The Times and Independent Series have teamed up with Jewish Care's Holocaust Survivors Centre in Hendon to tell the stories of those who saw first hand the atrocities of the Second World War. Here is Sigi Ciffer's story.

SIGI Ciffer, 91, is one of ten children and they were the only Jewish family in a small village in Hungary. Only Sigi, two brothers and a sister survived the Holocaust.

Aged 14 when war broke out, his recollection is that life was very hard.

Rising anti-Semitism meant he and his brothers and sisters were sent to Jewish schools up to 40 km from his home where they boarded with other families.

In 1939, Mr Ciffer went to a town called Gyor and was apprenticed to a glazier.

He learnt glazing, picture framing and polishing glass for sliding doors. In 1944, fully qualified, he returned to his village.

Two days later the Germans occupied Hungary and soon after the family were sent to the Papa ghetto.

Mr Ciffer was then sent to a military barracks Koszeg as a forced labourer. He worked in a foundry and then on a farm.

For a number of months Mr Ciffer was moved around Europe, travelling on top of trains and living on his wits, but finally he was taken to Mauthausen camp – in his words “a terrible place”. He describes the work as very hard, physical labour.

From there he was taken by the SS and marched to Gunsckirhen 60km away with no food or water.

Mr Ciffer said: “My brother refused to walk any further. He said let them kill us, let them shoot us, we will not survive anyway.

“He lived to be 90.”

The brothers were two of 18,000 people in a barracks in the middle of the forest until May 1945 when he finally heard voices shouting “we are free”.

Mr Ciffer, at this time 20, with his brother Michael, 23, describes being walked out the camp by the Americans – at first convinced they were SS because it was pitch black and he could not see their uniform.

He said: “We were walking, it was pitch dark. I heard my cousin’s voice. I had not seen him since 1938, it was now 1945 – eight years later. I couldn’t see him, I called out – and it was him.

“I thought we were being brought by SS men to kill us. One of the soldiers said ‘we’re not SS men, we’re American’.

“I asked him how he spoke Hungarian then, and he told me his mother was Hungarian and we were going to the nearest hospital to help us.”

After the war, Mr Ciffer found out his parents had been sent to Auschwitz. His youngest brother had also perished in the camp. His eldest brother had gone to Kiev in 1942 and had died in Germany on December 25, 1944.

Another brother, who had contracted polio as a child, was living in America and well looked after.

In 1946 Mr Ciffer arrived in England and was met by his sister Emma who he hadn’t seen for eight years.

He carried on his glazing career, working in a mirror factory. He married Sidy Singer in 1953 and they have three children and ten grandchildren and is now a keen artist.

He said: “I cannot understand it myself, but I do not hate the Germans.”