'Not long ago, not far away': Holocaust survivors tell their stories 80 years on

Only around 50 survivors were well enough to make the trip to Auschwitz, but even those too frail to travel summoned the strength to relive the horrors of their past. Europe Editor James Mates reports from Auschwitz

]There is something very special about this 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz: almost certainly this will be the last time that the assembled leaders, and the cameras of the world, will hear the living testimonies of those who survived the darkest moment in human history.

Auschwitz, and the Holocaust of which it has become the symbol, will soon move from memory into history.

At exactly the moment the verifiable and documented facts of the Holocaust are being challenged as never before, at a time when anti-semitism is reaching levels not seen since 1945, there will soon be no one left who can say “I was there. I saw it and survived it. Don’t tell me it wasn’t real or that it can’t happen again”.

In the lead up to this anniversary I have been struck by the superhuman efforts being made by the few dozen survivors, most well into their nineties, to tell and retell their stories to anyone who will listen and who can broadcast.

Only around 50 are still well enough to make the trip to Auschwitz, but even those too frail to travel have summoned the strength to relive the horrors of their past.

Renee Salt has a mind as sharp as a tack, but at 95 her body is not what it was. In a retirement home in North London she talked for 45 minutes, almost without pause for breath, about the years 1939 to 1945.

Just 11 years old when the Germans marched into her town near the city of Lodz in central Poland, she and her family were quickly confined in the Lodz ghetto.

Her younger sister, like so many declared “unfit for work”, was swiftly killed.

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Somehow, with the aid of make-up and high heels, Renee convinced the Germans she was 18. It was the first of many small miracles that enabled her to survive.

She spoke of the family’s arrival in Auschwitz.

The last time she saw her father was as they were pushed from the cattle-cars onto the railway sidings.

She stood with her mother in a selection line. In front of her was Dr Joseph Mengele, ‘the butcher of Auschwitz’.

“With a flick of his finger, he directed one to die and one to live. One to the left, one to the right. They took all old people, pregnant women, invalids. People who didn't look fit for work all went to one side, the rest to the other side. Guards moved in and saying to us, you are here now in Auschwitz Birkenau. This is the place where people are being taken straight to the gas chambers."

"We saw skeletons walking and their legs were like matchsticks," Renee Salt told ITV News

Renee somehow survived Mengele, survived Auschwitz, survived the move to Bergen-Belsen, survived typhus and lived long enough to see British tanks break through the gates of the camp to liberate the human-skeletons they found there.

Back in Poland she found just two aunts left alive. Her family, and more than 100 members of her extended family, were all gone.

Astonishingly, having made her way to Paris, she was to meet and marry one of the British soldiers who had liberated her that day.

It is a privilege to talk to these survivors, and to be a part of recording their testimonies so that future generations will hear them, even if only second hand. But the passing of the wartime generation is a challenge for those whose task now is keeping the words ‘never again’ at the forefront of our minds.

The Holocaust Educational Trust is leading that effort.

Karen Pollock reminds us that the Holocaust didn’t start with Auschwitz, but many years before in a society not unlike ours that considered itself modern and civilised.

“We've got to understand that the Holocaust didn't happen out of nowhere. It began with young people, families having to wear yellow stars, being singled out as Jews, being told they can't sit on a park bench or go to the cinema.

“Then eventually, the segregation and deportations. It happened slowly. But it wasn't only the perpetrators. There were people around who were complicit, who allowed it."

Much of the effort today, on the 80th anniversary, is to ensure that - by the time of the 90th or even the centenary - the Holocaust is still regarded as unchallengeable fact, and that the testimonies of the survivors are still believed and revered.

“Not long ago. Not far away.” is the logo of today’s ceremony.

With the unspoken message: ‘don’t be thinking it can’t happen again’.

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