Annick Lever BEM was born in 1943 in Nazi-occupied France to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father. A few months later, Annick and members of her extended family, with the exception of her father, were incarcerated awaiting deportation. Annick and her infant cousin were smuggled out of prison by her father, a member of the Resistance. The rest of her family perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Following the end of WW2, Annick was raised Catholic in the South-West of France. In her late teens, she met her mother’s surviving sister and learnt of her Jewish heritage and the fate of her family.
Annick now lives in the UK, where she met her husband and has 2 children, and 5 grandchildren.