Bernice Kennet: It fitted her like a glove so it was obviously a seamstress or somebody I think that she knew. I think there were some flowers on it but also made her out of the silk. There's nothing other than silk.

Tim Cole: Our guest today is Bernice Kenneth who is the daughter of a Polish Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. Her mum's story involves liberation at Bergen-Belsen and at the heart of it an object that's poignant and beautiful.

Bernice Kennet: She carried it back with her when she came here. I think out of the atrocities of the camps and out of World War II was a statement in a way that was I've survived.

Tim Cole: I'm Tim Cole

Louisa Clein: And I'm Louisa Clein. From the Holocaust Educational Trust this is Objects of the Holocaust.

Tim Cole: A podcast which explores the Holocaust through a single object to tell wider stories of family, loss and survival.

Tim Cole: Thanks so much for joining us, Bernice, and also bringing along your son, Josh. Hi Josh.

Josh Kennet: Thanks for having me. Hi!

Tim Cole: Bernice maybe you could start off by telling us a bit about the object that you've brought a photograph of, a really beautiful photograph of an extraordinary object. Could you describe it to us a little bit?

Bernice Kennet: The object is a cream colour, it's something you would wear. It's in the Imperial War Museum, it's been there for a number of years.

Louisa Clein: And the material it's white, it's silk and it's luxurious.

Bernice Kennet: Yes and it's not what you would expect out of the evils or the horrors of the concentration camps it's not something that you would expect to happen.

Louisa Clein: I'm looking at a photograph of it because as you say the original is in the Imperial War Museum but I can feel it, I can sense the weight of it, the heaviness, the softness and the delicacy of it.

Bernice Kennet: Exactly. As you say if you feel it you're surprised in a way because you don't expect it to be that delicate you would think of it more hard wearing.

Louisa Clein: When you were growing up was it in your house?

Bernice Kennet: Yes, it was in a wardrobe and when we came across it. It was, we thought, 'Ah, we can dress up in this.' And my mother said, 'No, it's not something to dress up in.'

Louisa Clein: So it was always treated with a sense of reverence and…

Bernice Kennet: Yes, because it was something special.

Tim Cole: So this is a dress that belonged to your mum, Bernice. Could you tell us a bit about your mum — where she's born, when she's born, a little bit about her family, about your grandparents — who I don't know if you ever met or not?

Bernice Kennet: My grandmother. I met my grandmother. My mother was born first of February 1923 to a large family. There were nine children. My grandmother owned a textile mill.

Tim Cole: And where's this, is this in Kraków in Poland? Is that right? She's born in Poland?

Bernice Kennet: Yes.

Louisa Clein: So were they brought up in quite a Jewish community?

Bernice Kennet: Mixed! Mixed. They weren't in a specific… I don't think any of the Jews were in a specific area as such. You know, everybody integrated with everybody else. Your friends were people you went to school with. They weren't, didn't matter what religion they were, what colour they were, what they believed in. They were people.

Tim Cole: And could you describe your grandmother to us? Like give us a little sense of what she was like as a person?

Bernice Kennet: My grandmother was strong. She had to be strong, because my grandfather — who I didn't know at all — was in the Austrian-Prussian army and came back from the First World War and came back with war injuries. And so she actually brought up all the children.

Tim Cole: So they're still living in Kraków in southern Poland at this point when the war breaks out?

Bernice Kennet: Yeah, 1939.

Tim Cole: And Kraków is a city that's occupied by the Germans, you know, as Poland is in this period. And I think what's interesting about Kraków is that the Germans essentially — they do this in Warsaw — they kind of carve it up into a German city, a Polish city, in a Jewish city. So they essentially move all the Jews out of the Jewish quarter across the river into an old working-class neighbourhood and create a ghetto. Then they put the poles in the former Jewish quarter and then the best housing remains for the Germans as they kind of remake Kraków.

Bernice Kennet: Exactly.

Tim Cole: So does your mum end up in the Kraków ghetto?

Bernice Kennet: Yes, she did. She did.

Tim Cole: Did she describe the ghetto at all to you? Did she ever tell stories about that period?

Bernice Kennet: What she said was, you know, food was limited. You were told that you can't go out after dark - if you did, you had to wear a star. But of course trying to get out was the main thing. If you could get out, you tried. If you had papers, you tried.

Louisa Clein: So she was teenage or at this point?

Bernice Kennet: Yes. Yes, she was about 16.

Tim Cole: So she's a 16-year-old girl living in the ghetto with some of her family, so she's with her mum?

Bernice Kennet: She had mum, her sisters.

Tim Cole: And what she's doing most of the time in the ghetto? Is she working? Because I know one of the things about Kraków is that they have a lot of factories. I mean, if people have watched Schindler's List, then in a sense we know from Schindler's List that there's a lot of Jewish labour and this seems to be the German policy in Kraków because they put Jews into forced labour. Is that part of her experience in Kraków?

Bernice Kennet: Yes. She had to work in a uniform shop — not a shop, a factory.

Tim Cole: So she's making German uniforms?

Bernice Kennet: Yes.

Louisa Clein: So interesting already we can see that there is this through line of textiles. That you say that your family were working in the textile industry before the war. She's currently working in a uniform factory in Kraków.

Bernice Kennet: Exactly. Some of the uniforms were old and you're picking sort of bits off and I think she mentioned that there were lots of lice and so you got bitten and when you wanted to come out of there, you know, all you wanted to do was to wash because you just felt totally unclean.

Tim Cole: And is that in the ghetto? Is the factory inside the ghetto?

Bernice Kennet: Yes.

Tim Cole: Because I think there's a few, aren't there? There's Optima factory, it's one of the ones in the ghetto. There's a couple of big factories that are set up actually within the ghetto, that you kind of walked from your ghetto house into the factory. You don't leave that. I guess that's probably your mum's experience at this time as well, as those women whose whole life is within these walls.

Bernice Kennet: Yes. And if you try to get out — which she did — invariably just to try and get some more food because you had your ration books. Because she was blond, she was fortunate in that respect. So she didn't get stopped. And she used to carry her coats on her sleeve which would hide the star of David on her arm.

Louisa Clein: So how easy was it to escape from the ghettos? Escape or at least for a moment?

Tim Cole: In a sense I think like Bernice said, you kind of have to if you're going to eat. Because I think one of the things that the Nazis do is that they enforce these kind of starvation rations upon the ghettos. You essentially have three ration levels: the Germans get as much food as they want. The Poles get less, and then the Jews get next to nothing so certainly not enough to live. And so if you're working, you know as your mum is doing, the only way you can survive is really either by buying smuggled food or becoming a smuggler yourself.

Bernice Kennet: Yes. That was the other thing, you know if you had money then you could buy the food. Sometimes, not always. And then she would always return with food for everybody.

Tim Cole: So your mum's in the ghetto, this six year old girl, she's in the ghetto, she's working in this factory with German uniforms. And then in 1942 it feels like there's a kind of shift in Nazi policy in '41 into '42. I mean this is the kind of the big moment of change. I think if you think about 1941, at that point the German policy for Polish Jews is very much about forced labour. But it becomes much more deadly in '42 and so you get a series of deportations from the Kraków ghetto in 1942.

There's one big round up in March, I think it is '42 to Belzec and then there's another round up. But they are also shifting people around. And I think that's the moment when your mum heads the few miles down the road to this newly created concentration camp or forced labour camp of Płaszów. Can you tell us a bit about that moment in her life? How she described that camp again, if you've watched Schindler's List it's a camp we're very familiar with where Amon Göth is the commandant, it's a very brutal place.

What were her recollections or memories of that place?

Bernice Kennet: There you're guarded more. And to get out you can't. You're there, you're working. Food rations were, I mean at a minimum. She went there with her mother, her sister Hela, and her sister Miriam, who was married. And then it was just working, working and working.

And my grandmother who was a very strong, able-bodied woman could but there were plenty who couldn't. A lot of them just didn't know how to survive and unfortunately those are the ones that died at Płaszów.

Tim Cole: So in Płaszów you've got this kind of all women group in a sense, haven't you? You've got grandmother and then your mum, her sister and then this other married sister. Do they manage to stay together in that period, in the barracks?

Bernice Kennet: They did and then Miriam's husband, he was an architect, if I'm not mistaken. And she used to work with him. I think there were a group of about 20 of them that used to get taken out and design buildings and stuff like that for the Nazis.

Tim Cole: And I think, I mean it's interesting that because I think that really is typical of what, if you look at what the Germans are doing with Jews, Polish Jews, in this period, they're really doing two things. One is construction, so Płaszów is built around a quarry and so architects and builders, like they're building the Reich, you know that's the kind of dream of the Germans - and they're using Jewish forced labour to do that.

Or they're doing munitions or uniforms because they're doing even military or construction. So it's really interesting that your family in a sense, I think fits that kind of typical profile of what the Germans think Jewish labour is for.

Bernice Kennet: Yeah, and they will hand, you know, you're hand-picked to a certain degree and those who weren't, they would then be sent off to Auschwitz.

Tim Cole: I mean I think that's one of the things that everyone has this fear of, is selections.

Bernice Kennet: Yeah.

Tim Cole: Initially, in the ghetto and then in the camp. Because that's one thing we know about somewhere like Płaszów, is that in any of the camps there's constant selections that are taking place as Jews are being pulled out and sent somewhere. You kind of lose control of your own fate, in a sense, like you're kind of just redeployed into the system.

Bernice Kennet: Yes.

Tim Cole: For medical experimentation for labour.

Josh Kennet: That was Nana's view though, wasn't it? She used to try and, she'd say like she tried to be busy, to try to do things so that she was kind of always seen as useful but be useful.

I remember her telling me that was like one of the things that would drive her, she'd like, "Fine busy, doing stuff, whatever that may be, they'll see me as useful" knowing what was kind of happening to everybody else.

Tim Cole: I mean I think it's, you're right, Josh, because I think that was a way of trying to survive in some ways because you kind of are thinking like — I mean I know there's no logic to the Nazi system — but in a sense you're trying to work out, 'is there a logic to the system'?

Josh Kennet: Yeah.

Tim Cole: Like if I'm mending uniforms then surely they'll keep me alive. They might starve me but they'll keep me alive because I'm being useful to the system.

Bernice Kennet: And the fact that she spoke German, actually, that's another really main point that she spoke fluent German and they were quite impressed with the fact that she spoke such good German.

Louisa Clein: How long did they stay in Płaszów for?

Bernice Kennet: They were in Płaszów for, I think about a year, while they were in Płaszów, Hela was experimented on.

Louisa Clein: Wow. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Bernice Kennet: They decided they would like to see what would happen if they drew the blood out of her. Or as much blood as they could out of her veins and they would inject her with petrol just to see how the body would react. Which... I don't think any of us can fathom, it just doesn't make sense. Why would you do that?

Louisa Clein: I mean that must have been so painful.

Bernice Kennet: She was in agony, apparently, and she was so weak she couldn't even lift her head.

Louisa Clein: We talk so often of this idea of dehumanisation, we talk about how an intelligent doctor who has had a training and a privileged life and education, could even justify doing something so horrific and it becomes about the Jewish community were completely dehumanised.

Tim Cole: So they end up in Auschwitz and your aunt Hela sadly dies in Auschwitz. Your mum and grandmother survive but they're not there long, is that right? They don't spend much time in Auschwitz.

Bernice Kennet: They're not there long. Because when they entered Auschwitz, that's where all the gas chambers were and when she first went in, they were told to go into this room where they saw, like, shower heads, they were told to strip and stand there and wait and they waited and they waited and they waited and nothing happened.

After a time, all of a sudden water came through so they showered, came out and there were other people standing there that saw them go and they said, "How come you've come out?"

Louisa Clein: So at this point, people knew about the gas chambers.

Bernice Kennet: Yes. Because you saw the furnaces, you saw the smoke, you had this stench.

Tim Cole: Yeah, I think people start to know in 1942, in the Jewish community in Poland, you know, because I think all of these trains of taking people somewhere. There's news starting to come back about Treblinka and Belzec.

So I think your mum and grandmother and her sisters are kind of living in this sense of already having, I mean — not the kind of knowledge we have — but they have rumours and stories about gassing, killing by gassing, certainly emerging by the end of 1942 into '43, that when they go to Auschwitz in '44, I think they would really know what Auschwitz is about. And so that is so striking that they go there, maybe expecting to be murdered but actually they survive probably because they still are seen to have some value.

Bernice Kennet: They still look strong enough. They still look capable so why not use them until they die?

Tim Cole: So Auschwitz in '44, this period, it's functioning either as a death camp for those who are seen to have no value, labour value, or it becomes this kind of exchange camp where people are quickly moved into camps elsewhere. And so I think your mum is one, she's in the latter categories, and your grandmother as well, both of them are moved.

Are they part of one of the evacuations, the death marches? Are they walked or are they trained?

Bernice Kennet: They walked.

Tim Cole: Did she ever talk about that?

Bernice Kennet: Yes, she just walked in the snow and the rain and the cold and she remembers falling asleep on paths of snow and just waking up sort of frozen solid.

One account was when she went into a barn, they saw shelter in a barn and the hay and she found a package underneath the hay and there was some clothes and she thought she didn't have, sort of, much to wear and she thought, 'well this is weird, you know, who's left this package of clothes?' Was it the farmers who hopefully were giving something to whoever would find them and put on the clothes and that's what she did.

Tim Cole: If you think of the whole story, I mean what happens in Germany, is that Germany is made Judenfrei in 1941, you know, Jews are removed from Germany and sent east, but in 1944-45 Jews are actually being sent, like a Polish Jew is being sent to Germany in 1945, which is your mum and grandma, which is really bizarre in some ways, isn't it? Because in some ways they really need labour, like there's a terrible shortage of labour. Hitler assumes that he can still win the war in the beginning of 1945 if he has enough labour to work in factories.

So I guess your mum and her mother, your grandma, are kind of part of that group of women, roughly between 16 and 35, who are kind of flooding the roads of Europe and the rail network of Europe, being sent to camps in Germany. I think they go to Buchenwald and then end up in Belsen in 1945.

And it's interesting, Belsen, because Belsen is a place, it's like a complicated camp. It's originally a POW camp, so prisoner of war camp set up in 1940, and it's initially set up for French prisoners of war, you know, at the time when Hitler marches into France, the Nazis occupied France, they moved French and Belgian prisoners there, but mainly Soviet prisoners of war.

So in '41 they send tens of thousands of Soviet prisoners there, very large number die. It's then a kind of weird exchange camp for Dutch Jews and Hungarian Jews in these kind of exchange schemes. But it essentially becomes this dumping ground of young Jewish women, in particular, and also Jewish men and children who were kind of dumped there in '45.

Bernice Kennet: You also had people who were gay, you had gypsies, they were also there, wasn't just, you know, it was a mixture. It's a very strange mixture.

Tim Cole: And I mean, what thing, I think that's so striking about Belsen, is that it's a camp that's designed for a relatively small number of people, and then it just becomes horribly overcrowded. So, there's probably about 10,000 or so prisoners there at the end of '44, December '44, and then by May 1945 there's about 50,000. You know, so it grows fivefold within just a few months. And I think that's the moment when your mum and grandma are arriving, is it, they're part of tens of thousands of Jewish women.

Louisa Clein: I'm interested, you talk about, I mean, I certainly know with places like Sobibor that they are extermination camps. It's usually death on arrival. Why was it not at Belsen?

Tim Cole: Yeah, I think one thing that survivors often differentiate between Belsen and Auschwitz is that at Auschwitz they have gas chambers where they kill you, at Belsen they don't. They just let you die. And so people talk about that, about, in some ways it feels like it's, like if there's one thing worse than purposeful killing, it's unpurposeful leaving people to die. And so a lot of survivors talk about how Belsen is the worst camp they were ever in, they'll say it was worse than Auschwitz, and that can be surprising for us.

We're like, well, how can it be worse than Auschwitz? Because Auschwitz was an extermination camp, and they say it was worse than Auschwitz because they no longer had us working.

So your grandma, Josh, she figures, if I work they might let me live. And at Belsen she arrives in a place where they don't have any work, because they don't let you work, they don't let you eat, and so there's no food, rations, you know, food really quickly stops. And they just let people die, and critically they don't bury the bodies anymore.

So if you think about Auschwitz as a kind of system in Auschwitz where you gas people and then you burn them, and then you scatter the ashes into ponds — at Belsen there's none of that.

So you just let thousands of thousands of people die, and so it's a camp where you have the living in the dead alongside each other. That's where it is, in a sense, a horror camp. I think it's for many survivors it's the worst place they end up because it's a dumping grounds.

Louisa Clein: Did your mother talk about her experience in Belsen? What did she tell you?

Bernice Kennet: She said that Belsen was like the walking dead. She said nobody had anything to do and they used to just walk around. You had to do something; she had to do something. And there was, like, a little hospital unit, and she used to work there, you know, trying to help others who were dying, you know, giving them water and maybe picking up scraps of food and making... I remember she said once that she had the potato peelings that she had found.

Louisa Clein: When she used to talk to you about that, did she talk to you with a sense of distance about it, or was it still an extremely emotional memory for her?

Bernice Kennet: It was always there, and she would explain it to us, not in a bitter way. She would explain it as this is what happened, this is how we dealt with it, this is how we survived.

I think the main thing also was my grandmother. She wanted to keep her alive, and that was the most important thing for her. Because without her she would have no one.

Tim Cole: Did she talk about how she managed to keep her mother alive?

Bernice Kennet: She would always make sure that my grandmother would have more to eat than she did. So if there was a roll, she would give my grandmother three quarters of the role, and she would keep a quarter for herself, because she was younger, and she felt, you know, I can survive.

Louisa Clein: So you talk about your mother working in the hospital to have something to do, something to do each day? Can you tell us about some of the people that she might have helped?

Bernice Kennet: Well, one of the most famous people in a, in a sad way was Anne Frank. And she was in the hospital there. My mother used to wash her, give her food — even though she could hardly stomach the food — and make sure that she drank.

Louisa Clein: Was she the same age as your mother?

Bernice Kennet: I think she would have been a slightly younger, but not by many years. But, you know, to my mother it was caring for another human being — a child, really — in a way. And she just, you know, she couldn't watch her die.

Louisa Clein: It's so interesting that there's a memory of this iconic figure of the Holocaust, past her diaries. We know Anne Frank as a child before she was taken in to the camps, before she was murdered, and your mother had an experience of this figure, one of the last people to see her alive, to help her to...

Bernice Kennet: Yes, but at the time, to my mother, she was just another girl.

Louisa Clein: Exactly.

Bernice Kennet: You know, she was just another person. You know, you exchange names, and you exchange where you've come from, maybe. And of course, because all these people came from different areas, as you said before, you know, some were Czech, some were from Holland, you know, all different areas, some were Russian, you all came from different places, but yet, what most of them had in common, is that they were Jews.

Tim Cole: And they both speak German, in the case of Anne Frank and your mother, they had this language.

Bernice Kennet: And that kept... I think that was one of the things that really kept my mother and my grandmother alive. Was because their German was so perfect, because the Nazis couldn't believe that they had such perfect German, yet they weren't.

Tim Cole: We should pause with your mum in Belsen at the moment, so think a bit about your dad. Maybe you could tell us a bit about your dad, and what he's doing in 1945. I think he's British, your father?

Bernice Kennet: Yeah.

Louisa Clein: Jewish.

Bernice Kennet: Yes, Jewish, British.

Tim Cole: What's his name? What's your dad's name?

Bernice Kennet: Norman Turgel.

Tim Cole: Where did he grow up?

Bernice Kennet: In Hendon, in North West London. I mean, my father was studying to be an architect. He actually wanted to be a footballer. But then the war broke out. They spoke German at home.

My father, of course, when the war started, went into the army. They knew that he spoke fluent German, and was in the intelligence corps, and they were the first British troops to go into Belsen.

I think when he went in, he didn't believe what he saw. He honestly could not believe it. I think one of his first experience was he just threw up. The smell, I think, was of all these, and these piles of bodies, and just the skeletons, I think that's what sort of, it was unbelievable.

But he had a job to do, and then at that stage they had to know who were the Germans, who were the Nazis, and who were inmates. Because you didn't know. And what happened was a lot of the Germans who were there, the guards, took off their uniforms, and they were right to put on other bits of clothing to make out as though they were there in the camps. But of course, they realized immediately who wasn't, who wasn't. Because you know, you've got somebody who's standing there looking like a skeleton, you've got somebody there, he looks plump-ish.

My mother was working in the infirmary in the hospital there, and he goes in there, and he sees her. And he says, 'who are you? What are you doing?'

He spoke to her in German, she replied, and she then asked him a question, and he said, 'no, no, no, no.' He said, 'I'm asking you the question, not you asking me', because I think then she turned around and said, 'well, how do I know you're the British troops or whatever?'

And weirdly, he fell madly in love with her. It was love at first sight.

She thought he was mad. He was totally overwhelmed by her. And I don't know.

Josh Kennet: And he went back every day to like, see her. Wasn't that how he fell in love with her?

Bernice Kennet: Yes, he went back, you're right, over a period of time.

Josh Kennet: Yeah.

Bernice Kennet: I don't know, I mean, talking about weeks. And then he asked, my mother, he said, 'would you come to a party at the office as mess?'

And she walks into this room, and the way that she described it; she said, she hadn't seen white tablecloths for so many years, she's like, you know, she was so astonished by it all. And she said, you know, what is this? And he said, it's a party, she said, 'well, who's the party for?'

And he said, 'it's for you'.

And she said, 'but why?'

He said, 'this is our engagement party'.

She was like, 'no. I think maybe you've had too much to drink,' or something like that. I think it was the way that she described it. And he was, he was besotted with her.

Tim Cole: Was this typical of your...?

Bernice Kennet: My dad?

Tim Cole: Your dad! Like, can you describe, tell us a bit about, like, was this his typical behaviour?

Bernice Kennet: My dad was, it was at a great sense of humour. He had very twinkly eyes. He had blue eyes, but they had a twinkle. And he was, he was fun. He was serious sometimes, but he was fun.

But he was very decisive. That's what he wanted to do. That would be it.

Tim Cole: And he decided he wanted to marry your mother.

Bernice Kennet: And he decided he wanted to marry her.

Louisa Clein: But also the impression you're giving of your mother was not of somebody who had been broken that she, she was no victim. And she's still, she's not going to be sort of rescued that she still was, 'no!'

Bernice Kennet: In control.

Louisa Clein: In control.

Bernice Kennet: Yeah. And that's how she felt. She had to be in control. She had to, she couldn't just all of a sudden just disappear into the distance with this stranger.

Tim Cole: Can you tell us a bit about how your mum and dad reconnect? So she's in Belsen, your dad is headed further east, because the war is still to be fought and won. How do they kind of reconnect?

Bernice Kennet: He comes back to... I think they're all transported out of Belsen.

Tim Cole: Yeah, because the SS barracks has kind of become a displaced persons camp. So they have hospitals.

Bernice Kennet: Yeah, exactly. Because there are also people, you know, they want to know if they can reconnect with families. And where they go. And to a lot of people, a whole shock of it made them mentally unstable.

Tim Cole: So he comes back looking for her?

Bernice Kennet: He comes back because he's already given her this slip of paper to say who she is. And he comes back and he says, he says, 'Oh, right, you know, now we'll get married.'

He wanted to get married in Germany.

So they moved to Lübeck and there was a synagogue there where they found the Jewish chaplain, who was Reverend Leslie Hardman, who married them in Lübeck on the 7th of October 1945.

Louisa Clein: And this brings us beautifully back to our object today, which as we described, made of silk, it's white, it's luxurious, yet delicate. And we're talking about the wedding dress that your mother was married in.

Bernice Kennet: Yeah. It's a very special piece of clothing.

Louisa Clein: There's a through line of your whole family story of garments and textiles. And this is almost the combination of all of that in a strange way. Can you talk to us about your mother's wedding dress?

Bernice Kennet: My mother's wedding dress is made out of a British parachute and that is iconic.

Louisa Clein: Is it made out of the parachute material because that was the only material that was around? Or was it a symbolic gesture?

Bernice Kennet: I think it's because it could be a bit of both, but I think it's because that was the only material that was around. I mean, I doubt very much whether you could go into a shop and say, 'Oh, I'd like a wedding dress, please', not like here, you know, 'oh, like a wedding dress.' So there it was a question of what you could get hold of. But it was just incredible that it was made out of a British parachute.

Louisa Clein: And did she make it? Was made for her?

Bernice Kennet: It was made for her. Because it fitted her like a glove. So it was obviously a seamstress or somebody I think that she knew made it for her and a specific style.

Louisa Clein: Talk to us about the style of it. What do you mean by that?

Bernice Kennet: I think it was a very 1940s, 50s look. You had the padded shoulders, you had sort of a tight sleeve. It was very — she was very, very tiny. She had a tiny waist, I think, which was probably like a about a 20 inch waist. And it's got this beautiful high neck. A beautiful high neck. And just a ruffle going round, the bodice of it.

Tim Cole: So she's married in Lübeck in October 1945. Somehow your dad gets hold of this old parachute. I mean, a beautiful parachute, a seamstress makes this dress. She wears it for the wedding.

And then you said she brought it with her when she came to Britain. When was that? Was it quite soon after the wedding?

Bernice Kennet: It was quite soon afterwards. And you know, she was in the newspapers. She was called 'The Bride of Belsen' because... and they showed her arriving on a boat. I think all the photographers and the newspaper — because it was just something out of the ordinary. It's not something you would expect.

Louisa Clein: I mean, as we talk about this story with a happy ending in many ways. However, she arrives in the UK with her mother?

Bernice Kennet: Her mother hadn't arrived yet. Her mother arrived three months afterwards.

Louisa Clein: And had any of her siblings survived?

Bernice Kennet: Only four out of the nine. And that's including her. All three of the others ended up — one in Hendon and the other two in Israel.

Louisa Clein: So we talk about this happy ending to your mother's story. But it is shadowed enormously by the loss. But again, as you mentioned, when she first meets your father and he is Jewish, this idea of bringing the next generation, repopulating a Jewish community, which makes it really special that we're sitting here with you and her grandson. Two generations, talking and continuing her story.

Bernice Kennet: Yes, but that's why she always made a point of her whole point was that she would educate people on what happened in the Holocaust and what we have learnt from it. And how today we're in a situation which — I don't know how she would handle the amount of antisemitism that is going on today.

Tim Cole: One question that I think I'd have for both of you is, do you have a kind of sense of what the impact of all of these experiences you've described were upon your mum, or Joshua your grandmother? What kind of person was she in her middle age, her older age from your memories and how much was she shaped by the wartime experiences?

Josh Kennet: She was very much like the matriarch. So any opportunity to feed us. I always think back of food, because I think you'd always go, and it was like to her house and it was just always so much food. Whether there was like four of us eating or 25 of us like the whole family, there was always just so much food.

I think that stems probably from her survival. I think a lot of survivors talk about it. The fear that someone could go without or one of us was still hungry — I mean you never would have been — but it always felt like that was for her like the way that she wanted to live her life afterwards.

Bernice Kennet: My grandmother lived with us and she was always there but the funny thing was with my grandmother when she went to bed at night she always took with her a piece of bread, some sugar lumps and a thermos flask of milk. And she invariably, the milk was still in the thermos flask. She may have eaten a crust of the bread and the sugar was there. But that was her reminder that she would always have something.

Louisa Clein: So often these survivors will hide food and stories of people who went when their grandparents have passed away, they find food hidden in the back of drawers and things like this.

I'm also interested in your father and how he spoke about his experience.

Bernice Kennet: He actually, I think was, was relatively quiet about it and what he wanted to do was protect her. He would never shout at her. I mean not at all. And was in awe of her.

He did idolise her. He was always, I mean it was quite amazing, made her breakfast every day. He brought breakfast upstairs. She had breakfast in bed and it sounds a bit strange but every day he would make her tea, toast, half a grapefruit and a boiled egg and he would take that upstairs at six o'clock in the morning. And if she wasn't awake he would wake her up and say she was darling and he would freshly squeeze orange juice.

It was quite incredible.

Louisa Clein: It's as if when he found her in Belsen there was a moment he made that decision. I'm going to look after this woman and I'm going to protect her. I mean he really did, and she loved him from taking her out of the horrors of there to give her a life that she would have ever dreamed of.

Louisa Clein: So we're recording this on the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Belsen. But it is also the 80th anniversary of the meeting of your mother and your father.

Bernice Kennet: Every year on the Liberation Day, my dad just to buy by her roses.

Tim Cole: Oh, wow.

Bernice Kennet: No you drag her up and you say, 'hi, mom! Happy Liberation Day.'

And she'd go, 'Thank you darling.'

Tim Cole: Thank you so much Josh and Bernice for talking about your mum, your grandmother. And this extraordinary object: a beautiful parachutes turned into a wedding dress in Germany in 1945.

Bernice Kennet: Thank you very much.

Louisa Clein: Objects of the Holocaust is presented by me Louisa Clein and Tim Cole and produced by Sarah Peters at Tuning Fork Productions.

Original music is by Ian Chambers and sound design is by Peregrine Andrews.

Thanks to Beth Lloyd and Annabel Pattle, Kirsty Young and Karen Pollock from the Holocaust Educational Trust.

The Holocaust Educational Trust is a charity that works across the UK to ensure that the horrors of the past are never forgotten.

Details of the charity can be found in the show notes.