The birthday gift that survived the Holocaust - a podcast by BBC World Service

For her 11th birthday in March 1942, a little girl called Eva Cohn asked her mother Sylvia to send her some of her own poems. At the time, Eva and her sister Myriam were in a Jewish children's home in France, and Sylvia was imprisoned in an internment camp. Separated from her children by the Holocaust, and not knowing when or if she would see them again, Sylvia wrote this inscription in a small shabby exercise book: "to my children... know that your mother loves you." The book contained her own poems, written from memory, some of them detailing the family's experiences in the Holocaust. At the end of the war, Eva finally made it to England to be reunited with her father, her only posessions the clothes on her back, and the book of poems Sylvia had given her. Now nearly ninety, she's had them translated at last. The story of one family in the Holocaust.

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.comPresenter: Emily Webb
Producer: Laura ThomasPicture: Eva with her sisters Myriam and Esther and their mother Sylvia; Eva Cohn; Sylvia's book of poems
Credit: Eva Mendelsson

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