In 1944, Mr Shipper and his grandmother, whom he was brought up by, were taken to a train station and transported to Auschwitz. Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch co-founded the English Chamber Orchestra and in 1952 married musician Peter Wallfisch, her childhood friend who had left Germany in the 1930s. Arek Hersh recounts his experience as a prisoner, at the age of only 14, in the notorious death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

All the children from the orphanage were all sent to the left-hand side and I knew that was the wrong place to be. He was then taken from camp to camp by the Nazis, witnessing some of history’s worst crimes against humanity as he passed through each one. He saw the first experiments with gassing Jews, as the prisoners were rounded up and shuffled into a van which had the exhaust pipe pumping fumes into it. Arek spoke of the coaches that brought the prisoners to the camp, where he even witnessed starving prisoners resorting to eating the arm of a dead compatriot. He told Kate: 'Well, I know that many survivors have not had a peaceful night’s sleep, many even to this day. Invariably they have nightmares. Six million Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered in Nazi Germany's network of death and concentration camps between 1941 and 1945.He joined the friendship association and I joined with him and he started talking in schools. He never shut up then.” Arek came to Britain as one of the “Windermere Boys”, rehabilitating in the Lake District, before settling first in Liverpool and later in Leeds. Arek did not speak about his experiences until the publication of his book, ‘A Detail of History’ in 1995, and since then has become one of the UK’s most prominent Holocaust education campaigners, touring schools and universities across the country to speak with younger generations about the horrors of the Holocaust. He has also worked closely with the National Holocaust Centre and Museum and other organisations to preserve the testimony of survivors, and seen his story featured in multiple TV documentaries. After liberation, Arek was transported to England with 300 other children. They were given just 8 hours of English lessons and had to learn the rest for themselves. He told how his older brother, who had escaped the nazis’ clutches, offered to surrender himself to save Arek. But the nazis were going to take them all anyway.

Only 732 were found, of which 300 were accommodated at the Calgarth Estate at Windermere, wartime housing for aeroplane factory workers. She made headlines last year when, with the help of her great-grandson Dov, she was reunited with the American soldier who penned her a heartfelt note on a German banknote after she was liberated from a Nazi Death March in 1945. Arek now lives in Leeds, but travels all over the country to speak about his experiences. In 2009, he was awarded an MBE for Voluntary Service to Holocaust Education. They formed a charity together in 1963 called The '45 Aid Society, raising money for those in need. There they were loaded onto open wagons again, once more with no provisions against hunger or the cold. This journey continued for many days and nights, Arek was even reduced to eating grass during a rare break from the journey. Many men died during this journey.

Harry Olmer

We were facing a selection which meant shuffling along single file until we faced an SS man who would say "left or right". Leonard Montefiore was born in London in June 1889. A leading philanthropist from a prominent Jewish family, he studied at Oxford before serving in the First World War. He then returned to London and dedicated himself to numerous Jewish organisations, including the Central British Fund.

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. Arek told how he instinctively saved his own life at Auschwitz by dashing from a line of old people, women and children selected for gassing, to a line of male adults and young men selected for work. Those in the church were taken to Chelmno death camp where they were gassed and buried in mass graves.

When they heard they were about to lose the war, the day before the camp was liberated, SS staff blew up the gas chambers and crematorium. They have been left exactly as they were. After three and a half weeks on the train, mostly without food, they arrived in Czechoslovakia. On 4 May 1945, 600 of the original 4,500 men from Buchenwald arrived at Roundnice. The train was finally taken to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where, four days later, on 8 May, they were liberated by the Russian army. Arek had survived, but virtually all his family had been murdered. His only surviving relative was Mania, his eldest sister, whom he found in Ulm, Germany, in 1947.