Victor Selmeczi, my great-grandfather

75 years ago today the Allies liberated Auschwitz. We have all seen the pictures and films of that place. We all know the facts and figures, and the atrocities that were carried out there. It stands as an eternal symbol of where hate and bigotry can lead us.

I wanted to commemorate my great-grandfather today, who was murdered in the Holocaust because he was Jewish. Sadly, survivors of the camps are mostly gone now, and I think it’s important to remember the victims on this day, to say their names, and to remember they lived.

Victor Selmeczi was born on 9th October 1888 in Budapest to Leopold and Fanny. As a young man he moved to Vienna where he married Hedy and they had two little girls, Gertrude (my granny) and Elly. The family was wealthy, and so when Hitler invaded in 1938 Victor was able to send his daughters to safety in Florence while he and Hedy figured out a plan of action. My granny and her sister were accepted on a refugee programme to the UK (imagine such a thing today. Tears) that took on young Jewish girls to be domestic servants, but for some unknown reason their parents weren’t able to join them in Britain and fled to France. On Victor’s entry in the Yad Vashem database (pictured above), it states he was resident in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, Paris, and Nice during the war. I can only assume that when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, he and Hedy fled south and took up residence in the unoccupied “free zone”.

Years ago, before my granny died, I found a letter to her from her dad dated early 1943. In it he promises to send her money for a new dress, he tells her he and her mother are doing all they can to reach the girls in the UK, and he lets her know how proud he is of her. It’s heartbreaking.

Tragically Victor would never see his daughters again. All we know is that he and Hedy were rounded up at some point in 1943. My cousin tells a story that as they were both being loaded onto the trucks to be taken away, Hedy was able to convince the soldiers she was actually French and thus escape capture. I don’t know if it’s true, but either way she did manage to get away, and after the war she settled in the US with Elly.

Victor was not so lucky. The trail goes cold after his letter to my granny. I’ve done lots of digging and from what I can gather, it seems likely he was held prisoner at Gurs internment camp in southwestern France, before being deported to Drancy (another internment camp in Paris), and then onwards to Auschwitz. This seems to have been the fate of most of the Jews captured in southern France.

My granny never spoke to me of her father. I did try and speak to her about him a couple of times, but she was always evasive, and it was clear the topic was too painful for her to discuss.

Since the Holocaust, the cry has been “never again.” And yet it has happened again. In Rwanda, in Srebrenica, in Myanmar, and God only knows what’s happening with the Uighurs in China right now. Even after the horrific lessons of the Holocaust, we are still struggling to realise that we are all part of one indivisible entity, and that slaughtering each other over race or religion is tantamount to hacking away chunks of our own soul. We all forfeit a piece of our humanity every time we allow another genocide to take place.

Victor Selmeczi was my great-grandfather. He was murdered by the Nazis. I’m thankful he lived. I’m thankful he fought for his family to survive. I’m thankful he helped raise the fearless, intelligent, passionate, hilarious, loving woman I knew as my granny.

I’m thankful that I am the beneficiary of the EU, an organisation set up expressly to ensure something like the Holocaust could never again happen in Europe. I’m thankful for the fact that I am now able to live openly and freely in the capital city of the country which once sought Victor’s death and the deaths of so many others like him. I am living testament to the fact that we are stronger together, and with just a few days to go until we leave the EU, it is more important than ever that we remember where division and hatred can lead.

I wish I could have met Victor, but I like to think that he and his little Gerda are together now watching over me and enjoying each other’s company after being apart for so long.

In memory of all the victims of National Socialism.