Holocaust Memorial Day: Survivors share their experiences

"I've got to talk about it," an Auschwitz survivor has said as the UK marks Holocaust Memorial Day.

Ivor Perl was born in 1932 in Mako, Hungary, and grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Aged 12, he was taken by train to the concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

"My brother literally saved me from the gas chamber three times," he said.

"There's hardly any day that doesn't go by without some sort of connection to the Holocaust.

"I was 12 years old. I survived. Why? Why did I survive? I feel as though, especially as there are less and less of us left alive, I've got to talk about it."

Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust - the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe's Jewish population.

Auschwitz was at the centre of the genocide. At least 1.1 million people were murdered in the camp complex in just over four-and-a-half years.

Those deported to Auschwitz were gassed, starved, worked to death and killed in medical experiments.

Mr Perl said his mother, father and eight siblings were killed when they arrived at Auschwitz in 1944.

"There's only me and my brother Alec, who was two years older than me, who survived," he said.

Mr Perl said he and his brother made it to England in 1945, and settled in London.

Vera Schaufeld, who was evacuated from Prague to England on the Kindertransport in 1939, said it was important to her to talk to people who survived the concentration camps.

Her mother and father, who was the head of the Jewish community in their hometown, sent her away when the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia.

The family hoped to be reunited, but the Red Cross told Ms Schaufeld her parents did not survive the war.

She went on to become a teacher in England, and lives in London.

"I always felt that coming on the children's transport was something so minor, which it was compared to people who were in the camps," she said.

"My husband had been in concentration camps and had just survived. Ivor and my husband really suffered."

Both Mr Perl and Ms Schaufeld work with the Holocaust Educational Trust to share their experiences with others.

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