Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen survivor Ruzena Levy is among seven Jewish refugees named in this weekend’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list. Levy, along with Walter Kammerling, Gabriele Keenaghan, Ernest Simon, George Hans Vulkan, Robert and Hannah Kirk were awarded British Empire Medals for sharing their testimony with over 100,000 schoolchildren around the UK. It took Levy over half a century to find the words to describe her traumatic experiences in the former Czechoslovakia. The 88-year-old was 15 when she flew to Northern Ireland after being liberated from Auschwitz, the death-camp that saw siblings and her mother Shlima murdered. Levy and her brother Chaskel arrived in Belfast in February 1947 with a group of Jewish orphans who had escaped concentration camps.
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