"She gave me birth twice; once when she bore me and then when she gave me freedom"
Eva (right) with her sisters Esther and Myriam, 1935
As she approached her 90th birthday, Holocaust survivor Eva Mendelsson decided it was time to share the precious gift that her mother Sylvia Cohn gave her for her 11th birthday, back in 1942 – a little exercise book filled with her own poetry. Sylvia was a gifted poet who bore witness in her verse to the good times, and the increasingly more terrible times, she was living through. The poems she sent to Eva and her sister Myriam in the Jewish children’s home in France, came directly from the internment camp where she was imprisoned and were only a portion of her prolific writings. Sylvia did not survive, but after the war, Eva and Myriam were able to join their father Eduard in England. This touching and gripping story was broadcast on the BBC World Service in March – The Birthday Gift that Survived the Holocaust – and is available to stream online for over a year.
Now, at last, Eva has been able to get her mother’s poetry translated into English to share with the world. JR's arts editor Judi Herman spoke to her, along with her son Jonny, to discover more about Sylvia’s life and legacy, Eva’s life after the war, and insights into what it's like to be a survivor and the child of a survivor.
Sylvia’s poems are read by Rabbi Lea Mühlstein and translated by Marion Godfrey. Hashiveinu is sung by Ruth Colin and Jo Rose at The Ark Synagogue, Northwood & Pinner.