I had a lovely dad. When I think of him, I picture his large moustache that curled up at the end and tickled us. He would often take my little sister Cherry and myself down to the beach. We lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a Jewish Geordie family. My mother was a dressmaker and ran an haute -couture business and worked 6 days a week. My father was a telephone operator and worked nights, so he often looked after us at half terms and schools holidays.

So, my memories are of sea, sand, sun and laughter. He was a lovely dad but the one shadow that came over him was when we asked, “What did you do in the war Daddy?” as many children did. He refused to answer and made it clear he wouldn’t talk about it. I was born only a few years after the end of World War 2. As a Jewish family the shadow of the Holocaust was very present.

Many years later when I had left home. I had been to college and was now working in a library. I had married Philip, who wasn’t Jewish. It wasn’t what my mother had planned for me. One day Philip and I went back to Newcastle to visit my parents. When back in our own home Philip said “I didn’t know your dad was at the liberation of Bergen Belsen Concentration camp?” Well to say it was a shock doesn’t touch it. My lovely dad had kept this as a secret, had protected us in some way from his experience. Later I talked with him about it. I got to understand how impossible to talk, to tell, to convey what he had seen. He was in the Royal Engineers who were first in to places to build bridges roads etc. No one knew what they were going into. None of us can imagine what it was like. But he was a British Jewish soldier, only in his early 20s and saw other Jews in such a place.

What courage to still love life, love his family and live a full and joyous life after all that. Thank you Daddy.