Born on this day – Martin Greenfield:

Martin Greenfield

Tailor

Writer

Holocaust survivor

August 9, 1928 – March 20, 2024

Credits:

Founder of Martin Greenfield Clothiers.

Book:

Measure of a Man: From Auschwitz Survivor to Presidents' Tailor (2014).

Television:

Tailor Made (2018); Great Big Show (2017); Lessons from a Tailor (2008).

Born on this day – Eva Schloss:

Eva Schloss

Writer

Holocaust survivor

May 11, 1929 – January 3, 2026

Credits:

Books:

After Auschwitz: My Memories of Otto and Anne Frank (2013); Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale, by the Stepsister of Anne Frank (1988); The Promise (2006).

Movies and television:

A Tale of Two Sisters (2015); And Then They Came for Me (2007); Anne Frank House VR (2018); Anne Frank: Beyond the Diary (2015); BBC World News (2008); Britain's Holocaust Survivors (2013); Call Me Papa: The Letters of Otto Frank (2026); Du sollst leben! - Holocaust-Überlebende im Gespräch mit Markus Lanz (2015); Hate Among Us (2019); History vs. Hollywood (2001); History vs. Hollywood (2001); Horrors of the Holocaust (2023); III nach neun (2016); Jinek (2017); Kaaskoppen & waterlanders (2008); Markus Lanz (2017); My Daughter, Anne Frank (2015); När livet vänder (2020); Nazis on the Run: The Series (2021); No Asylum: The Untold Chapter of Anne Frank's Story (2015); Otto Frank, Father of Anne (2010); Pauw & Witteman (2010); Rendez-vous de l'histoire (2025); Sunday Life (2008); Surviving Hitler's Mad Doctors (2022); The Diary of Anne Frank: A Tale of Two Sisters (2015); The Final Days of the Nazis (2023); This Morning (2013); Times Series Video News: And Then They Came for Me - Remembering the World of Anne Frank (2008); WGN Morning News (2018).

Born on this day – Marthe Cohn:

Marthe Cohn

Writer

Nurse

Holocaust survivor

April 13, 1920 – May 21, 2025

Credits:

Documentaries:

Chichinette: The Accidental Spy (2019); For Womenkind (2020).

Book:

Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany

By Marthe Cohn & Wendy Holden.

Published by Crown.

First published 2002.

ISBN-10: 0307335909

ISBN-13: 978-0307335906

Description:

“This compelling memoir is a testament to how extraordinary circumstances can transform a life – and how an extraordinary person reacts to difficult circumstances. What comes through is the importance of courageous individual action in the most dire situations. This is the amazing story of a woman who lived through one of the worst times in human history, losing family members to the Nazis but surviving with her spirit and integrity intact.” – Publishers Weekly.

Marthe Cohn was in her late teens when Hitler was rising to power. Living across the German border in Alsace-Lorraine, her family began taking in Jews who were fleeing the Nazis, as well as the Jewish children being sent away by terrified parents. Soon her own homeland was under Nazi rule, and she and her parents, brothers, and sisters were forced to live the restricted lives of all Jews. As the Nazi occupation of France escalated along with the war, Marthe’s sister was arrested and eventually sent to Auschwitz, and the rest of her family was forced to flee to the south of France. Always a fighter, Marthe joined the French Army.

Behind Enemy Lines is Marthe Cohn’s memoir of a time and place that has mesmerized the world for more than half a century. But at its heart it is the tale of an ordinary human being who, under extraordinary circumstances, became the hero her country needed her to be.

Recently, at the age of eighty, Marthe Cohn was awarded France’s highest military honor, the Medaille Militaire, a relatively rare medal awarded for outstanding military service and given, in the past, to the likes of Winston Churchill. With this award came official acknowledgment of the heroic exploits of a beautiful young Jewish woman who faced death every day as she sought to help defeat the Nazi empire.

When the spotlight was turned on Marthe Cohn, not even her children or grandchildren knew to what extent this modest woman had been involved with the Allies in fighting the evils of the greatest war of the twentieth century. She had fought valiantly to retrieve needed inside information about Nazi troop movements by slipping behind enemy lines, utilizing her perfect German accent and blond hair to pose as a young German nurse who was desperately trying to obtain word about a fictional fiancé. In traveling about the countryside and approaching troops sympathetic to her plight, she learned where they were going next and was able to alert Allied commanders.

Born on this day – Viktor Frankl:

Viktor Frankl

Neurologist

Psychiatrist

Writer

Holocaust survivor

March 26, 1905 – September 2, 1997

Credits:

Man's Search for Meaning (1946); Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997); On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders (2004); Psychotherapy and Existentialism (1967); The Doctor and the Soul (1955); The Unheard Cry for Meaning (2011); The Will to Meaning (1988); Viktor Frankl Recollections: An Autobiography (2000); Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything (2020).

Born on this day – Jacob Barosin:

Jacob Barosin (self-portrait)
Jacob Barosin and his wife Sonia

Jacob Barosin

Holocaust survivor

Artist

Painter

Writer

January 3, 1908 – 2001

Exact date of death unknown

Credits:

Book:

A Remnant (1988).

ISBN-10: 0896041298
ISBN-13: 978-0896041295
United States Holocaust Library.

Born on this day – Lily Ebert:

Lily Ebert

Writer

Holocaust survivor

December 29, 1923 – October 9, 2024

Credits:

Television:

Good Morning Britain (2021); Sky Midnight News (2021); Sky World News (2021); The View (2022).

Book:

Lily's Promise

How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live

By Lily Ebert and Dov Forman.

Hardcover.

Published 2021.

Published by Macmillan.

ISBN 13: 9781529073409

ISBN 10: 1529073405

ASIN: 1529073405

Description:

A heart-wrenching and ultimately life-affirming Holocaust survivor story that demonstrates the power of love to see us through the darkest of times.

When Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert was liberated in 1945, a Jewish-American soldier gave her a banknote on which he’d written ‘Good luck and happiness’. And when her great-grandson, Dov, decided to use social media to track down the family of the GI, 96-year-old Lily found herself making headlines round the world. Lily had promised herself that if she survived Auschwitz she would tell everyone the truth about the camp. Now was her chance.

In Lily’s Promise she writes movingly about her happy childhood in Hungary, the death of her mother and two youngest siblings on their arrival at Auschwitz in 1944 and her determination to keep her two other sisters safe. She describes the inhumanity of the camp and the small acts of defiance that gave her strength. From there she and her sisters became slave labour in a munitions factory, and then faced a death march that they barely survived.

Lily lost so much, but she built a new life for herself and her family, first in Israel and then in London. It wasn’t easy; the pain of her past was always with her, but this extraordinary woman found the strength to speak out in the hope that such evil would never happen again.

Born on this day – Ingrid Pitt:

Ingrid Pitt

Actress

Writer

Holocaust survivor

November 21, 1937 – November 23, 2010

Credits:

Books:

Annul Domini: The Jesus Factor (2012); Bertie the Bus (1981); Cuckoo Run (1980); Dracula Who...? (2012); Eva's Spell (1985); Katarina (1986); Life's a Scream: The Autobiography of Ingrid Pitt / aka Darkness Before Dawn (1999 / 2004); The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters (1999); The Ingrid Pitt Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers (1998); The Ingrid Pitt Book of Murder, Torture and Depravity (2000); The Perons (1984).

Movies and television:

100 Years of Horror (1996); 40 Years of Hammer (1997); A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966); Artemis 81 (1981); Barreiros 66 (1966); BBC2 Playhouse (1981); Beyond the Rave (2008); Bones (1984); Bride of Monster Mania (2000); British Film Forever (2007); Bulman (1987); Burnt Offering: The Cult of the Wicker Man (2001); Cast & Crew (2005); Chastity Bites (2013); Chimes at Midnight (1965); Cinema mil (2005); Cinemassacre's Monster Madness (2014); Countess Dracula (1971); Crumpet! A Very British Sex Symbol (2005); Doctor Who (1972–1984); Doctor Who: The Lost Stories (2010); Doctor Zhivago (1965); Dominator (2003); Drácula en la Hammer (2003); Dundee and the Culhane (1967); Ex-S (1998); Fanex Files: Hammer Films (2008); Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994); Frankenpimp's Revenge: The Romeo and Juliet Massacre (2020); Green Fingers (2000); Hammer Horror: Vampire Terrortory (2007); Hammer: The Studio That Dripped Blood! (1987); Hanna's War (1988); Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest (2011); Interview mit Produzent Euan Lloyd und Ingrid Pitt (2010); Ironside (1967); Jason King (1972); Joe D'Amato at Eurofest (2007); Les vamps fantastiques (2003); London by Night (2009); Los duendes de Andalucía (1966); Martina Cole's Lady Killers (2008); Midnight Madness: The History of Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Films (2010); Minotaur (2006); Mondo Rosso (1995); Monsters & Maniacs (1988); Movie Memories (1981); Myths of Mankind (2000–2008); New Faces (1974); Nobody Ordered Love (1972); Octopussy (1983); On Location: Where Eagles Dare (1968); Once Upon a Time in Europe (2001); Robin Hardy on 'The Wicker Man' (2013); Saucy 70's Volume 2 (2010); Sea of Dust (2008); Sex at 24 Frames Per Second (2003); Ski-Boy (1974); Smiley's People (1982); Sound of Horror (1966); The Adventurer (1973); The Asylum (2000); The Comedy of Errors (1983); The Eamonn Andrews Show (1968); The Final Option / aka Who Dares Wins (1982); The Flesh and the Fury: X-posing Twins of Evil (2012); The House (1984); The House That Dripped Blood / Segment: The Cloak (1971); The Last of the Gentleman Producers (2004); The Merv Griffin Show (1969); The Mind of David Berglas (1986); The Omegans (1968); The Perfect Scary Movie (2005); The Return of Count Yorga (1971); The Saint (1963); The Vampire Lovers (1970); The Wicker Man (1973); The Wicker Man Enigma (2001); The World of Hammer (1994); The Zoo Gang (1974); Thriller (1975); Tiempo y hora (1966); Un beso en el puerto (1966); Underworld (1985); Urban Gothic (2000); Where Eagles Dare (1968); Wild Geese II (1985).

Recommended reading:

Darkness Before Dawn

By Ingrid Pitt.

Paperback.
Published 2004.
Published by Midnight Marquee Press.
ISBN 13: 9781887664547
ISBN 10: 1887664548
ASIN: 1887664548

Description:

At the age of five, Ingrid Pitt found herself in a concentration camp. Ingrid and her mother escaped from the guards while on a forced march and presented themselves to the partisans, unsure if they would kill them. They spent the rest of the war in the forests. Ingrid fell in love for the first time and watched in despair as British bombers flew overhead. She still cannot see the vapor trials of planes without being transported back to her childhood vigil. After the war Ingrid came to London, where she developed a career as a Hammer House of Horror movie star, but, as she proudly says, `I was always the biter, never the bitten!' She also acted in mainstream films, such as WHERE EAGLES DARE. She had a child by her first marriage and a grand passion which lead to her marrying a racing driver. They lived in Argentina for a while and were good friends of President Peron and Isabel Peron. Ingrid even spent an evening with the embalmed body of Eva Peron. Written with great passion and warmth, this is a rare childhood memoir and the story of Hammer`s most glamorous actress. Above all, this is a story of a survivor.

Born on this day – Margot Friedländer:

Margot Friedländer

Holocaust survivor

Advocate

Writer

November 5, 1921 – May 9, 2025

Credits:

Book:

Try to Make Your Life

A Jewish Girl Hiding in Nazi Berlin

By Margot Friedländer, with Ronald L. Kolb.

Published by BEA Press.

Published 2013,

First Edition.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 1935034073

ISBN-13: 978-1935034070

Description:

On January 25, 1943, the day of a planned escape from Nazi Germany, 22-year-old Margot Bendheim learns that the Gestapo has just picked up her brother and mother. Her mother manages to leave her a message, "Try to make your life." This is Margot's spellbinding memoir.

Movies and television:

Anne Will (2023); Arte Journal (1998); Aspekte (2021); Die Wannseekonferenz - Die Dokumentation (2022); Eins zu eins (2010–2018); Goebbels and the Führer (2024); Günther Jauch (2015); Ich bin! Margot Friedländer (2023); Joanna Lumley's Great Cities of the World (2022); Judenhass: Unser Leben nach dem 7. Oktober (2024); Markus Lanz (2021); Morgenmagazin (2012); Tagesthemen (2024).