, and, well, she thought he was a bit mad.’
The couple married in Lübeck in October 1945, at a synagogue that had survived because the Nazis used it as a stable.
James Bulgin, content leader of Holocaust Galleries at Imperial War Museums, said the dress Gena wore is a powerful illustration of the small number of survivors who were ‘forced into this situation where they had nobody and nothing and had to rebuild new lives’.
Gena’s daughter Bernice said her mother ‘would be ecstatic’ that the dress is going on display permanently, adding: ‘When she was asked to have it at the museum, she thought it was unbelievable. She was incredibly proud that people would see it and realise that out of the horrors something wonderful happened.’ Pictured: Gena in 2004
‘One of the things we’re really keen to make people aware of in the new Holocaust Galleries is that this period is really important,’ he told the Telegraph.
‘Displaced persons camps had the highest birth rate in all of Europe at the time.’
The Imperial War Museum London will become the first museum in the word to present the Holocaust within the wider context of WWII this year, using modern display techniques.
Bulgin added that it will differ from traditional Holocaust exhibitions because it will be bathed in light.
‘There are good reasons for them to be in the dark, which is that it feels appropriate to the nature of the subject,’ he acknowledged. ‘But the problem is that it also tacitly suggests that the Holocaust is something that happened in the shadows… We wanted to be really clear with visitors about the fact that these things happened in our world.
The Queen left, meets Holocaust survivor Gena Turgel during a service to remember victims in Westminster Central Hall in London on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 2005
The Queen chats with Gena during a garden party at Buckingham Palace in May 2015
‘We need to accept the fact that this didn’t happen despite Western culture, it happened within it and because of it.’
Gena published a memoir, ‘I Light a Candle,’ in 1987 and kept retelling her story in schools across Britain until the end of her life.
She and Norman remained together until his death in 1995, just two months shy of their golden wedding anniversary.
Bernice said he openly declared himself ‘the luckiest man alive’ and always brought her mother breakfast in bed on a tray, even if he had to leave for work at 6am.
But Norman was long haunted by the ‘smell’ of the concentration camp and had to take sick leave due to the shock of seeing ‘massed piles of bodies’ – made worse by the fact he was a Jew himself.
It was Norman who captured notorious concentration camp guard Josef Kramer, dubbed the ‘Beast of Belsen’.
Meanwhile Gena was awarded an MBE and described as ‘the ultimate symbol of everything which is good and great in our world’ by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.
‘Gena dedicated her life to sharing her testimony to hundreds of thousands in schools across the country,’ said Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, after her death.
‘Her story was difficult to hear – and difficult for her to tell, but no one who heard her speak will ever forget.’
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he met Gena at the Hyde Park event in April 2018 and was ‘inspired by her lifelong commitment to educating people about the horrors of the Holocaust’.
‘Let us hope for a better future where anti-Semitism and all hatred should be demolished, shouldn’t be tolerated,’ Gena said at the time. ‘And I do beg you, don’t forget those who are less fortunate than yourselves.’
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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