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Edith Birkin (nee Hofmann)
'I evolved a pictorial language, that enabled me to put my visions on canvas. It wasn't so much cruelty or physical suffering that I wanted to record. Most of all, I wanted to show what it felt like to be a human being in the starved, emaciated, strange looking body, forever being separated from loved ones.'
The Death Cart – Lodz Ghetto, 1980-1982
acrylic, Imperial War Museum
A Camp of Twins – Auschwitz, 1980-1982
acrylic, Imperial War Museum
The Last Gasp – Gas Chamber, 1980-1982
acrylic, Imperial War Museum
Edith Birkin (née Hofmann), born 13 November 1927 in Prague, was sent with her family to the Lodz ghetto, Nazi-occupied Poland, in 1941.
Her parents died in the ghetto within a year, and Edith was left on her own. With the Russian advance into Poland in 1944, the Lodz ghetto was liquidated and the remaining population sent to Auschwitz. On arrival there, Edith was selected for slave labour and sent to a camp in eastern Germany, where she worked in an underground munitions factory.
In January 1945, with the Russians now advancing into Germany, the slave labourers were sent on a death march across Germany to Bavaria, where they were loaded onto cattle trucks. After a week in crowded conditions, Edith arrived in Belsen on 15 March 1945 and was liberated a month later.
Edith returned to Prague only to find that none of her family and friends had survived. In 1946, she settled in England and became a teacher.
Immediately after her return to Prague, Edith had recorded what she had experienced and witnessed. After moving to England, she used this material to write a book but could not find a publisher, as there was no interest in her story directly after the war.
