A few months before the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944, I was at a synagogue and three men were telling me about some terrible things they’d heard happening to Jews across Europe. 

Gas chambers, incinerators and forced labour camps sounded too heinous to be true.

Those were the days before the internet – and even listening to a radio tuned to a non-government frequency was prohibited – so there was no way to verify what they were saying.

If I’d known back then that I’d end up in Auschwitz just a few months later, I’d have done everything in my power to escape that fate.

I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in a small Hungarian town called Makó. Unfortunately, some of my earliest memories are of people throwing rocks at me while I was walking down the street and calling me a ‘dirty Jew’.

I was around seven years old when World War Two started in 1939, but at that time Hungary was allied with Germany so my home country initially resisted Nazi pressure.

By 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary and the far-right Arrow Cross Party came into power – that was when my world changed immeasurably. Jews had to identify themselves by wearing a yellow star and we couldn’t associate with non-Jews so we were forced to move into tightly-packed ghettos.

Not long after, my father and eldest brother were taken away. We didn’t know it at the time but they were sent to a forced labour camp – I would never see them again.

The rest of my family were forced onto overcrowded cattle wagons and taken to another ghetto in the city of Szeged. A couple of days later, we were forced onto another transport on its way to Auschwitz.

The journey on the overcrowded cattle truck took about five days. Luckily we had some leftover food on us but I remember having to share two buckets of water between around 80 people.

None of us had any idea what was going on and of course, we were terrified. Some people tragically didn’t make it to the end of the journey.

Once the trucks stopped, I could hear and see people speaking Yiddish working along the train tracks. Thankfully, I could understand what they were saying, which was for all children to pretend they were at least 16 years old.

When we were eventually let off the transports, we were herded into the camp and forced into two lines – able-bodied men and youngsters on one side and women and children on the other. I started walking alongside my mother and said ‘I want to come with you Mummy’ but she told me, ‘go and stand with your brother’. The luxury of arguing wasn’t an option so I did what I was told.

On my way back, a man with white gloves stopped me and asked in German, ‘how old are you?’ Even though I was only 12 at the time, I responded in German that I was 16 years old. He paused for a second and then waved me through to join my older brother.

I never saw my mother and sisters again. I would also later learn that the man in white gloves was Dr Josef Mengele – also known as the Angel of Death.

Daily life was tough as I was placed into a holding camp for prisoners awaiting orders to begin forced labour. My brother, however, got picked to take the bodies out of the gas chambers to be incinerated. It was horrifying.

I was given an ID number but they’d run out of ink on the day they were tattooing them so I never got it tattooed on me. My days were mostly spent wandering around between roll calls and lining up for meagre meals. It was really tough but I made sure to do exactly what anyone asked of me.

In January 1945, the Nazis evacuated the camp after mounting pressure from the Russian army descending from the east. We were sent to the Allach concentration camp – which was even smaller – where I was forced to do gruelling manual labour like digging underground bases with basic tools. It was really tough, especially for a 12-year-old child.

At one point, I was so run down that I got typhus and was sent to hospital. Doctors – who didn’t actually give us any medication – only visited twice a day to check whether or not we were fit to go back to work. If you got too ill, you’d simply be sent to the gas chambers.

After a few months, we were forced to march to Dachau, which took a total of seven days. It was exhausting but when we arrived, it was too full so a general was told to take us to the mountains to be killed.

The German official refused – fearing consequences from allied forces if he carried out the order – so as we were being held in an open field, many of us took the opportunity to escape.

My brother and I just ran as fast as we could and eventually came across an anti-aircraft battery – a base designed to gun down aircraft – that was abandoned. Along with two other escaped prisoners, the four of us hid for our lives.

We survived by scavenging and somebody actually managed to catch a rabbit so we could make a stew. Obviously, we couldn’t eat more than a few mouthfuls, but it kept us fed for a while.

A few days later, we heard a knock on the door of the based and were immediately scared it was Nazi troops coming to capture us again. The intruders came in and thankfully we saw it was American soldiers who had liberated the camp. We actually offered them some stew but they didn’t really fancy it.

For the next few months, my brother and I lived in a displaced persons’ camp provided by the Red Cross and I’ll never forget the feeling of sleeping on a bed again for the first time. It felt like heaven on Earth.

This is when we learned that neither of our parents or six other siblings had survived. It was devastating.

While at the camp, we were presented with several options about where we could immigrate to. Going back home wasn’t possible so we decided to go to England because they’d opened up their borders to allow Jewish refugees at the time.

For a few months before we actually left for England, we were given English lessons to prepare us and courses on how to behave. In one of my first classes, they told us to learn the word ‘sorry’ because that was a very British thing to say and also to never refuse a cup of tea because it was rude.

Because we were among the youngest survivors liberated, my brother and I were one of the first people to arrive in the UK. Even though we could see the devastating effects of the war – like the Blitz – it was still worlds away from where we’d come from.

One of my first impressions being in London was seeing traffic lights and wondering why I couldn’t see the person controlling the lights changing. It was just so different but we were beyond thankful for all of the support we received from both the Red Cross and the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief. 

For the first few years, we moved from hostel to hostel around the country – like Southampton, Ascott and Manchester. I was eventually enrolled into a theological college in Egham and then the Organization for Rehabilitation through Training (ORT), which had electrical engineering lessons in the morning and then general education in the afternoon.

When I was around 18, I opened up my own business as a blouse cutter in the garment trade – along with a friend of mine who I’d met in a hostel – because I didn’t really have any knowledge or financial means for anything else.

Around the same time, my business partner introduced me to his cousin, who he described as a ‘nice Jewish girl’. We met and eventually ended up marrying, as well as having four wonderful children together. My son-in-law is still carrying on the business I started all those years ago, expanding into manufacturing garments for retail outlets.

Throughout my life in the UK, I never really spoke about my time during the Holocaust. I just wanted to forget it ever happened so my children didn’t even really know what I’d been through.

It wasn’t until the 50th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day that anyone really heard about that part of my life. As a representative on the board of management for my local synagogue, I was invited to speak at a special ceremony honouring Holocaust survivors. 

I was too nervous about sharing my story so I actually put forward a friend of mine. But when my friend pulled out of the event two weeks before it was due to happen, I had no choice but to step in and do it myself.

Two sleepless weeks passed and I got up on the stage and shared the details of my life to an enraptured audience. After I finished, people came up to me and said how powerful it was to hear firsthand from an Auschwitz survivor. Some people never even knew I went through it all. 

From that moment on, I’ve been invited to speak at countless schools, events and synagogues across the country.

On the 70-year anniversary to mark the end of World War Two, I was honoured by the Queen with a British Empire Medal, which was one of the best moments of my life.

And in 2015, I testified against former Nazi guard Oskar Groening. As I was giving my testimony, I looked up and I just felt pity at a man who helped assist in the murder of around 300,000 people during the Holocaust.

These days, I feel conflicted about opening up about my story because I know how much it needs to be told, otherwise we’ll just repeat the mistakes of the past over and over again.

But every time I open up about it, I relive the horrible atrocities I witnessed with my very own eyes.

It never gets any easier to share what happened to me in Auschwitz, but I do it out of respect for all of the people who lost their lives. 

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