“When you listen to a witness, you become a witness” Elie Wiesel
My Voice’s mission is to record the actual words spoken by survivors and Holocaust refugees. From these they produce individual books voicing the survivors’ experiences in their own words – before, during and after the war years. The books give honour to their lives and enable their stories to be passed on to their loved ones and future generations. At the same time, they provide present day survivors of genocide and conflict with the possibility of believing in a brighter future. They are used in holocaust education, from Yad Vashem to schools in the UK. In 2021, My Voice was awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service – the highest possible accolade for a voluntary sector group.
I (Aliza) have been privileged to be part of the My Voice project this year, working as a volunteer editor on their incredible books, and have seen how important the project is for the survivors, their families, and the general public. While most stories we hear from survivors focus on their time during and immediately around the war, these books are unique in that they trace the person’s whole life, from birth to the present day. What emerges is a much fuller picture of the ongoing effects of the trauma that they experienced, including into the next generations, but also of resilience and optimism and of lives rebuilt and lived to the full.
The project has published six whole life stories of Windermere Children who arrived in the UK in 1945, along with 300 survivors of Theresienstadt. On the 80th anniversary of their liberation, My Voice is holding a fundraising trek in their footsteps, walking from Carlisle Airport – where they landed – to the Calgarth Estate on the shores of Lake Windermere where they began their rehabilitation and learnt to live again.
We (sisters) will be taking part in the 5Okm trek – hiked over two days – and would be so grateful if you would sponsor us to raise money for this wonderful project. All money raised will be used to support the My Voice project and its crucial work, which is now more important than ever.