Holocaust survivor who tended to Anne Frank dies aged 95
Holocaust Survivor Gena Turgel tended to Anne Frank (Paul Faith/PA) Photo: PA Archive/PA Images
Gena Turgel, a Holocaust survivor who comforted diarist Anne Frank at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp months before its liberation, has died at the age of 95.
Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said Ms Turgel died on Thursday.
The Holocaust Educational Trust said Ms Turgel dedicated her life to sharing her story of surviving the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland and the German Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
Garden Party at Buckingham Palace Credit: The Queen and Gena Turgel
It was in a hospital at Bergen-Belsen that Ms Turgel cared for Anne Frank as the teenager was dying of typhus.
She once told the BBC: “I washed her face, gave her water to drink, and I can still see that face, her hair and how she looked.”
After the Second World War, Ms Turgel married one of the camp’s British liberators, Norman Turgel, earning her the nickname “The Bride of Belsen”.
