‘I call Zelma Cacik who may be living in London,’ says the announcer, in the clipped RP accent of the BBC in the 1940s. ‘I call her on behalf of her 16-year-old cousin…’ The voice betrays no emotion, no feeling, it’s so matter-of-fact, but the script spares no punches as it tells the cousin’s story in blunt statements of fact. She was born in Poland, separated from her family when she was 12 and made to work in a munitions factory while her parents, her sisters and brother were sent to Treblinka extermination camp.
Twelve names in all are called out on the archive radio programme from 1946, one of several that were made on behalf of children who had been Nazi captives and were waiting in displaced persons camps on the continent with nowhere to go, nothing left, no family, no home, no possessions. Would the contact named by the announcer come forward to rescue them? A 15-year-old boy survived the ghetto at Riga and five concentration camps.
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