A Detail of History

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Brought up in a musical family in the then-German town of Breslau but now Wroclaw in Poland, Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch survived both the notorious extermination camp and the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The camp was abandoned just days before the war ended and Manfred and other prisoners were sent on a death march in appalling conditions, before he was finally liberated at Neustadt in Germany on 3 May 1945.

Arek Hersh MBE, aged 94, from Leeds, is a Polish-born Holocaust survivor who was aged 11 when he was first taken to a concentration camp, experiencing horrors in multiple camps - including Auschwitz - and surviving a death march before finally being liberated from Theresienstadt in May 1945. Arek and the other 150 people were taken to Lodz. The president of the ghetto demanded that the ghetto population should hand over 10,000 children. Arek knew he fell into that category. He managed to hide from the SS in a cemetery while the ghetto children were taken to Chelmno where they were also gassed. Alone, and without his family, Arek was accepted into the orphanage where he worked in the textile mill and was able to find food. He stayed there for two years.So what is the relevance of the Holocaust experiences of Arek, Eugene and the other survivors in the face of the rise of the far-right in Europe today, including the UK? We were woken up with music, dancing - the Russian army liberated us on the 8 May 1945. And I did survive. We had no parents, we had no brothers or sisters, we had nobody. We’re just on our own. Everyone was on their own. In his portrait, Arek rests his right hand on his left arm, covering the spot that bears a tattooed number from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

I just think I've been dealt a difficult one': Amy Dowden says she feels 'angry' about her devastating breast cancer diagnosis and reveals how her fellow Strictly stars are supporting her Ms Ebert was on one of the last trains carrying Hungarian Jews to enter Auschwitz in 1944, enduring months at Birkenau before being transported to Altenburg, a sub-camp of Buchenwald. Speaking to Kate in 2021, he said: 'So after a few days we came to the station, I said to my grandmother "I can’t see any trains".Mr Shipper said his first six months in the UK 'were hell' because he missed his friends so much but that he went on to have a 'wonderful, wonderful life'. The Calgarth estate programme was designed to be a temporary scheme, running for four months, after which, the younger children would be placed in the care of foster families, and the older ones would live in hostels and prepare for work. Hersh moved first to Liverpool with his friends and then Manchester. He trained as an electrician, but eventually, living in Leeds after marrying Jean, he bought and let property, mainly to students. Somewhere along the line, in the 1950s, he shortened his name from Herszlikowicz, because he was fed up with having to spell it out. Arek found out after the end of the war that 81 of his relatives, including his closest family — mother, father, sisters and brother — had been murdered by the nazis. Auschwitz survivor Arek Hersh MBE: "I wanted to live. I wanted to survive." ". LeftLion . Retrieved 6 January 2020.

In 1944, Mr Shipper and his grandmother, whom he was brought up by, were taken to a train station and transported to Auschwitz. In 1939 his father escaped to the Soviet Union, believing that it was only young Jewish men who were at risk, and not children or the elderly, and Mr Shipper never saw him again. His grandmother tragically died the day of the liberation.Before the war, Arek had a happy childhood in Sieradz, Poland, skating and sledding with his four siblings.