Golders Green Holocaust survivor: ‘I was fed up with the word being bandied out by people with no real understanding’

A Holocaust survivor from Golders Green presented a copy of her critically-acclaimed book to a senior politician.

Agnes Grunwald-Spier, who was awarded an MBE in the New Year’s Honours list, met Sir Eric Pickles – the UK’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues - at the House of Commons.

The 71-year-old author presented Sir Eric with a copy of her book Who Betrayed the Jews?

Ms Grunwald-Spier, a founder trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, was just six months old when she was liberated from the Budapest Ghetto, having narrowly avoided being sent to Auschwitz.

She said: “I wrote the new book because I wanted to try to explain what the Holocaust was really like.

“I was fed up with the word being bandied about by people who had no real understanding of what they were saying. It deals with various topics in separate chapters such as betrayal by friends and neighbours, the impact on Jewish soldiers who fought in WW1, Olympians who were killed by the Nazis, children, suicides, slave labourers and indirect complicity amongst many other topics.”