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VE Day: Never give up hope says Auschwitz survivor

Mady Gerrard was 14 when she was taken to Auschwitz concentration camp.

In 1944, when she was just 13 years old, the Nazis arrived in Mady Gerrard's home town in Hungary.

As a Jewish person, she was forced to wear the yellow star, which she called the "cruellest, most humiliating" of their policies.

But that summer, Mady and her school friends were sent to Auschwitz. Of 13 girls, two survived.

On the 75th anniversary of VE Day, Mady, who now lives in Monmouthshire, shares her story of hope.

For years, Mady, now 90, said she lived with the guilt of surviving when so many of her friends died.

More than one million people were killed by the Nazis at the concentration camp in present day Poland during World War Two.

"Every night, overnight, we saw the flames of the crematorium and we smelled the smell," she said.

Mady Gerrard Mady, aged about 12, with her aunt ElizabethMady Gerrard
Mady, aged about 12, with her aunt Elizabeth, not long before the Nazis invaded

The following year, she was taken to Bergen-Belsen camp, in what is now Lower Saxony in northern Germany.

Confronted by the sight of thousands of dead bodies, Mady thought she was going to die, and by April 1945, the German staff started deserting the camp.

"We all knew that we were dying," she said.

"We didn't have any hope. There was no food, there was no water, there was no sanitation."

But in the camps, where she was forced to make plane components, Mady did not give up hope.

The later-celebrated designer used a twig as a knitting needle and wires to turn the parts into necklaces, making them for local German women.

Mady Gerrard Mady and John Randall, they were reunited when she read about him in 2005 and then became friends.Mady Gerrard
Mady and John Randall, were reunited when she read about him in 2005 and then became friends

The camp was liberated when SAS officer, John Randall, stumbled upon the place on a reconnaissance mission.

The memory of his arrival, which signalled the liberation of the camp, is so clear she recalls it "as if he was just walking through that door".

After the war she went to Sweden, where she recovered from her ordeal, and then back to Hungary.

When the revolution broke out in her home country in 1956, she fled with her three-year-old daughter Ildi to Cardiff.

Mady Gerrard Mady in a knitted dress, modellingMady Gerrard
Mady was a celebrated clothes designer in New York

An acclaimed clothes maker and designer, she lived for a while in New York before returning to south Wales and settled near Chepstow.

During the coronavirus pandemic, she celebrated her 90th birthday, but there was no big party because of the lockdown.

Mady said she "hates with a passion" the social distancing rules keeping us all indoors during the coronavirus pandemic.

But she has spent her time crocheting bands to soothe NHS workers' discomfort while wearing face masks.

Mady Gerrard Mady as a young childMady Gerrard
Mady, pictured here as a young child, fled to Cardiff after leaving the concentration camps

Her advice to anyone worried about the virus or struggling with confinement at home?

"Don't give up hope. Just keep on trucking. What can you do?

"In my life, being an optimist was always the best choice.

"I hope that I will be able to do a little bit of something to help until my dying day.

"I hope that more people will realise how much nicer it is to live in peace with other nice people than to be hated and being hated."