Edith Birkin

Edith Birkin née Hofmann (born 13 November 1927)[1] is a Jewish artist, writer, and survivor of the Holocaust who lives in Britain.

Birkin was born in Prague in 1927; in 1941, aged 14, she was sent with her family to the Lodz ghetto in Poland.[2] Her parents died within their first year there. When the Lodz ghetto was liquidated in 1944 Birkin was sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz where she spent the rest of her time there working in an underground munitions factory.[3]

Birkin was liberated from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, having survived a death march to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. She returned to Prague at the end of the war to discover that none of her family had survived.[3]

It was really I think the worst time of the war. Although we were free and liberated, it was the very worst time because we realised, or I realised that nobody was going to come back, and that life is never going to be the same, and what I hoped for would happen after the war is never going to happen. The hope was gone. [2]

Birkin wrote down her experiences shortly after liberation and in 2001 they were published in the form of a novel Unshed Tears under her maiden name, Edith Hofmann.[4]

In 1946 Birkin moved to England, where she became a teacher and went on to adopt three children. In the 1970s she studied A-level History of Modern Art and went on to take a course in fine art.[4] She has painted a series of paintings[5] in response to her experiences, and also written a book of poems titled The Last Goodbye, also published as Edith Hofmann.[3] She describes her work as expressing the "sense of loneliness or isolation experienced by so many".[6] She has paintings in the collections of the Imperial War Museum, Birmingham Museums Trust and the Ben Uri Gallery.[5] Her work was included in the 1987 Anne Frank exhibition in Manchester.[7]

References

  1. ↑ https://prezi.com/7pul69akqkia/edith-birkin/
  2. 1 2 "Testimony of Edith Birkin". www.bl.uk. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  3. 1 2 3 ""The Last Goodbye" by Edith Birkin – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools". www.theholocaustexplained.org. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  4. 1 2 Hofmann, Edith (2012-02-11). The Last Goodbye. Memoirs Publishing. ISBN 9781908223883.
  5. 1 2 "Edith Birkin (b.1927) | Art UK". artuk.org. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
  6. ↑ "Artists Responses to the Holocaust". Imperial War Museum. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
  7. ↑ "Birkin, Edith: Liberation Day, 1987". NEN Gallery. Retrieved 2018-01-28.
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