‘We were sub-human’

Zigi, 77, of Gordon Avenue, Stanmore, grew up in Poland's second largest city, Lodz.

At the start of the Second World War the city, which lies to the south west of Warsaw, had a Jewish population of 240,000. When Zigi visited his native town five years ago the terrible consequences of the Nazi regime were still evident - there are just 200 Jews there now.

Zigi said: "Anti Semitism is still present and the taxi driver explained that it was mostly ignorance."

Zigi was ten years old when the Nazis began herding Lodz's Jews into self-contained, walled ghettos.

It was November 1939 and Zigi remembers how the Germans made all Jewish people wear yellow Stars of David on their fronts and backs and that food was scarce.

Zigi's parents had divorced when he was a young boy and he was living with his grandparents. He said: "For an orthodox Jew at that time divorce was worse than death, but I had a normal and happy life with my grandparents who treated me like a son."

But within a short time of being in the confines of the ghetto living on rations of horsemeat, bread, rice and flour and sugar his grandfather passed away leaving him with only his grandmother.

So, Zigi went to work in a metal factory where he got a bowl of soup at lunch time. Without working he could not get rations to feed himself.

"We went to work and at least we were safe when we got home because we were surrounded by our own people."

But in 1941 the Nazis started rounding people up for resettlement - children, men, women and disabled people were herded into lorries by the thousand.

Zigi explained: "On one of these raids I was taken away and slung into lorry, I don't know how and I don't know what made me do it, but I manged to jump off. I ran and ran for about half a mile and luckily the Germans didn't see me, otherwise they would have killed me."

Zigi hid in a house with his cousin for a week before returning to the ghetto and going back to work.

In July 1944 the Nazis decided to liquidate the Lodz ghetto and start transporting Jews to unknown destinations.

"We were allowed to take one suitcase each and we were herded onto cattle trucks, we had no water to drink, it was suffocatingly hot."

When they disembarked they had arrived at Auschwitz concentration camp.

"The sky was hazy and there was a terrible smell. From a distance we saw chimneys with smoke coming out. At that time we didn't realise what it was. But rumours started spreading that it was a crematorium. I still didn't know that meant," said Zigi.

Men and women were separated on arrival, they were made to undress and give up their jewellery and possessions. They were shaved, disinfected and put in communal showers, afterwards they were given striped suits with numbers on to wear.

He recalled: "While at Auschwitz, we did no work at all. We were getting black coffee and a slice of bread morning and evening. We slept three people to a bunk, three bunks high.

"All able-bodied people went to the left, women, babies and little children went to the right - to the gas chambers. Within an hour those people on the right were all dead."

A few weeks later Zigi was moved to Stuthoff concentration camp near Danzig where conditions were worse and the camp was smaller, it was the middle of winter and the prisoners kept warm by huddling together to form a human oven' in the freezing conditions.

Zigi explained: "A few hundred people would huddle together, as those in the middle got warm they went to the outside of the group and so on. I managed to sneak into the middle as I was so small. It got so bad after a while that I didn't think I would survive - the cold, the lack of food and no warm clothing."

After a short stay at Burschgrabben, a return to Danzig and a ten-day barge trip with no food or water and suffering from typhus, the Nazis decided to march the remaining survivors 15km to Neustadt.

Zigi said: "I was still ill and had it not been for my friends who helped me to walk I would have been shot if I had fallen down, as anyone who fell was immediately shot."

But on May 3, 1945 he was liberated by the British army.

He said: "I kept asking the British soldier for water in German, he understood and he gave me some. That was the first water I had drunk in days. It was the first time in five years that I had any food or drink as a free man."

Today Zigi is married to Jeannette and has two daughters, Michelle and Lorraine, and six grandchildren. His grandmother died the day the war ended.

He said: "I can't blame a young person for things their grandparents did, I don't hate the German people. I find in my life one of the worst things you can do is hate, if you hate you are always bitter and you are the one who suffers.

"Also you can never give up, however bad it is, it can only get better." he said, leaning back into the chair he is sitting on in the lobby of the synagogue as streams of children walk past on their way to workshops to learn more about one of the most devastating periods of recent history.