Letter exhibition recounts WWII act of kindness

The permanent exhibition displays original letters, family photographs and newspaper reports

An exhibition showcasing the life-changing impact of a small act of kindness during World War Two, is opening at a museum on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Naomi and Arthur: Letters from Liberation goes on permanent display at Soldiers of Oxfordshire (SOFO) Museum in Woodstock on Saturday.

The letters reveal how an Oxfordshire Yeomanry soldier helped a Polish Jewish prisoner get in touch with her family after she survived the Nazi camp system.

The museum called the exhibition "a wartime story with a difference".

Soldier Arthur Tyler wrote letters to the family of survivor Naomi Kaplan, helping her reunite with them

Arthur Tyler and Naomi Kaplan survived both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

Oxfordshire Yeomanry were the first troops to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on 15 April 1945.

They found prisoners living in appalling conditions of disease, starvation and cruelty, with many thousands of unburied dead.

Ms Kaplan approached Mr Tyler and asked him to write to her remaining family - notifying them that she was alive - giving him the address of her Uncle Bill in Houston, US.

Mr Tyler began a correspondence with her sister Elizabeth Brandon.

After eventually reaching the US, Mrs Kaplan wrote to Mr Tyler to thank him for his kindness.

She said she had asked "very many British soldiers" to help her get in touch with her family, "but nobody did it – only you", she wrote.

In her thank you letter to Arthur Tyler, Naomi Kaplan wrote: "I met very many British soldiers and I asked everybody to write about me to my family, but nobody did it – only you."

For her 80th birthday and to celebrate her life, Mrs Kaplan's three children established an education programme based at Holocaust Museum Houston.

Research by independent historian Dr Myfanwy Lloyd has enabled SOFO to put together the new display of the original letters, family photographs and newspaper reports that tell the story of Mrs Kaplan and Mr Tyler.

Museum director Ursula Corcoran said this was "a powerful reminder that we need to be vigilant against Holocaust denial".

"The new display gives a human face to the Holocaust Memorial Day theme for 2024 - the fragility of freedom," she added.

The exhibition develops SOFO's existing Liberation of Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp display.

Bergen-Belsen is one of the concentration camps that Naomi Kaplan survived