The motto of the Women’s Institute (WI) is “inspiring women”; few women are more inspirational than Eva Clarke, and her mother, Anka Nathanova, who both survived the hell on earth that was the Nazi concentration camps.
Born on a cart at the Mauthausen death camp
Now aged 80, Eva Clarke, BEM, held the October meeting of Freshwater Bay WI in the palm of her hand, explaining how she was born on a cart at the Mauthausen death camp in Austria, shortly after her mother arrived there, nine months pregnant and weighing just 5st.
Anka Nathanova, a Czech, had just endured 17 days packed into a filthy, crowded coal rail truck, no food, just occasional water to arrive at Mauthausen from a slave labour camp at Freiberg, near Dresden, where she had been put to work making Doodlebugs.
Before that she and her German architect husband, Bernd, had been at Auschwitz in Poland. She later discovered he had been shot, without ever learning she was pregnant. Their earlier baby, born at the Theresienstadt ghetto and concentration camp in 1943, died of pneumonia, aged two months, although his mother had been forced to sign a document saying he would be euthanised.
Horror-struck by Eva’s story
Members listened horror-struck as Eva Clarke told how her parents, and other Jews, had been affected by the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935. These laws gradually stripped all Jews of their citizenship, right to vote, to marry other religions, imposed a curfew, excluded them from professions and expelled their children from school.
It happened gradually, so when they were ordered to report to warehouses with a suitcase and cooking utensils, they were unaware of the nightmare that awaited them in concentration or death camps all over Nazi-occupied Europe.
Concentration camps
Eva Clarke’s parents were first sent to Theresienstadt, near Prague, then to Auschwitz where the infamous Dr Josef Mengele conducted his experiments.
At Theresienstadt, Anka had helped distribute food supplies through the camp, occasionally stealing the odd potato or carrot which would be boiled secretly to make a weak soup for up to 15 members of her family there.
Pregnancies kept secret
Both her pregnancies were kept secret as the penalty for both Anka and her husband would have been death.
The couple were young and strong, and so were spared the gas chambers that were the fate of so many fellow prisoners.
Strength and indomitable spirit shone throug
Amidst all the horrors, Anka’s strength and indomitable spirit shone through. She and her newborn daughter were probably saved by the fact that the Mauthausen gas chambers had been shut only a day before they arrived, and that the camp was liberated by the Allies within a week.
A fellow prisoner, a doctor , cut the umbilical cord and slapped the baby until she breathed.
“Born Survivors”
Eva Clarke’s emotional testimony moved her audience, and her talk was followed by rapturous applause. A prize-winning book about three mothers and babies who survived the concentration camps, including Eva and her mother, “Born Survivors” has been written by the well-known novelist, Wendy Holden.
FBWI president, Lisa, presented Eva Clarke with flowers. She said,
“We were delighted to welcome Eva Clarke, and she just made such a lasting impression.”
Holocaust educator
Eva Clarke is a speaker for the Holocaust Educational Trust, and was awarded the British Empire Medal for “services to Holocaust education.”
The talk , and follow-up questions, were enjoyed by more than 40 members of FBWI, IW Federation chairman, Sue Biss, plus five visitors.
News shared by Janice on behalf of Freshwater Bay WI. Ed
