Lili Pohlmann

Lili Stern-Pohlmann MBE (29 March 1930 – 15 September 2021) was a Holocaust survivor and educator.

Lili Pohlmann

MBE
Born
Lili Stern

29 March 1930
Lvov, Poland
Died15 September 2021 (aged 91)
OccupationHolocaust educator
SpouseEric Pohlmann

Early life

Lili Stern was born in Lviv and raised in Kraków, the daughter of Filip Stern and Cecylia Bruek Stern. Her father was a bank manager and her mother was a dressmaker. She and her mother were the only members of their large extended family to survive the Holocaust.[1] They were sheltered by a German civil servant, Irmgard Wieth,[2] until Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky placed them in a Ukrainian convent to protect them. After the war, she was taken to London with other refugee children by Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld in 1946.[3] Her mother joined her in 1947.[4][5]

Career

Pohlmann taught and spoke about her experiences during World War II, working with the Association of Jewish Refugees,[3] the Holocaust Educational Trust, the Imperial War Museum,[6] and other British groups. She was honorary president of Learning from the Righteous, and a director of the Centre for Jewish Culture in Kraków. She was awarded the Commander’s Cross of Polonia Restituta, and became a member of the Order of the British Empire in 2020, "for services to Holocaust Education, Awareness and Human Relations".[4] "If we, the last generation, don't talk about it, then that's it," she explained of her work. "I owe it to posterity."[7]

Personal life

Lili Stern married Austrian actor Eric Pohlmann. He died in 1979. Her partner from 1985 was Ian Fleming's literary agent, Peter Janson-Smith; he died in 2016.[8][9] She had a daughter, Karen. Stern-Pohlmann died in 2021, aged 91 years.[4][10]

References
  1. Barnes, Tom (22 January 2017). "Imagine if all you had left of your family was one handkerchief". The Sunday Times.
  2. "'You felt this is the end of the journey, this is where life ends'". Evening Standard. 31 May 2000. pp. 29, 30. Retrieved 14 December 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. "Lili Pohlmann". AJR Refugee Voices. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  4. Frot, Mathilde. "Survivor who was sheltered by a Righteous Among the Nations dies aged 91" The Jewish Chronicle (15 September 2021).
  5. "Tributes to 'remarkable' Lili, one of two Shoah survivors out of family of 300". Jewish News. 17 September 2021. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  6. "'It's most important to teach about this'". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  7. "Survivor Spent Life Teaching of Holocaust; Lost Dad, Brother". National Post. 5 October 2021. pp. AS2. Retrieved 14 December 2021 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. Lewis, Jeremy (11 May 2016). "Obituary: Peter Janson-Smith". The Bookseller. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  9. "Peter Janson-Smith". The Times. 27 April 2016. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 14 December 2021.
  10. “Lili Stern-Pohlmann; Survivor of the Holocaust Who Was Sheltered by a Kind German Woman and a Greek Catholic Prelate.” Daily Telegraph (London, England), 30 September 2021. via EBSCO Connect
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