Brave Luton man’s memories included in Yad Vashem museum to ensure the Holocaust is not forgotten

The late Eric Trott, who was a former member of the Royal Army Medical Corp, will have his important memories and photos included in Israel’s Yad Vashem museum.

The humble Luton man rarely spoke about the atrocities he’d witnessed while working with concentration camp victims after World War Two; however, his story will now educate others about the murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime, its allies and collaborators.

Eric’s daughter, Anne Connolly, said: “I would just like to say that Dad would have been very proud to know that his photographs are on display in the Yad Vashem, and that the Holocaust should never be forgotten or denied however unpleasant the taste it leaves behind.”

Eric’s story came to light after he entrusted former Luton social worker, Andy Strowman, with his memories and two graphic photographs taken at Bergen Belsen.

One shows bodies piled in a pit at the camp and the other is of a skeletal naked man being supported by two British soldiers.

Speaking to the newspaper in 2015, Mr Strowman said: “I met Eric in 1994 through one of his daughters, who had Downs Syndrome. One day he asked if I was Jewish and when I said yes, he said: ‘I have something I want to give you.’

“He had held on to those photographs for 49 years. I feel, deep in my heart, that he was waiting for a Jewish man he could trust to come along. Seeing them was one of the biggest shocks of my life.

“In 1945 his unit went to a place in Germany where Hitler had had a ‘breeding’ hospital. All the people they found there were moved into tents with evacuated prisoners from Belsen. He told me hundreds went through their operating theatre and between 30 and 60 a day died on them.

“He said: ‘We saved as many as we could but some were just too ill. One man had hands grafted on to his buttocks, which we had to undo.’”

Mr Strowman believes the Jewish nation owes Eric and his comrades a huge debt and is delighted his story is finally reaching a larger audience.

To commemorate his dear friend, he has penned a poem entitled ‘From Illness to Cure -

In memory of Private Eric Trott of Luton’.

It reads:

I got given this illness to cure:

Your monster in your dreams.

To search in these wandering days

For the broken and the poor.

You gave me a job to mend

Those who were stumbling.

Cannot

The lonely: broken by a friend.

Why did the factory tell me

What to do?

To beat the best out of fear

For gentile, Buddhist, or Jew.

Now, I am at home with Belsen:

I have returned.

But my memory,

My memory,

Cannot be burnt.

Andy Strowman, copyright February 1, 2020.

Speaking to the Luton News in 2015, Andy and Anne remembered Eric.

Andy said: “Eric dictated his story to me, about joining the Royal Army Medical Corps as a volunteer. He did his apprenticeship in various army hospitals, assisting at operations and getting on-the-job training.”

After his duties, Eric returned to Luton to work for Kent Instruments.

Anne said: “I wasn’t aware of what Dad did during the war, all I knew was that he’d been in the medical corps. He wouldn’t discuss it, end of subject. Mum, who was Dutch, hated all Germans right up to the end. But Dad was always very fair and very kind. And I think he would like to have worked in a hospital if there’d been the money for training.”