New Year's Honour for Holocaust Survivor from SW15

Anne-Marie Lever given British Empire Medal


Anne-Marie (Annick) Lever. Picture: Family

Participate

 

Putney Teenager Receives British Empire Medal

Sign up for our weekly Putney newsletter

Comment on this story on the

A 78-year-old woman from the SW15 area has been given a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the New Year’s Honours list.

Anne-Marie Lever, who is also known as Annick, was awarded for services to Holocaust Education and Awareness.

She is a Holocaust survivor who has shared her testimony with students and adults across the United Kingdom. In the last two years alone, through her work with the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Outreach Programme, she has told of the experiences of her family to hundreds of children.

She was born in November 1943 in Nazi-occupied France to a Jewish mother and a Catholic father. Life became very difficult for French Jews after the German invasion in 1940. Annick’s family had to register, declare all their possessions and, from 1942, wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing.

Their identification papers were stamped with the word ‘Jew’ and a curfew was imposed preventing Jewish people from being out of their homes in the evening. In 1944 Annick and her family were taken to the local prison and kept there pending deportation to Drancy (the main transit camp in France). Her father, as a non-Jew and a member of the Resistance, was able to smuggle Annick and her baby cousin out of the prison.

The rest of the family were transported and were taken from Drancy by cattle train to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 10 February 1944. They did not survive and later she learned that her mother most certainly died on the journey.

After the war, Annick was brought up in a small town in south-west France by a Catholic family. She came to Britain in 1963 and it is this story she now tells in schools across the country.

As well as her work with Outreach Programme, she has also worked with organisations such as the Jewish Museum in Camden, the League of Jewish Women, and a number of liberal synagogues and local councils, sharing her testimony with different groups, from all backgrounds and assisting numerous local communities in marking Holocaust Memorial Day each year in January.

She quickly mastered video technology and now shares her testimony to students via Zoom. She has also given a number of radio and other press interviews to educate the wider public on the history of the Holocaust. These articles and clips have been shared widely online, reaching millions of more people.

Another recipient of the BEM was local sixth former Nina Andersen who was awarded for her letter writing programme which linked 70,000 school children with isolated elderly people during the pandemic.

Like Reading Articles Like This? Help Us Produce More

This site remains committed to providing local community news and public interest journalism.

Articles such as the one above are integral to what we do. We aim to feature as much as possible on local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents, community-based initiatives and even helping people find missing pets.

We've always done that and won't be changing, in fact we'd like to do more.

However, the readership that these stories generates is often below that needed to cover the cost of producing them. Our financial resources are limited and the local media environment is intensely competitive so there is a constraint on what we can do.

We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area.

A suggested monthly payment is £8 but we would be grateful for any amount for instance if you think this site offers the equivalent value of a subscription to a daily printed newspaper you may wish to consider £20 per month. If neither of these amounts is suitable for you then contact info@neighbournet.com and we can set up an alternative. All payments are made through a secure web site.

One-off donations are also appreciated. Choose The Amount You Wish To Contribute.

If you do support us in this way we'd be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor.

For businesses we offer the chance to be a corporate sponsor of community content on the site. For £30 plus VAT per month you will be the designated sponsor of at least one article a month with your logo appearing if supplied. If there is a specific community group or initiative you'd like to support we can make sure your sponsorship is featured on related content for a one off payment of £50 plus VAT. All payments are made through a secure web site.

 

January 4, 2022