My Voice: Lydia Tischler

The My Voice Project is a unique initiative by The Fed, Manchester's leading social care charity serving the Jewish community. The My Voice Project empowers Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK to share their entire life stories including experiences before, during and after the war years. This project involves a bespoke methodological approach, producing books that preserve their unique voices. The My Voice Project ensures firsthand accounts are remembered and valued for future generations, highlighting the critical role of individual perspectives in ensuring a deeper historical understanding.

Lydia Tischler was born in Ostrava, formerly Czechoslovakia. Her story takes her from childhood innocence to the horrors of the ghetto-camp of Theresienstadt, where she spent two years, before volunteering willingly to go to Auschwitz, after learning that her mother and sister were being transported there.

Tragically, Lydia's mother was murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Lydia and her sister Rutka were sent to Oederan labour camp in Germany where they dug trenches and held on to their integrity - just.

After liberation in 1945, Lydia came to England with other child refugees in a Wellington bomber aircraft, recuperating initially in Windermere. Lydia spent many years after the war maintaining a fantasy that her mother might still be alive and it was only through her own analysis, part of her mandatory training as a child psychotherapist, that she finally processed her mother's death and let the idea go.

Lydia has gone on to live a fulfilled, meaningful life, working as a child psychotherapist for over 65 years, and marrying Salo Tischler in November 1975.

Lydia's book is part of the My Voice book collection