Zigi Shipper

Zigi Shipper BEM (born Zygmunt Shipper; 18 January 1930 – 18 January 2023) was a Polish survivor of the Holocaust and public speaker. Born and raised in Łódź, Poland, he survived the Łódź Ghetto, the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, the Stutthof concentration camp, and a death march to Neustadt in Holstein, and was eventually liberated by the British Army on 3 May 1945.

In 1947, he moved to England and became a public speaker and educator with the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), often speaking in schools about his experiences. In 2016, he was awarded a British Empire Medal for 20 years of work educating people about the Holocaust.

Biography

Early life Zygmunt Shipper was born on 18 January 1930 in Łódź, Poland into a Jewish family. When he was five years old, his parents divorced. As they were an Orthodox family, divorce was disapproved of, so he was told that his mother had died. Shipper had a happy childhood and was raised by his father and grandparents. In Łódź, he attended a Jewish school.

Persecution by the Nazis In 1939, at the beginning of World War II, his father became aware of the increasing persecution of the Jews by the Nazis and fled to Russia. He believed that the danger only applied to Jewish men, not children or the elderly.

Łódź Ghetto Between November 1939 and April 1940, the entire Jewish population of Łódź was transferred to Łódź Ghetto. Due to the increased scarcity of food, Shipper's grandfather quickly died from malnutrition in 1942. Death in the ghetto was commonplace. Shipper recalled stepping over dead bodies at the age of ten. Like other Jews in the ghetto, he was forced to work. He worked in a metal factory producing munitions.

He continued to live in the squalid ghetto until 1944, when the ghetto was liquidated and the Nazis transferred the inhabitants on overcrowded cattle trucks to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of the occupants died of dehydration on the journey. The people who were not fit enough to work, (the women, children, elderly and disabled) were gassed to death within the hour. Initially, he found settling in difficult because he missed his fellow survivors, but found new friends at the Primrose Club, a Jewish youth club for Holocaust survivors in Belsize Park in London.

He made his first return visit to Auschwitz in the 1990s, accompanied by his two daughters. England captain Steven Gerrard described his story as, "very moving and very inspirational for us."

In January 2015, at the age of 85, Shipper made a return visit to Auschwitz, accompanied by ITN News.

On 18 July 2017, he and his friend Manfred Goldberg visited Stutthof concentration camp alongside the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he spoke to them about his experiences there.

In 2021, Catherine, Princess of Wales met with Shipper and Goldberg to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

King Charles III commissioned a portrait of Shipper and six other survivors in 2022 for an exhibition titled Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust; the portrait is part of the Royal Collection. , which was displayed in Buckingham Palace in 2022.

In 1981, he had a heart attack and the doctors did not think that he would survive. His wife responded that she was not particularly concerned, as the Nazis had tried to kill him for five years. The Prince and Princess of Wales, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Lord Ian Austin were amongst those who paid tribute to him.

In the 2016 New Year Honours Shipper was awarded a British Empire Medal for his work educating people about the Holocaust over the course of 20 years.

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2026, holocaust survivors and their families were at Buckingham Palace with Charles III. The King was re-showing the Seven Portraits: Surviving the Holocaust that he had commissioned of holocaust survivors.