One of the UK’s last remaining Holocaust survivors had been left “distraught” by a rise in antisemitism in the UK in the past year, her great-grandson said as he told of the family’s heartbreak following her death.
Lily Ebert had spent her life sharing her horrific experiences in the Second World War and changed countless lives in the process, Dov Forman said.
But as someone who retained hope that “love will always triumph over hatred”, he said she had found news of the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 last year hard to believe and was saddened by a rise in incidents of antisemitism in the UK in the months that followed.
He told the PA news agency: “When she heard about what happened on October 7 2023, I just remember how difficult that was for her, she actually couldn’t believe it.
“And as I say, she genuinely thought the promise of ‘never again’ after the Holocaust would be upheld, and she felt that that had been broken by the world.
“And when she saw the rise of antisemitism on the streets of the UK, particularly – a place where she moved to in 1967 because she believed that the freedom of expression, freedom of belief just to be a Jewish person without persecution, would be upheld – she felt distraught.”
A Jewish charity said last week that it had recorded more than 5,500 antisemitic incidents in the UK in the year since the Hamas attacks on Israel.
The Community Security Trust (CST) said the 5,583 incidents recorded between October 7 2023 and September 30 is the highest total of any 12-month period.
Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate in the UK has risen to the highest total in more than a decade, in the same period, according to a charity monitoring such incidents.
Tell Mama said it recorded 4,971 incidents of anti-Muslim hate and discrimination in the year since the October 7 attacks.
Mr Forman, who co-authored a book with his great-grandmother, telling her story of being in Auschwitz and having family members killed, said Ms Ebert had made it “her whole life’s mission” to share her experience in an effort to educate and prevent the horrors of the past being repeated.
He said: “She was so upset when she would hear of hatred, when she would hear of antisemitism, to know that perhaps people haven’t learned as much as she would have wanted them to.
“And she always said to me, ‘what can we do? What can we do to combat this?’ Every day she would say to me, ‘let’s do something bigger’. It was never big enough. It was always wanting to achieve more.”
The pair accrued billions of views on video-sharing platform TikTok in more recent years in an effort to educate the younger generation on the Holocaust.
While Mr Forman said his family were heartbroken at her death, her legacy will live on.
He said: “She lived an incredible life. So, as much as mourning her death, this is also celebrating the life that she lived, the impact that she had.
“Hundreds of millions of people live a different life because of her. I’ve had messages today, but also in the past few years, from hundreds of people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people across the world who say how much their life has changed after reading her book or seeing her videos on TikTok.
“Seeing her laugh, seeing her smile, but also seeing her and listening to her share her harrowing testimony.
“And I mean, I can’t even relay some of these stories, but people who were in the worst places in their life, they say that my great-grandmother’s story helped them get through that.”
Mr Forman added: “My great-grandmother always called out all forms of hate. This is someone who knows where the dangers of hatred, if left unchecked, if left unchallenged, can go. And it doesn’t matter who the hatred is coming from or is directed towards, it’s unacceptable and should be called out.
“She always said that love will always triumph over hatred.”
