A Detail of History

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Bingley Grammar School | Bingley Grammar School - Arek Hersh visits Yr 9". www.bingleygrammar.org. Archived from the original on 1 February 2020 . Retrieved 6 January 2020. Six million Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered in Nazi Germany's network of death and concentration camps between 1941 and 1945. 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. He joined the friendship association and I joined with him and he started talking in schools. He never shut up then.”

On the morning of 14 August 1945 towards the end of the second world war, 16-year-old Arek Hersh and 300 other Jewish children boarded a squadron of 10 converted Stirling bombers and took off from Prague. They were organised in groups of 30 to each aeroplane, with 15 sitting on each side on the floor. Hersh remembers it vividly: “They cut us some bread,” he says. “We thought it was cake. They gave us each a piece and it was great.” About eight hours later, they landed at RAF Crosby-on-Eden, near Carlisle. It churns everything up,” she says. “But I’m determined, hoping it makes a difference. It starts from childhood, teaching them to be kind to each other. We’ve got to tolerate each other. She was among those child survivors who were awarded an British Empire Medal in the Queen's Birthday Honours 2018. These visits are clearly still not easy – why does he put himself through it? “Because I don’t want people to think that it just happened many moons ago, and people forgot about it,” he says. “I talk to everybody, so young people know that what actually happened to me can happen to anybody. That’s the main reason I do it.” 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.In January 1945 Arek was among the thousands of men and women from Auschwitz forced onto a death march towards Germany. They marched for days until they eventually reached the large town of Katowice, where they were put into goods wagons. The journey in those wagons, destination unknown, lasted for several days without food. Mrs Lasker-Wallfisch and her sister Renate were conscripted to work at a paper factory, but were arrested and imprisoned for helping forge documents for French prisoners of war.

They were marched through freezing conditions, with no food or rest. Those who lagged behind were shot. When they reached a Katowice, Poland, they were put into goods wagons and began the journey to Buchenwald concentration camp. The journey lasted several days, and they were given no food. Arek and his friend had managed to steal a bag of semolina from Auschwitz, which staved off some of the hunger. Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, Arek met with the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at Downing Street to share his story, and was presented with his award (pictured above and below, alongside his wife Jean Hersh and daughter Michelle Tanam – photo credit Simon Dawson/No10 Downing Street). Mr Hersh says: "I was taken out of Auschwitz on the death march. Outside it was minus 23 degrees and we were just in our striped suits. It was as if we had been taken to another world…A friendly world, a beautiful world. After everything we’d been through, we could not believe it.” She explained that she was searching for her son and had found his name on a British Red Cross List.He survived the Lodz ghetto, forced labour at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death march to Buchenwald and finally Theresienstadt. In his portrait, Arek rests his right hand on his left arm, covering the spot that bears a tattooed number from Auschwitz-Birkenau. During the Second World War, Montefiore became a key figure in the attempt to rescue young Jewish refugees from Europe and in 1945, welcomed over 700 to England - the first 300 of whom came to Windermere. Related Media Centre Links He was made to leave all his clothes and possessions, had his head and body shaved and was made to shower. He was given a striped suit to wear and was tattooed with the number B7608. From that day onward Arek lost his name and was only referred to by his number. There was nowhere you could sit down. If you sat down, they sat on top of you. I was praying that maybe - I was so bad, I was - that I said to myself, "I hope someone would die, so I would have somewhere to sit down". Every morning they use take out the dead bodies, so eventually I had somewhere to sit down.

Amazingly, Arek survived by eating grass and cooking the leather from his shoes. He watched as some Russian and Ukranian prisoners of war resorted to cutting the flesh from dead bodies, cooking it in boiling water, and eating it. Eventually, he was released to return to his ghetto home in Lodz. He recalled his thoughts as he walked away from the barbed-wire fencing: “If ever there was a hell, this is it.” Escaping death at Auschwitz – Arek Hersh tells his story". University of Huddersfield . Retrieved 6 January 2020. Survivors today, with the actors who play them in The Windermere Children (left to right): Chaim ‘Harry’ Olmer, Kacper Swietek, Arek Hersh, Tomasz Studzinski, Pascal Fischer, Ben Helfgott, Marek Wroblewski, Sam Laskier, Kuba Sprenger, Ike Alterman. Photograph: Helen Sloan/BBC/Wall to Wall/ZDF

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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. 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. In August 1942 the Nazis decided to liquidate the ghetto. 4000 people were made to assemble in the church. Arek ran away on pretence of getting some water and went to join a group of people who had been selected to work.