YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Helfgott

lines on the record: 34
first: 2007-04-01
most recent: 2007-04-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“My work is different today. At the time I was training, I wanted to be stronger and to lift more. Now I want my heart to be strong. I need a bar with two discs.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think he'll have a good laugh at that. See, I believe in fitness. And I've always kept myself fit. I would need in order to do my training, I would need a bar. Bit”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I thought and thought about it and came to the conclusion that I would pick the history of Western philosophy by Bertrand Rassel.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the last part of State On It is a call for freedom, a call to the future to be optimistic, to look forward, to work together and to live in harmony, and to me whenever I listen to it, I can see the beautiful world that can be, and unfortunately some of the elements who don't allow it, but we must fight against these elements, we must never let them get away with it.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I've always found peace in myself. I have learned to live with the part of my life right from the very beginning, and the reason why I've been able to carry it out was because I had So I am at Peith. Oh, if I would not be in Peith myself, I could never be the person that I am, I wouldn't be able to do so many different things, I wouldn't be able to devote myself to a causes, which I think are taker to me.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's because I suddenly realize I keep asking myself why did it happen? Why did it happen? And that's why I've been involved at every stage with the Holocaust Memorial Day, with the International Task Force for Holocaust Education Research and Members. And since we started with the Holocaust Memorial Day, we have made tremendous progress”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely because what is the point? What do they achieve by their holding back on them and flagellating themselves? But that is wrong, because we have survived, we have this duty.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course I understand the survivor guilt because one always feels that one survives because somebody else close to him or her did not survive and say why me why not you? And that of course but the fact remains that that is how it is those survivors who survived by lucky chance they have a duty to go out into the weld and to talk about it.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be like brothers and sisters. We are a family because we lost our parents and we came together here and therefore when anyone got married, we were the ones who used to be on the survivor's side.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is absolutely right. I love people. And I cherish my friendship, and I cherish love to humanity I think this is what it's all about, and that is why all the I have been featherful very closely connected with Vivith, the Vivath who came to this country.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The three tenets, I could have picked any of the operators because they're so lovely, they're so inspiring, and I love listening to them. And when I think about serenity like I think about my family, what better song can it be than that exemplifying what my family is all about?”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, on the contrary, on the contrary, I love so much, and I felt that I must make up for it. Always happen and isn't always lucky. One needs luck, I know that the element of luck is there. I was very fortunate to meet my wife because we've been married now for forty one years, and I must say my laughter had today is stronger today than it was even the first day when I met her. We were blessed with three sons, and I'm very grateful to her, though yes, I am very fortunate.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, because my body weight was natural body weight was 11 stone, 154 pounds, and I had to be within 148 and 3 quarters, and I had only three four days to go to my competition, so others had the benefit of it, but we nevertheless had the party afterwards, so it was really a lovely, lovely day for me.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The opening of the nineteen fifty six Olympic Games Melbourne That was a very special opening because it coincided with my birthday and so it was very emotional unless I marched out of my parents I thought how proud they would have been of me eleven years ago I was at the point of death and here I was not only alive and kicking but I was representing my adopted country. There was sadness at the same time acceleration.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it came natural to me, I thought it's a challenge. And when I look back, I am really very lucky. Because I had to work and even when I was picked to compete in world championships of another country, the British weightlifting association was very poor and I was told that they haven't got money that I should pay for my faith. And I was very happy to do it. I was honored that I was representing my adopted country. The most important thing is that I could compete and I could enjoy it.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Weightlifting I was very keen on sport, I did every spot. But until I was about fifty There I play squash, whether I play tennis, whatever I did, I played to win because I was very, very competitive. That weightlifting I was introduced by chance.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is something very special because here we were end of nineteen forty seven listening to the United Nations voting for a Jewish state and a Palestinian state and what a wonderful feeling there was and after such a great catastrophe where six million Jews were killed and that suddenly we heard at last that it's going to be a state and so we celebrated and celebrated in the Megasons and Halfanagila really gives the meaning of it all.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can remember vividly. Early morning of the ninth of May It must have been about six thirty in the morning where I shared a bank with another boy. He woke me up and he said we are free Of course I jumped up at Dref, and I ran out and that was something very, very special.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, we knew that any day we're going to be liberated because they brought the newspapers with them. We were not far away from Dreden, and we were there when Dredden was bombed, and we could see the skies in the distance was red, and all this gave us a lot of hope”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I didn't know where we were going. We didn't know at all where we were going, we didn't know what place we were going, what we came to a place which was hell. when the people turned from work. We just couldn't believe what we thought they looked like walking dead people, and the clothes was completely intended, life was falling off them. The hair was overgrown, There was no comparison they were completely emaciated.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We traveled for about a day and a half, and during that period I never stopped crying. I just could not overcome the thought that I was separated from my father.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we were sent there in order to be sent to another concentration camp, to a factory where they were producing an anti-tank weapon. But in the last minute when they called out our names, for some reason my father and a few others were left behind, and I was the only boy who was not with his father.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely because We can't bring them back, but their memory is this their life, and their memory has to be their life not just for them, but for posterity, the present generation must learn what has happened and pass it on to others, because what has happened is something that has never happened to anybody, and I hope and I pray that it will never happen to anybody else.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every time I hear that song a shadow goes down my bet my back And I can't help thinking not just about my mother, about the mother of all those who survived, and this song I'm pleased that I don't hear it often, but when I do hear it, in the sense I please to hear that I think of my mother often, but this evokes other memories beautiful memories the way she was.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely that Sunday morning Within minutes we knew it. never forget it. When my father came in, I and I looked at his face. and I didn't have to ask many. She lived for us. She was the most wonderful mother.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they were taken to the synagogue, and we could see what was going on there all the time. During the two weeks or ten days that they were there, when the Germans were deliberating what to do with them, my father managed to get a permit for my mother to be freed, but he couldn't get a permit from my sister to get freed, and I remembered the correspondence between my mother and my father, my father begged her to come out, and my mother thought. I look after Lucia. And then a decision was made This was on the twentieth of december nineteen forty two, they were taken out to the nearby wood on a Sunday morning and they were all shot.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well my mother and my sisters were in hiding. That meant that they were illegal because only those who were working were legalized. Anybody else had no right to live. And the Germans knew all about it because they had their collaborators, and they announced that everyone who had returned to the smallgetto, who wasn't illegal, should register, and they will be legalized because they need to be And of course they'll get rations. So they did, no sooner have they registered, they were rounded up And among them was my mother and my youngest sister Lucia, who was nine years old, and though they were all taken but there were about five hundred twenty three hundred fifty people, most of them women and children.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depotions started on the fourteenth of february nineteen forty two, they took place over a period of one week, during which time. twenty two thousand truth from the ghetto were deported to the guest chambers of Toblinka and two and a half thousand were left. Those who were left behind were living in its smaller ghetto consisting of two streets, two half streets right on top of one another, and there we lived for money here, I was working in the glass factory, and my father and I and my little sister, my sister Malat, I had two sisters, one was killed.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That says Conedre it is almost a sacred event for Jews once a year, and I look back over the years the pre war years, and it was a nice life, but it was also a life where everybody was worried about what the future was going to be and this conniderer in a way. The song itself simplifies it.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, my mother used to beg him not to do it because Tum Tumzy didn't come back for a day or two, and in the meantime we heard people are being shot, and then I could see how my mother was suffering, and I joined in with my mother and begged him to stop, for my father laughed and he said I'd like to see how long you will talk like this if you have to live just on potatoes and salt. That was his reply. And so even today, when I think about it, the pain is as great as ever. He was thirty nine years old and he had so much to live for.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we were more lucky than others. We had a kitchen and we had one large room where we could live, eat and sleep and everything. And 28,000 Jews were living in an area before the war between 4 and 5,000 people. There was no peace. But in between this we lived, and my father died from the very beginning, immediately set about smuggling in food into the ghetto. That means flour, and because of it we were better off.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my town Piotkov of the first ghetto, as soon as the Germans came in at the end of September, there were announcements that the Jews have to move in to geto. It really affected me very badly, the very thought that I was not safe anymore, that no one is safe any longer, and this was only just the beginning.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I compare myself today when I see my grandchildren and I look at them, I simply can't believe that I was the same age that they are, because they are children, they behave like children. I did not behave like a child. I already was very responsible of what was going on around me. I understood the meaning of life in a way that the child does not understand. And then the war came in, of course, that immediately accelerated it.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and I was very concerned what was happening, and I understood. At that moment, that I am no longer a child, and there in the midst of all this, I kept hearing this lovely, beautiful song The Isle of Capri, and it has stayed with me all my life.”
2007-04-01 · Desert Island Discs · Ben Helfgott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source