Last year on the 80th anniversary of the Bialystok Ghetto Uprising, Ben was honoured by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken as the last surviving person from the city, which had 250,000 Jews before 1939.
Ben Midler[Missing Credit]
Ben was also a speaker at the 2021 San Diego Comic-Con as a “real-life hero” and has been interviewed by the Reagan Presidential Library and CBS News in the US.
Since the 1970s, Ben has dedicated his life to educating future generations about the Holocaust. He now speaks at between 30 to 40 schools a year in the United States with a message that is “universal, positive, life-affirming, and personal.”
Ben Midler's book, 'The Life of a Child Survivor'[Missing Credit]
Ben is grandfather to Gavin Stein, founder and CEO of luxury retirement village developer Elysian Residences, which operates The Landsby retirement community in Stanmore. It was Ben’s life that inspired Gavin’s in his approach to building retirement homes, which were a way of “repaying older generations for their sacrifices, which have enabled those younger to live a comfortable life.”
CEO of Elysian Residences, Gavin Stein[Missing Credit]
This will be the first time that Ben’s story and the details behind his grandson Gavin’s inspiration are relayed to a UK audience.
Ben said: “I believe I must speak up and educate people about the Holocaust. Yesterday is gone, everyone should always live for the future, and what is so important is that there is tolerance, love, understanding, and mutual respect between people of different countries, religions, and races.”