The man who stumbled on HELL

 

 

	The man who stumbled on HELL: His place in history has never been revealed. But a just published memoir by an SAS officer recounts how he uncovered the horrors of Belsen Lieutenant John Randal thought iron gates led to a grand country house Then he saw figures, dressed in rags, shuffling from a hut Trying not to retch at the smell, Randall addressed the prisoners Afterwards he noticed the emaciated corpses locked in hideous embraces The camp contained 50,000 prisoners, most of all near death Suffering: Lt John Randall uncovered the horrors of Belsen When Lieutenant John Randall first saw the iron gates, he thought they were the entrance to a grand country house. Beyond them led a track that curved into a dark wood of pines and silver birch. Intrigued, Randall ordered his corporal to turn the Jeep to the left. The safer option would have been to have driven on, but the winged dagger badge on his beret meant that Randall was not that type of man. The regimental motto of the SAS is ‘Who Dares Wins’, and what the 25-year-old dared to do that day would stay with him for the rest of his life. As the two men headed into the woods, Randall sensed danger, and drew his pistol from his holster. The Jeep drove through the trees, then emerged into the brightness of a vast clearing in which stood numerous ranks of one-storey wooden huts. Randall saw the SS guards first. Normally, he would have shot those wearing the dreaded uniform on sight, but these men seemed to pose no threat that April morning. Instead, they merely stared at the two SAS men. Randall’s attention was drawn to something else, the like of which he had never seen. Emerging from the huts was a shuffling group of figures, some of whom were dressed in rags, while others were naked. Their bodies were skeletal, their skin yellow. Rising from them was a hubbub of noise, as they pleaded for the SAS men to help them. Doing his best not to retch at the smell, Randall stood and addressed the prisoners. He told them that he was simply the very tip of the Allied advance, and that he would shortly be followed by those who would be able to help. Although he was not to know it at the time, one of those he spoke to was a 15-year-old Hungarian Jew called Mady Goldgruber. She had spotted the Jeep through the filthy window of her hut, and despite being extremely weak, had managed to stagger outside. After spending years in a series of Nazi camps — including Auschwitz — Mady regarded the arrival of these two British soldiers as a miracle. +7 Aftermath: During the liberation of Belsen in April 1945. S.S. guards were forced to remove the bodies of their victims into lorries on their way to be buried Before the desperate men, women and children could grab them, the corporal drove off, pulling up some yards away in front of what Randall initially thought was a vast potato patch. This, though, was no vegetable garden. All that was sown here was death, hundreds of emaciated, naked corpses, locked together in hideous embraces. Although he did not know it, on that day — April 15, 1945 — John Randall made history, as he became the first Allied soldier to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. The compound contained more than 50,000 prisoners, nearly all of whom were near to death. Around them lay the corpses of a further 13,000 — proof, if it were needed, of the utter barbarism of the Nazi regime. Most accounts of Belsen focus on the work of a British officer called Brigadier Llewellyn Glyn Hughes and he has become most closely associated with the liberation of the camp. Arriving shortly after Randall, it was Glyn Hughes who, as senior medical officer, had the immense responsibility of tending to the sick and cleaning up the camp. However, as a new book reveals, it was Randall — now 94 years old — who was the first Allied soldier to enter what was undeniably a living hell. Although he was an officer in the SAS, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw that day. He had been fighting in Europe since parachuting into France in July 1944, during which time he had served as a radio operator alongside the French Resistance. +7 Starved: Emaciated allied prisoners of war are released at Belsen after their colleagues stormed the camp Together with his driver, Cpl Brown, Randall had also seen action. Early one morning in August, the two had driven into a small village near Epernay in the Champagne region, where they saw a firing squad of SS men lined up. In front of them, standing against the wall of a church, were six French civilians in blindfolds, all of whom were clearly about to be shot. Randall knew that he had to act quickly, and his elite training kicked in. He stood up, and took hold of the powerful Vickers machine gun that was mounted on the Jeep. He pulled the trigger, and scores of heavy .50 calibre rounds tore into the SS men. Within a few seconds, the Germans lay either dead or dying. Today, Randall is modest about the fact that he saved so many French lives in a single, courageous action. When interviewed about the episode, all he says is: ‘We had the satisfaction of eliminating the German patrol.’ It is that modest reticence that has seen Randall described as the ‘last gentleman of the SAS’, and indeed, the epithet fits, even if it may disgruntle other SAS officers and troopers. +7 Cramped: Female inmates at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, many of them sick and dying of typhus and starvation, wait inside a barrack in 1945 However, when Randall arrived at Belsen, he had to summon all his self-control to deal with those who ran the concentration camp. Those Germans who remained were a minimum staff, but among them was the commandant, Josef Kramer, and Irma Grese, who was in charge of the female prisoners. Kramer had the nerve to approach Randall and to introduce himself and the blonde Grese with a chilling half-smile. ‘To our astonishment he offered us a guided tour of the camp,’ Randall recalled many years later. ‘We followed them. We pushed open the door of one of the huts and were overpowered by the stench. ‘Emaciated figures peered out at us, in fear and surprise, from the rows of bunks. Lying among them, on the same bunks, were dead bodies.’ By now, Randall and his driver had been joined by two other SAS men — Major John Tonkin, and the battle-hardened Sergeant-Major Reg Seekings. As the British left one of the huts, they saw one of the guards beating up a prisoner — the type of event that had taken place every day for the past five years of the camp’s existence. The German had finally picked the wrong day to do it. A furious Seekings asked permission from Major Tonkin to teach the guard a lesson. Permission was granted. ‘So Reg went over and hit the guard in the face,’ Randall recalled. ‘He got up and was then knocked out by another punch to the head.’ +7 Conditions: Inmates of the camp near Hannover had to carry the emaciated bodies of others while hundreds lay on the floor, dead After that, Kramer and Grese were put immediately under arrest. Both were hanged that December, after a trial that shocked the world when it exposed the depths of sadism to which the Nazis had sunk. Witnesses testified to the fact that Grese — nicknamed the ‘Beast of Belsen’ — had even whipped women to death. Randall left Belsen after only an hour. His reconnaissance mission was still not complete, and it was clear that neither he nor Cpl Brown had the ability to help the prisoners. Not only was there a terrible risk of catching typhus, but the prisoners needed specialist medical care. That came soon enough, along with two British journalists, one of whom was Richard Dimbleby — father of David and Jonathan. It was Dimbleby’s harrowing report — which the BBC initially refused to broadcast because executives could not believe the scenes that he described — that brought the attention of the world to the savagery of Belsen. ‘This day at Belsen was the most horrible day of my life,’ Dimbleby reported. ‘I saw it all — furnaces where thousands have been burned alive. The pit — 15ft deep — as big as a tennis court, piled to the top at one end with naked bodies. +7 Allied soldiers were greeted with a sea of bodies and mass graves as they arrived to liberate the camp in 1945 ‘The British bulldozers — digging a new pit for the hundreds of bodies lying all over the camp days after death. The dark huts, piled with human filth in which the dead and dying are lying together.’ Randall’s war would end when he was fortunate enough to witness Montgomery taking the German surrender, but that short time in Belsen would stay with him for ever. In particular, the awful smell seemed to linger. ‘The stench was horrific,’ Randall said. ‘It was a mixture of rotting flesh and excrement — a smell that I couldn’t get rid of for weeks. I would wake in the night with this ghastly smell in my nose.’ After leaving the Army, Randall tried to put Belsen behind him. He married, had two children, ran a very successful business consultancy, and then became senior course director at the Institute  of Marketing. However, nearly ten years ago, he was interviewed for a newspaper about his experiences to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Belsen. For a 75-year-old woman called Mady Gerrard living in Wales, the article struck a deep chord, as did the accompanying photograph of the young Lieutenant Randall. +7 Horrifying: Some of the dead were piled up in rows in the forest on the outskirts of the camp ‘I screamed,’ Mady recalled, ‘because in front of my eyes was the face that I had been carrying around in my head for 60 years.’ Mady Gerrard was, of course, Mady Goldgruber. She had survived the war, and had created a new life for herself as a clothes designer in the  U.S. and Britain. She immediately wrote a letter to Randall, and a few days later,  he called her at home. ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Mady shouted down the phone. ‘I cannot believe that I am talking with the man who basically saved my life!’ Six decades after their first encounter, John and Mady met in somewhat different circumstances when they had lunch at the Special Forces Club in London. They chatted for three hours. Typically, John came across as the complete gentleman, and Mady even said to him: ‘You not only turned out to be the most important man in my life, but as a bonus you are a very nice person, too!’ When Mady wrote a book about her life, John wrote the foreword. In it, he assured readers that nothing could compare to ‘the actual experience of seeing with my own eyes the true horror of the situation at Belsen’.		How hundreds of Jews escaped the horrors of Nazi concentration camps by jumping from heavily guarded trains Around 764 Jews jumped from Nazi trains, according to new research Some passengers were angry at escapees due to fears for their own safety Escapees were torn between leaving someone behind and survival True scale of those who escaped has been revealed for first time It was the difference between life and horrific certain death - a decision to use urine from latrine bucket as part of an escape plan, which helped save Leo Bretholz’s life. Bretholz was one of many on a guarded train packed with Jews, which left Paris and for Auschwitz on November 5, 1943. With the latrine overflowing and located in the middle of the floor on the railway cattle wagon headed for the death camp in Nazi occupied Poland, Bretholz used its contents to help him jump from the train, the Independent reported. He was one of at least 764 people who escaped the Holocaust by leaping from trains, a surprising  figure drawn from new research.  +6 Jews wearing the star emblem, arrive in Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland in June 1944 +6 A freight car, used used to transport Jews, gypsies and other political prisoners to concentration camps, where many were killed Bretholz, then 21, and friend Manfred Silberstein tried desperately for hours to force apart iron bars a small window in the side of the wagon in the hope they would pass out of them. Despite their best efforts using pullovers as ropes, the bars refused to give. Another person on the train proposed they soak the makeshift ropes in urine, as it could strengthen their grip on the bars. Desperate to escape, Bretholz said he put aside feelings of sickness and nausea in the next steps he took.  'I bent down and soaked my pullover in urine. There were bits of excrement floating in it. I felt humiliated. It was the most disgusting thing I had ever done,' he said. With the fellow passanger's advice working, Bretholz and his friend successfully pulled the bars far enough apart for them to squeeze their way out. But their battle for survival was far from over once they were on the outside the edge of the wagon, with the two young men trying to avoid the guards' searchlights. It was not until the train passed a corner that the pair used a concave shadow to hide them as they jumped. Getting a second chance at life, the two miraculously survived the escape and risky jump, with  Bretholz spending the rest of World War II evading the Nazis.  +6 Escape: Leo Bretholz, who died last week at 93 Aged 93, Bretholz died in the US a week ago, coinciding with new historical research published in Germany. The work tells the unheard stories of about those who cheated death by jumping from Nazi trains leaving from France, Belgium and Holland for death camps. Historian Tanja von Fransecky spent four years interviewing people and researching archives in Europe and Israel for her study Jewish Escapes from Deportation Trains. She said was shocked at the number who survived the Holocaust by jumping trains. 'I was amazed that this happened at all. I had always assumed that the wagons were stuffed full prior to departure and simply opened on arrival and that not much could happen in between,' she said. During her research, the author found this was not the case, with desperate attempts by passengers trying to break free from the Nazi trains with the aid of smuggled tools in some cases, or by people improvising, such as Bretholz with the urine-drenched pullovers.But would-be escapees often faced anger from fellow passengers, who feared for their own lives if others successfully got away. Their concerns were on the back of threats that everyone would be shot if someone escape and fears over who would care for children, the old and the sick. This placed the escapees in a deep moral dilemma, torn between leaving someone behind and fighting to live, Dr von Fransecky said. For this reason, the author said many survivors kept silent in the years following the war, including Simon Gronowski, 82, kept quite about his jump to freedom for almost 60 years. At just 11 years old, Gronowski was held in a Nazi transit camp near Antwerp, Belgium. With his father escaping the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's feared secret police force, the young boy hoped to rejoin his dad. +6 Prisoners arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. In the background chimneys of the crematory can be seen, used to burn the bodies of the murdered prisoners. It is believed 2.5 and 4 million people, mostly Jews, were killed here by the Nazi regime until the end of World War II in 1945 +6 Death camp: The snow-covered train tracks lead to the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Nazi's had the concentration camp established in 1940 and enlarged to an extermination camp in 1941 After hearing about people leaping off trains, he used his bunk bed in the Nazi camp to practice jumping in preparation for his own escape. In March 1943, Gronowski and his mother were among those packed onto a cattle wagon with Auschwitz awaiting them at the end of their journey. Getting his chance to beat death, the young boy was encouraged by  a group of resistance fighter's raid, which freed 17 Jews from the train. A group of men in Gronowski’s wagon were able to force open the door, but with the train building speed, the young boy paused while hesitating. Taking the jump off the train, his mother’s last words to him were that the train was going too fast. While he survived, his mother was murder in Auschwitz shortly after. Willy Berler was 25 when he was imprisoned aboard an Auschwitz transport travelling through Belgium - but he did not jump. Part of a group of six young male prisoners, they broke open a cattle wagon window, which enabled them to escape one by one. Watching anxiously as the person before him climbed through the window, Berler was next, but as he pulled himself through, was confronted with a 'horrible sight'. 'The boy was caught between two wagons and his head had been crushed between the buffers like a melon.' Berler said in hindsight, if he knew what awaited him in Auschwitz, he would have jumped, but unlike thousands of others, he survived the camp. Simon Gronowski lost his sister in Auschwitz and only resolved his traumatic experiences in 2002, when he had a reunion with the armed guard who forced him and his family on to the death camp train in 1943. In the meeting, the guard begged him for forgiveness, with the two men weeping as they fell into each others’ arms. 'My life has been full of miracles,' Mr Gronowski now likes to say. +6 Red Cross workers care for 2,500 Jewish slave laborers who were being transported by train to camps behind Nazi lines when freed by rapidly advancing US Ninth Army infantrymen. Many prisoners died during the rail ride from malnutrition and lack of medical attention

 

Even though they were taken in color, the images of Dachau concentration camp, where tens of thousands were imprisoned and killed by the Nazis, appear bleak and foreboding. What is even more chilling than the sight of drainage ditches to catch the blood of victims, or the images of gas chambers, is that the man behind the camera in 1950 was Hugo Jaeger - one of Hitler's personal photographers. The events that unfolded in Dachau continue to haunt the world 81 years after it first opened its gates on March 22, 1933. But the series of images taken by Jaeger, who documented the rise of Nazi Germany, add a layer of horror to the pride Hitler and his followers took in their movement. +17 Shafts of light can be seen in one of the gas chambers at the concentration camp +17 One of the barracks in Dachau concentration camp, photographed by Hugo Jaeger in 1950 +17 Bleak rows of rundown buildings in Dachau, where 32 barracks housed Jews and other groups persecuted by the Nazis No one is quite sure why Jaeger, whose work was lauded by Hitler as the future of photography, decided to visit the camp five years after U.S. troops liberated the tortured souls interned there. The photographer, described as an ardent Fascist even before Hitler came to power, had been on hand to capture rallies, glorify the Third Reich and take candid snapshots of Hitler at his birthday and on other occasions. After Hitler's suicide and the fall of Nazi Germany, he hid his images in metal jars that he buried in several locations around Munich. He returned periodically to check on them and dry them out, according to Time. It was claimed that when American soldiers searched the home he was staying in, he distracted them with a bottle of brandy to prevent them searching the bag where he had the stored the images, before he went on to bury them. He appeared desperate to preserve the images documenting the cause he had backed and eventually moved the archive from the buried jars to a Swiss bank vault. Jaeger had documented key points in the rise of the Nazis, yet five years after the Second World War ended, he traveled to Dachau to photograph the deserted barracks, crumbling crematorium, and eerie gas chambers that had been made to look like showers. He photographed the watch towers and barracks, and also took pictures of prayer scarves and wreaths laid at memorials to the prisoners who were cremated, and the 4,000 Soviet soldiers killed there by firing squads. +17 Prayer scarves and wreathes surround one of the crematoriums in Dachau +17 Jaeger photographed the foliage and flowers left at a row of furnaces +17 The spot where about 4,000 Soviet soldiers were executed by firing range at the camp was also documented by Jaeger +17 Wooden slats cover a ditch, possible used as a blood drain at the firing squad range +17 Hugo Jaeger, pictured here for a 1970 article in Life magazine, documented the rise of Hitler +17 Jaeger captured this informal shot of Hitler with wife of Gauleiter Albert Forster at his Upper Bavaria estate in the late 30s His vast archive, taken during and after the fall of Hitler, were eventually sold to Life magazine in 1965. The magazine published them, but with an editor's note referring to the archive of roughly 2,000 images as 'the work of a man we admire so little'. At the time of his visit to Dachau - where sunlight could be seen shining weakly through the barracks' windows and stark prison walls were lifted only by the tiny dots of yellow from the dandelions on overgrown verges - refugees and survivors of the Nazi onslaught had moved into the camp as they tried to reclaim their lives, Time reported. More than 188,000 political prisoners, Jews and other groups persecuted by the Nazis were kept in Dachau, which was used as a labor camp and place where medical experiments took place. In a final act of cruelty, guards at the camp forced more than 7,000 prisoners, most of them Jewish, on a death march as American troops drew close in April 1945. Many of the starved and weak prisoners who struggled to keep up were shot dead. Those who survived were liberated by the Allies in May. +17 The Brausebad - shower - sign hangs over a door surrounded by graffiti. The doorway led to the gas chamber +17 The Grave of Thousands Unknown in Dachau was also photographed by Jaeger +17 A memorial to the tens of thousands of victims was also photographed +17 A picture taken by American troops in April 1945 shows emaciated men who were kept at Dachau +17 The site where ashes were stored appeared in the images taken by Hitler's photographer +17 The long barracks can be stretching into the distance +17 A watchtower at the camp, which imprisoned more than 188,000 people between 1933 and 1945 +17 Dandelions bring a small touch of color to the austere walls and razor wire that surrounded the camp Confused, exhausted and vulnerable, they may have somehow survived and are about to be free, but these chilling colour photographs show that for victims of the Nazis' concentration camps there seemed little to celebrate as the Allies arrived. The never before seen images show the liberation of Dachau, the first of the thousands of concentration camps that sprang up across Germany after the Nazis swept into power. Established in March 1933, just two months after Hitler became Chancellor, Dachau was built to house political prisoners and by the end of the year around 4,800 mainly communists, social democrats and union officials, had been incarcerated there. Over the years that followed, the number of inmates was swelled as other 'undesirables', such as homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, criminals and of course Jews were sent there. +11 Persecuted: These colour photos show the liberation of Dachau. The first of the thousands of concentration camps that sprang up across Germany after the Nazis  rose to power +11 'Undesirables': When Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933 he  quickly incarcerated those he saw as a threat. As his power grew, so did the number of concentration camps, reaching 40,000 by the end of the war +11 Shock and disbelief: Prisoners are seen milling around the grounds of Dachau after its liberation by American forces on April 29, 1945 Dachau would become the prototype for the thousands of concentration camps that sprang up across Germany during the Nazi era. The camp layout and daily routine was widely copied. It was also a training centre for SS concentration camp guards. Dachau was liberated by American troops on April 29, 1945. By that time over 200,000 people from all over Europe had been imprisoned there. An estimated 41,500 of these were murdered. The new pictures were posted on the Vintage Everyday website, but little was known about when and where they were taken. However after comparing the photographs with existing records, an expert was able to confirm the pictures were of Dachau. He said: 'The prisoners appear quite relaxed and unregimented, as if they are just hanging about. 'French and Yugoslav flags can also be seen and it is highly unlikely the Nazis would have adorned their camp with the flags of other nations. 'Some of the men are wearing caps with stars on them, suggesting they are from Russia there are red and white badges for Poles. 'The pictures appear to be quite similar to others taken by the US forces who liberated the camp.' +11 Dachau would become the prototype for the thousands of concentration camps that sprang up across Germany during the Nazi era. The camp layout and daily routine was widely copied. It was also a training centre for SS concentration camp guards. +11 Some of the men are in uniform and those that aren't appear bedraggled and unkempt +11 This image shows an exhausted prisoner asleep against a wall. The camps were a vital terror tool wielded by the SS and SA Dachau, was one of several larger camps established by the SS including Oranienburg, Esterwegen, and a facility for women in Lichtenburg, Saxony. In Berlin itself, the Columbia Haus facility held prisoners under investigation by the Gestapo (the German secret state police) until 1936. The first concentration camps were set up in early 1933 and their numbers expanded rapidly after the Reichstag Fire. In 1934 Hitler authorised SS leader, Heinrich Himmler, to formalise the administration of the concentration camps into a system. Himmler chose SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke for this task as he had been the commandant of the SS concentration camp at Dachau since June 1933. Himmler appointed him Inspector of Concentration Camps, a new section of the SS. While Dachau was not an extermination camp, such as Auschwitz, Treblinka or Sobibor  - prisoners were still forced to live under the most appalling conditions and would face the prospect of death on a daily basis. The expert added: 'One should not get the impression these were not as bad as the extermination camps. Hundreds of thousands of people died inside concentration camps. 'The prison guards could kill anybody they wanted. If they felt like it they would shoot you on sight. Inmates faced the imminent possibility of dying at any minute. 'Although people were shipped in to work they were still completely expendable.' +11 German authorities established camps all over Germany to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged subversives +11 Rations: Bread is doled out among the prisoners. Starvation was itself a weapon used on the inmates +11 SS Lieutenant General Theodor Eicke was appointed to oversee the Concentration Camps by Himmler in 1933 The organisation, structure, and practice developed at Dachau in 1933-1934 became the model for the Nazi concentration camp system as it expanded. Eicke issued regulations both for the duties of the guards and for treatment of the prisoners. Among his early trainees at Dachau was Rudolf Höss, who later commanded the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. It is not known who took the pictures, which offer a candid and insightful look at the murderous system's earliest victims. A system of triangle badges was used to identify the inmates. Political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals green, homosexuals pink and Jehovah’s Witnesses purple. Jewish prisoners were forced to wear an additional yellow Star of David under their classification triangle. By the time the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, unleashing World War II, there were six concentration camps in the so-called Greater German Reich: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen in Austria and Ravensbrück, the women's camp. As the war raged the concentration camps increasingly became sites where the SS authorities could kill targeted groups of real or perceived enemies of Nazi Germany. They also came to serve as holding centers for a growing pool of forced laborers deployed on construction projects, industrial sites, and, by 1942, in the production of armaments and weapons for the German war effort. German authorities established camps all over Germany to handle the masses of people arrested as alleged subversives Between 1939 and 1942 the Nazis were rounding up more and more prisoners in the camps, including those they deemed racially inferior, such as Roma gypsies and Jews. Constructed gas chambers to efficiently murder people at several of the concentration camps. Gas chambers were constructed at Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen, Auschwitz, and other camps. A gas chamber was constructed later at Dachau, but never used. By the close of the Second World War there was a network of over 40,000 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territory. An estimated six million Jews and millions more Poles, Russian soldiers, gypsies, homosexuals and other 'undesirables' lost their lives in the camps. +11 Merciless: The dead are loaded onto a train for disposal +11 Spartan: The austere accommodation the prisoners were forced to live in can be seen on the right, while the barbed wire fence can be seen on the left 'I was basically a pimp but it saved my life': Extraordinary story of the Auschwitz survivor who spent two YEARS hiding from the Nazis in Paris red light district Freddie Knoller, 93, from London, survived nearly two years at Auschwitz Sent away from Vienna aged 16 by his parents following Anschluss Had to hide in Paris's red light district following Nazi invasion in 1940 Spent two years there before joining the French Resistance Was captured and sent to the notorious Drancy transit camp in Paris Deported to Auschwitz and was part of forced march as Red Army arrived Ended the war in Bergen Belsen and was liberated by British troops His two brothers survived the war but his parents were both gassed In the 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, a multitude of stories that reveal the bravery and quick-thinking of survivors have emerged. But few come close to matching that of Freddie Knoller, 93, from London, who spent two years sheltering in Paris's red light district before becoming a member of the French Resistance. Mr Knoller, who is originally from Vienna, managed to evade the Nazis for almost five years before being captured and sent to the Polish death camp. +15 Survivor: 93-year-old Freddie Knoller spent two years hiding from the Nazis in Paris' red light district Once there, he narrowly escaped being sent to the gas chambers of Birkenau on arrival, endured months of hard labour and was among the group marched away by the Nazis as the Russians approached. Sent to Bergen Belsen, Knoller was finally freed on the 15th April, 1945, by men from the Royal Artillery. Although 24, he weighed just 6st after being forced to survive on handfuls of roots. Now Mr Knoller, who appears on a BBC documentary Surviving the Holocaust: Freddie Knoller's War tonight, has spoken publicly about his experiences for the first time. +15 Tenacious: Mr Knoller, who was born in Vienna, survived seven years of Nazi rule and Auschwitz The youngest child of an accountant and a housewife, Mr Knoller says his Viennese childhood was idyllic and was overseen by his 'strict' father and 'terrific' mother. Living side-by-side with Christians and those of other religious persuasions, Knoller says the first hint that something was wrong came during the Anschluss of March 1938 when, far from being upset to see Germans in their country, the Austrians welcomed them. 'We were quite amazed because we didn't think Austrians would welcome the Germans into Austria but they did,' he remembers. 'The Austrians were very happy to have the Germans in their country.' Life swiftly became difficult, with Mr Knoller and his older brothers Otto and Eric forbidden to go to school, while on the streets of Vienna, Jews were harassed and belittled. Kristallnacht, the orgy of attacks on Jewish homes and businesses in November the same year, saw the local synagogue burned to the ground with the connivance of Nazi soldiers. This proved to be the final straw for Mr Knoller's father who sent his son Otto to the UK, Eric to the US and 16-year-old Freddie to Belgium to stay with family friends. But just over a year later, Hitler sent the German Army into the Netherlands and, in a campaign that lasted just 18 days, swiftly overwhelmed Belgium as well. Mr Knoller, then just 17-years-old, fled and was part of one of the refugee convoys strafed by German fighter planes as they headed for the French border. 'The roads were full with people, some walking, some with cars, some with bicycles,' he remembers. +15 Family: Mr Knoller (front centre) with his family. His parents (back row centre) were killed at Auschwitz +15 Friends: Mr Knoller spent two years living in Paris' 'naughty district' and became friends with many girls there Battle of France: In 1940 Hitler and the Nazis invaded Paris 'While we were walking, planes came, German planes came, and started to shoot at us. Some people jumped into the ditches to get away from it. 'I lay down on the ground shivering, afraid, hoping nothing would happen to me. Everybody was just screaming, mothers shouting to their children, everyone just screaming. 'It was a terrible situation. Together with the gun shots from the aeroplanes and the screaming, it was truly terrible.' But Mr Knoller and his friends were lucky and made it to the border. There, however, their luck ran out when French border guards, realising they carried German passports, sent them to a camp for enemy aliens at St. Cyprien in the Pyrénées-Orientales. +15 Fascinated: He had long wanted to go to the Moulin Rouge and was fascinated by the Paris demi-monde He had been there for just one month when France fell to the Nazis. 'Immediately, the real German Nazis were released from the camp,' he says, 'but the Jews stayed there. 'We had very little food and no washing facilities, so people became ill and started to die of cholera.' Determined to survive, he dug a hole beneath the barbed wire one night and escaped, travelling north to find his cousins who were living and working in a small French village. But a quiet life wasn't what Mr Knoller had in mind so with the 100 francs he earned by helping with the harvest, he paid to have false papers made up in the name of Robert Mesniere, a Christian from Alsace-Lorraine. He briefly travelled back to Belgium but before long, he had made his way to Paris where he found his way to the Place Pigalle, at the heart of what was then the French capital's red light district. 'I was fascinated,' he says. 'This was the naughty district of Paris that I had read so much about. I was standing in front of the Folie Bergere which was in Montmartre and I saw these photos of the half naked dancers on the stage and I enjoyed myself.' But in order to stay hidden, he needed to make some money and with the help of his friend Christos, he got a job as a 'guide' for German soldiers anxious to see more of Paris' nightlife. 'Christos introduced me to the music and the dancers,' remembers Mr Knoller. 'He would take me to the cabarets and the brothels. 'I met a lot of lovely people, interesting people. Not the German soldiers but the girls in the cabarets and all the people I met with them, like the owners of the brothels who I became very friendly with.' +15 Blitzkrieg: By the 25th June 1940, France had fallen to the Nazis and the Battle of Britain was underway +15 Resistance: Mr Knoller (not pictured) joined the French Resistance and helped to blow up a troop train His job might have been unsavoury, but for now, he was safe. 'We did earn quite a lot of money from it,' he confesses. 'In reality, I was really a pimp but I didn't consider it something to be ashamed of because it saved my life - it really did.' But his days of hiding in the red light district were numbered and after two years, in July 1943, a visit from the Gestapo forced him to flee. His friend Christos had introduced him to the French Resistance and it was to one of these groups that he went next. 'We were taught how to use guns, how to lay explosives and to do these things that I had never done before in my life,' he remembers. 'It was a great joy for me to fight my enemies instead of earning money from them.' The group scored some successes, among them managing to blow up a train transporting German soldiers, but after less than two months on the job, Mr Knoller was captured. A girl called Jacqueline, with whom he had had a brief romance, told gendarmes he was a member of the French Resistance and rather than betray his friends, Mr Knoller told them the truth about himself instead - that he was really a Jew from Vienna. This time there was to be no escaping the Nazis and by September 1943, Mr Knoller found himself in Drancy, a transit camp on the outskirts of Paris. +15 Capture: In September 1943, Mr Knoller was captured and sent to the notorious transit camp at Drancy +15 Notorious: From Drancy (pictured), a total of 67,400 people were sent east to the death camps of Poland Infamous for being the main point of departure for French Jews en route to Auschwitz, by the end of the Second World War, 67,400 people, 6,000 of them children, had been deported from the camp. Among them was Mr Knoller, who on the 6th October, 1943, was one of a group of 1,000 people crammed into cattle cars and shipped east to Poland. 'The train stopped, the doors opened and we saw SS in uniform,' remembers Mr Knoller. 'They all had dogs on leads, whips in their hand and through a loudspeaker, they were telling us: "You are now in Auschwitz Concentration Camp".' Of the 1,000 people on Mr Knoller's train, 591, him included, were selected for work. The other 491 souls, including women, children and the elderly, were gassed. It was not until later that he realised what had happened to them. 'Some people were asking the old prisoners why we only saw men in the camp,' he says. 'They told them that they would never see their families again. They told us we would soon smell a sweet smell in the air which was the bodies being burned. 'We actually didn't believe what they were saying because Germany was a cultured country, to some extent, in our minds. +15 Final destination: For most of the people with Mr Knoller, Auschwitz Birkenau was their final destination +15 Selection: He was one of 591 people on his transport chosen to work. The other 491 were gassed immediately 'But quite soon afterwards, we smelt that sweet smell coming over from Birkenau, and realised that it was really true and they were cremating the bodies of their relatives.' The men from Paris were soon put to work, Mr Knoller among them. Much of his first winter was spent lugging bags of cement, all done at a run, before a friend helped him move to a different commando, this one with lighter duties. Nevertheless, life in the camp was harsh and, to his shame, Mr Knoller says he resorted to stealing bread from other prisoners to survive. 'You only think of yourself,' he says. 'You don't look around and think of what others are suffering. You become selfish and become a completely different person to what you were in the past.' While Mr Knoller struggled with camp life, the German war machine was facing problems of its own and by the beginning of 1945, the Nazis were in retreat. As the Red Army of Russia closed in, Mr Knoller was part of a group of 60,000 prisoners forcibly marched 35 miles to Wodzisław Śląski in southern Poland and put on a train for Germany. +15 Forced march: He was one of the 60,000 prisoners marched away by the Nazis as the Red Army approached +15 Liberation: Mr Knoller was at Bergen Belsen (women pictured) when it was liberated by the British Brave: Now 93, Mr Knoller lives with his wife Freda in London and has begun to tell his story His destination was the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 'We arrived there at the beginning of March 1945,' he explains. 'We didn't really see any guards. They were there but they didn't come into the camp. No food was given to us at all. I remember digging into the ground to get hold of some roots for something to eat.' By the time the camp was liberated by men from the Royal Artillery a month later, Mr Knoller, by then 24, was emaciated and weighed just 6st. Now a free man, he emigrated to the US to join his brothers but returned to Europe, this time to the UK, with his wife Freda in 1950. Although happy, it was 30 years before he felt able to tell his wife of what had happened to him and 50 years before he finally discovered what became of his parents. Tragically, the couple had been deported from Vienna to Auschwitz in 1942, dying in the gas chambers of Birkenau on the 22nd November 1944. Mr Knoller was there at the time but knew nothing of his parents' fate. Despite the hardships and the tragedy, Mr Knoller says he is proud of his experiences and prouder still to be able to tell people about them. 'What I went through in my lifetime made me believe in myself,' he says. I am proud to have experienced what I have experienced. I am proud to have fought for my life.' SURVIVING AUSCHWITZ: THE HISTORY OF A DEATH CAMP Among the six Nazi vernichtungslager (extermination camps), Auschwitz holds a unique place thanks to its dual role as a concentration and work camp, and because of the especially large number of people murdered there. Although the majority of Jews from nearby Kraków died at the Bełżec death camp near Lublin, the women of Schindler’s List were briefly held in Birkenau before being transferred to his Czech Brinnlitz factory. Many more weren’t so lucky. The original camp, Auschwitz I, was built in 1940 to house Polish and Soviet prisoners, and continued to do so throughout the Nazi period, although Jews were also held in the camp from the start. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was built in 1941 and was designated a vernichtungslager by SS leader, Heinrich Himmler, the same year. Mass transports of Jewish prisoners began in 1942, with the camp able to ‘process’ 9,000 Jews a day at the peak of its operations in its five huge crematoria. Among those who died at Auschwitz II-Birkenau were 400,000 Hungarians, 300,000 Poles, 69,000 French, 25,000 Belgians, 7,500 Italians and six British Jews from the Channel Islands. Of the 1.3 million murdered at Birkenau, 200,000 were children.

A former Nazi concentration camp guard known only as Horst P keeps a photo scrapbook of his time at Dachau and says he had 'fun' there Authorities in Germany have opened a probe into a Nazi concentration camp S.S. guard who kept a photo scrapbook of his time at Dachau where he admitted he 'had fun.' Identified only as Horst P., now aged 87, he was a guard at the camp outside Munich between 1943 and the end of the war. Dachau was the first of the Nazi concentration camps, the blueprint for brutality at all other such places in the Third Reich and some 36,000 people were murdered there between 1933 and 1945. Horst P., who lives in Berlin, was reported to the local prosecutor by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Israel as a probable war criminal after receiving information about him from camp survivors. He lives in the Gruenau section of Berlin with a female partner 14 years younger than him and has a photo collage of himself in an S.S. uniform in Dachau. Over the photos are inscribed the words 'Mein Kampf' - meaning My Struggle, the title of his one time Fuehrer Adolf Hitler's rabid anti-Semitic autobiography. He told the Bild newspaper in Germany: 'Yes, I wanted to go into the S.S.  It was explained to me that it would be fun.' Bild commented: 'When he talks about his time in Dachau, it sounded like it was.' Horst P. went on: 'We were together with the prisoners each day. They were like colleagues. With some I even played cards. I ate the same things. There was even a certain camaraderie.' But he says nothing about extermination or murder, or the hideous medical experiments carried out on prisoners by air force doctors who wanted to test the human body's reaction to freezing water in a bid to save downed pilots in the English Channel during the Battle of Britain. He only added unrepentantly: 'If a criminal made trouble I reported him.  Then he was taken away and went into the special prison.  Sometimes I never saw him again.  But I never asked questions because I didn't want it to appear that I had something to do with them.' +4 Horst was overseer of the camp for almost two years between 1943 and 1947. Dachau was the first concentration camp, and the horrors carried out there helped to create a blueprint for all future camps He added: 'If one was so stupid not to obey, then you can no longer help him. I did not want to help them. I wanted to live.' It is understood that eyewitnesses have placed him at beatings and executions in Dachau. A whipping stool, where prisoners were often flogged to death, is one of the exhibits still on display in the camp to this day. Between 1933 and 1945, more than 200,000 people from 38 countries were held at Dachau and at least 30,000 people were killed, starved or died of disease. +4 Between 1933 and 1945, more than 200,000 people from 38 countries were held at Dachau and at least 30,000 people were killed, starved or died of disease +4 Prisoners were forced to work as slaves for their captors, living and sleeping in horrific conditions while many who disobeyed were beaten to death +8 Young: Ivor Perl was sent to Hitler's camps when he was just 11 years old. In this picture, taken after he was liberated, he is 14 In February of 1945 Ivor Perl, 13, was standing in the snow cold, hungry, desperate, and dimly aware that under normal circumstances it would be time for his bar mitzvah. But instead of a celebration, Ivor, staring through the fence of Allach, a Nazi concentration camp, had been put to work for months on end with nothing more than thin prison clothes to protect him from the bitter winter, and a slice of bread a day to sustain him. Remembering his desperation, Ivor, now 81, recalls: 'The camp was in the middle of the forest, and a fence ran through the trees. I was praying to God “help me, if you let me get out of this place, I shall not ask anything else of you in my life.”' But his liberation was not to come for months, when the American soldiers would sweep into Germany and, horrified, stumble upon the hellish camps where Ivor and millions like him were held. So Ivor, suffering not only from terrible deprivation and could, but a typhus infection, worked on through the winter. The gruelling regime hit him especially badly as, having pretended to be older than he was to avoid being killed, he had to do the work of an adult to keep up the act. Ivor, a Hungarian, was imprisoned in 1944, after his country had been occupied by the Nazis for attempting to defect to the Allies. +8 Transported: Ivor was forced on to a crowded railway car and transported to Auscwitz in awful conditions (file picture) He, his parents and his eight siblings were sent first to Auschwitz, where women and children would be separated from men, and killed. Ivor was saved because he mother ordered him to join the adults despite still being a boy. The decision saved his life, as his mother and seven of his siblings died in the camps. 'Of course at the start, I ran over to my mother's side, with the children and the women', Ivor says. 'I told her: “I want to come with you, mum.” She said: “No, don't come here.”' He pleaded but gave in and joined one of his brothers in the other line. However, even then he was almost sent back to die by the notorious Auschwitz camp Dr Josef Mengele. 'I could see a German officer with white gloves', Ivor says, 'who we heard later on was Dr Mengele. He was pointing left and right. And as he came to me, he suddenly stopped and said “how old are you?” 'Remembering what I was told, I said I was 16. Fortunately I was big for my age. 'I've often, even now after all these years, I can remember his eyes as he was thinking to himself which side he should put me to. He must have thought that if I'm lying I won't be strong enough so it doesn't matter.' In Allach for the bitterest months of the year, Ivor's strength was sorely tested. An average meal in the camp was a slice of bread, a cup of hot water and, perhaps, a dab of margarine. To protect them from the weather, prisoners had only the infamous black-and-white striped prisoner underclothes and a thin cotton overcoat. +8 Desperate: These Jewish survivors, mostly children, were photographed when Auschwitz was liberated (file picture) +8 Skeletal: Children were kept in horrible conditions inside the camps Alongside hundreds of others, he was put to work on gruelling projects such as digging underground bases for military equipment with only rudimentary tools. Order was kept with a combination of fear and extreme force. When Nazi guards realised some prisoners were hiding in a cave to avoid work, they thought nothing of throwing grenades in after them. When a register of prisoners was taken in the morning, everyone faced an agonising decision of which group of labourers to join. Some tasks were easier than others – and the hardest work could easily drive struggling prisoners to death. One day Ivor made a different choice to his brother, and didn't see him for three weeks. While his brother was posted to a farm, and allowed to eat decently for a time, Ivor grew so emaciated and ill that his older sibling did not recognise him. +8 Marched: Hungarian Jews, marked with a Star of David, queue on their way into Auschwitz in 1944, the same time Ivor was taken to the camps (file picture) +8 Work: Children are seen behind barbed wire in Auschwitz Indeed, at one point Ivor's typhus, which was ubiquitous in concentration camps, grew so bad he was referred to the camp hospital. 'The hospital block was laughable', Ivor recalls. 'Twice a day – in the morning a camp doctor would come along, you would uncover yourself, he'd see how much flesh you had on you, whether you were able to work. 'Those who were not considered workable were pointed towards, and those people had to be taken away to be killed. All of us would push our stomach out to pretend we were more healthy than we were.' With the help of his brother, Ivor sneaked out of the hospital, where there was clearly no prospect of getting better. +8 Haunting: A recent images shows a wintery Auschwitz as it is now, with the infamous slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' written above the gate But outside, in the camp, things began to change, as the noise of Allied war planes gradually began to fill the air. But for those still inside, it wasn't a symbol of hope. 'They said the worse the Germans treated us the more we were losing the war,' Ivor remembers. And indeed, the worst was yet to come. After weeks of restlessness in the camp, the order was given that it be abandoned. Ivor and his brother were told that they must march, for days, to a larger camp. +8 Recollection: Ivor Perl, pictured recently, was able to start a new life in Britain They were given a single loaf of bread to sustain them for several days, and warned that if they finished it too soon there would be nothing else. Part way through this gruelling journey, with a pace so uncompromising prisoners would die on their feet, it became too much. 'We were walking along in the mud and suddenly my brother and I accused each other of taking bigger bites than we should have done,' Ivor remembers. 'We started fighting and wrestling in the mud.' 'And as we were fighting in the mud suddenly I could see a pair of army boots and the butt of a gun on the floor.' The two thought – with good reason – they would soon be brutally punished. 'Then suddenly we heard this soldier talking to us in Hungarian', Ivor says. 'He said “Don't fight, because you'll soon be liberated and then afterwards you'll be sorry you fought each other.” 'That was about the only kindness that I experienced in my camp life.' Even this was only a blip in the otherwise unrelenting suffering of Ivor's year under Nazi persecution. But, as he marched towards Dachau, where he would soon be liberated by the American forces, it was a sign of better things to come. After the war, Ivor was granted a visa to come to the UK. He spent his working life in fashion retail, married and has four children and six grandchildren. The Nazis were investigating how to use mosquitos as biological weapons, recently discovered documents reveal. SS-chief Heinrich Himmler’s entomological institute at Dachau concentration camp investigated whether malaria-infected mosquitos could survive transport into enemy territory. The institute, set up by Himmler in 1942, conducted trials of different types of mosquitoes to find which could be kept alive long enough to ‘transport’ malaria from the lab to Allied troops. +3 Nazi's bio war: SS-chief Heinrich Himmler's entomological institute at Dachau conducted trials of different types of mosquitoes to find which could be kept alive long enough to spread malaria to Allied troops The institute’s official mission was to conduct research into insect-transmitted diseases, such as typhoid, but according to a recent article, it also investigated potential ways of conducting biological warfare In 1944, the director of the institute recommended a particular type of anopheles mosquito known for its capacity to transmit malaria to humans, according to an article in science journal Endeavour. Due to Germany having signed up to the 1925 Geneva protocol, use of biological weapons was forbidden and as a result, the ‘mosquito malaria project’ had to remain secret. The project was ‘a bizarre mix of Himmler's smattering of scientific knowledge, personal paranoia, an esoteric world view, and genuine concerns about his SS troops’, the article’s author Klaus Reinhardt told Süddeutsche Zeitung. The idea of attacking Nazi enemies with malaria was not the only unconventional idea investigated by Himmler. +3 Evil plans: The 'mosquito project' was carried out in secret, by scientists at Himmler's Dachau concentration camp, and proof of the experiments has only emerged in modern times +3 As Hitler, pictured with Himmler, had signed the 1925 Geneva protocol the 'mosquito malaria project' had to be conducted in secret at Dachau According to a 2010 book, Himmler believed he would be able to manufacture gold. An alchemist named Karl Malchus convinced Himmler that he could make gold from stones, soil and even paraffin. He was installed at another secret unit at Dachau, and it allegedly took several weeks before Himmler realised he had been conned. 'Operation Munchkin' was another one of the SS chief's plans, one which involved breeding giant Angora rabbits in concentration camps to provide fur-lined clothing for Hitler's armed forces. While prisoners were starved, beaten and tortured to death in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dachau, thousands of rabbits were kept in hutches in these and 27 other camps. The rabbits were treated eons better than the prisoners of the camps, and according to Himmler's notes the population grew from 6,500 in 1941 to 25,000 in 1943. However, as the Allies began to move in on Nazi Germany, Himmler's 'pet project' was stopped. Read more:         Concluding our poignant and surprising series, the much-loved star of Fawlty Towers reveals how his arrival in Britain as a refugee from Hitler’s Germany was the start of some very colourful adventures. When we fled from Nazi Germany in 1938, my elder brother Tom knew exactly what to expect. London, he announced confidently, would be full of thick fog and horse-drawn hansom cabs. Unfortunately, he’d got all  his information from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — so he was a century out of date. Oh, boy, did I gloat.  Shortly after my family settled into a small rented semi in Hatch End, North London, I made my first foray alone into our new world. I was just nine — a half-Jewish little German boy. +7 +7 New life: Andrew, pictured before his first week at school aged six, and his mother, who fled to London in 1938 Outside, there was no one and nothing about. A few minutes later, I spotted a man standing by a lamp-post, wearing what looked like a uniform. In Berlin, of course, men in uniform had never been a welcome sight. So I resolved to keep a steady pace and show no signs of fear. The man was big and round, and he looked at me carefully as I got closer. He wore no shiny leather coat, so he wasn’t a member of the SS. More... ‘They’re crocodile tears’: Julia Roberts and her mother accused of driving star’s half-sister to suicide after ‘cutting her off and never caring for her’ 'She's done that for spite. She was a wicked woman': Horror of Labour supporting family after widow leaves £750,000 to the TORIES in her will and nothing to her family Still, better to be safe than sorry: I rounded my shoulders and lowered my eyes in the accepted racial tradition — but not before casting him a furtive glance. To my astonishment, he was smiling at me, a very nice, open smile; something quite unexpected from a member of the ruling class. Then he spoke. I had no idea what he was saying and stared at him dumbly. Was it worth trying the one sentence I’d been taught parrot-fashion in that awesome gibberish called English? I gave it a go: ‘I am sorry I do not understand you, I am a little German boy.’ The man looked surprised. His smile turned into a laugh and he tousled my hair. It was all too much for my little foreign brain. My mouth started turning down at both ends as I tried not to cry. ‘No, no, nein!’ he said in an effort to comfort me. Then he produced a shiny whistle, put it to his lips and made a soft sound. He had my interest immediately. Smiling again, he pointed at me, raising his eyebrows invitingly. ‘Name?’ he asked. I understood that all right. But I got scared. Was he going to demand my papers? I didn’t have any papers! At which point, our local bobby on his beat — for that’s what he was — pointed at himself and said: ‘Me, Reginald. Uncle Reginald. Say Reginald?’ +7 War hero: His father Hans Sachs, born in 1885, was awarded the Iron Cross in 1885, but it was not enough to saw him from persecution under the Nazis ‘Regiland,’ I murmured. ‘Your name, please?’ he asked again. Another little stab of panic, but there was no way out. ‘Andreas,’ I said softly, hoping I wouldn’t be arrested. But all he wanted was a language lesson. Pointing to the road and then the lamp-post, he tried to say the words in German — and I corrected his pronunciation. I was flattered by his keenness to tap my superior knowledge. By the time he’d escorted me home, we were friends. He took his weird helmet off to greet my mother; and before leaving, he gave her his whistle to pass on to me. So, in this strange land called England, a policeman’s lot was evidently a happy one. We were all quite amazed. After that, English took root very quickly, almost as though it had been my mother tongue. Within months, I’d not only changed my name from Andreas to Andrew, but I was wincing whenever my parents spoke German in public. After all, German was the language of the enemy — and good English folk might easily mistake us for spies and have us shot. For me, it was definitely a case of ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ These days, of course, we live in a multicultural society which views this old motto as insensitive and even morally wrong. It was very different in the Forties, when all I desperately wanted to do was fit in. Then, Churchill barked his famous order — ‘Collar the lot’ — and many aliens who’d come from enemy countries had to be interned. It didn’t matter if they were Jews, like my father: off he went to a camp. I missed him a lot during the three months he was away. By then, we’d moved on to a tiny flat in Kilburn and I was going to my second English school. It was at this point that I embarked on a secret life of crime. My new schoolfriends gave me starter tips in the art of truancy, while helping to expand my vocabulary with interesting words such as ‘luvaduck’, ‘wotcher mate’ and ‘corblimey’. Soon I’d graduated to shoplifting from Woolworths. My favourite items were small-scale replicas of military insignia, and I stole about a dozen over a couple of months. Then I’d drop them down a drain. Had my father been home, needless to say, one look at my shifty eyes would have given the game away. +7 The Blitz: Sachs said the chimneys jittered and juddered and sometimes fell down during the bombings The very worst thing I did was to pocket a ten-shilling note that my saintly mother had been saving in a drawer. It wasn’t a good time for her: she had three hungry children packed into poky lodgings, her husband was confined in a camp and it was hard making ends meet. One day, when I came home from school, Mother was crying as she opened the front door, and wouldn’t say why. My heart sank. Still silent, she climbed wearily back up four flights to our flat, and poured me a glass of milk. I couldn’t meet her eyes. At last, she sighed and told me why she was so sad: she’d just discovered her money had been stolen. She blamed herself, she said, for leaving it where it could so easily be found by any of a dozen people living in the house. Then she started to cry again. There was no hint of any suspicion directed at me. Alone without Father, she continued, she felt that only her children could give her the strength to carry on. ‘Can you think of anyone who might have taken it?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if someone like you had taken it, I know you’d have the courage to tell me.’ She leant forward and gave me an encouraging little kiss. The longest pause in my life followed before I finally managed an almost voiceless: ‘It was me . . .’ Mother put her arms around me and patted my back. ‘Very good,’ she said, and we both sobbed. Reparations were arranged. She suggested I work off the debt by doing little jobs for her, like running errands, drying dishes, polishing shoes, darning socks and laying the table. Each chore would reduce my debt by a penny. So that’s what I did, with fanatical energy. And when I reached my hundredth chore a fortnight later, Mother was so proud that she let me off the other 20. I should have felt proud, too, but niggling at my conscience was that empty drawer. +7 Struggle: His mother found it hard during the war as she had to provide for three hungry children while her husband was in a camp Fortunately for me, both my parents enjoyed a smoke, and I’d been collecting the cards that came with the packets since our Berlin days. There was a set of motor cars of the world, another set illustrating the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936 and one of film stars from Germany and Hollywood. I was prepared to sacrifice the lot — but wartime markets are notoriously fickle. The information on the back of the cards was in German and therefore much less attractive to my schoolmates than I’d hoped. I gritted my teeth and let my treasures go at rock-bottom prices. Two months after my theft, I managed to lure Mother with the utmost cunning into opening the drawer, where she discovered a crisp new banknote. At first, she didn’t want to accept the money. But I was firm with her, oh yes, very firm. It was a major moment in my life when I felt honestly good about myself. After Father came home, we moved to Primrose Hill, where half a dozen huge anti-aircraft guns sat in the park, ready to attack enemy bombers and local eardrums. Their vibrations shook everything. Chimneys jittered and juddered and sometimes fell down, and frightened moggies could be decapitated by a dive-bombing slate. Many of the windows in our house had been replaced with planks or cardboard that let in the rain. At my third school, Haverstock Hill Primary, I soon made friends with a boy called Coop, who made liberal use of the F-word. Intrigued, I started a personal archive entitled Rude Words, which was soon filling up nicely. But I was never entirely sure what the words meant. In pursuit of knowledge, I set off courageously to eavesdrop on a gang of swaggering toughs in the neighbourhood — and only just avoided grievous bodily harm by running faster than they did when they spotted me. As soon as I thought I’d lost them, I ducked into a dustbin. What happened next may sound incredible, but it’s true: inside that bin I found a dog-eared copy of Teach Yourself Good English. Even more miraculously, it had a section on gross words. I was in heaven. And when Coop told me one day: ‘You’re my best mate. Gorrit?’ I knew just what to say (with only the slightest trace of a German accent). ‘Oh, yes, Coop. I gorrit. Oh, my goodness f***ing hell, I have.’ A few weeks later, Coop told me he had ‘summink’ for my sister: a big doll that she’d ‘go effin’ mad abaht.’ He ordered me to follow him, and led me to a bomb site by the side of a road. +7 Persecuted: His father Hans was interned when he came to Britain after Winston Chruchill's famous quote 'Collar the lot' Obeying his command to have a closer ‘gander’, I spied a scruffy doll with tangled hair, dirty legs, one shoe and a worn-out summer dress. ‘Effin’ scrub up lovely, that will,’ said Coop. He was hovering behind me. What could I do? I reached in and took hold of the doll’s arm. And let go again. I’d been expecting china or Bakelite, but this doll wasn’t like that at all. It was more like, more like . . . Suddenly, I knew what it was more like. It definitely was — had been — a baby. I now noticed that one cheek was bruised. Coop and I stared at each other. ‘Come on — scarper!’ he yelled. ‘They’ll string us up for bloody murder!’ Coop ran away. I stayed there, trembling and cold despite the afternoon sun, and finally managed to get the attention of a passer-by. He peered into the recess for a few moments and then went off to call the police. The body was taken away 20 minutes later in a hessian sack. And my friendship with Coop was definitely over. In any case, I’d soon found a new passion: reading patriotic books by a writer called Sapper. These all featured unscrupulous villains who sought to stop Britons (who never, never shall  be slaves) protecting the world  from anarchists, Bolsheviks and crime barons. Sapper’s hero was a First World War veteran: the redoubtable Captain Hugh Drummond DSO MC, late of His Majesty’s Royal Loamshire Regiment, who represented everything that’s best and most noble in our sceptred isle. Indeed, to me, Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond was Great Britain. Now aged 12, I became a fervent disciple. I wanted desperately to be one of Bulldog Drummond’s band of frightfully decent chaps; to do their deeds, walk their walk and talk their talk. +7 Sachs was in a small flat in Kilburn when the Blitz devastated parts of London in 1940 I wasn’t the only boy at school who was obsessed, so a group of us founded an inner circle of Bulldog devotion. We trained ourselves to be fluent in Sapper-speak, often referring to each other as ‘my dear old bean’, or ‘my dear old flick’ or ‘my dear old bird’, or even ‘you priceless old stuffed tomato’. Homework became either ‘deuced awkward’ or ‘most fearfully jolly’. Teachers we approved of were ‘all-round good eggs’, while the rest were sentenced to be ‘foully done to death with animal fury’. We also became terrific at improvising scenes. In the playground, we’d alert the rabble with an ear‑catching startler such as: ‘Dash it all, Algy Longworth, old fruit, a hooded cobra is not a pleasing pet, don’t you know.’ Timed right, it could turn heads in our direction and grab an interested audience. So we’d carry on with such priceless lines as: ‘I remember it well, Drummond old flick. Tricky devils and no mistake. What say you, Toby, old bean?’ ‘You had a dashed close shave that time, and no mistake.’ But it wasn’t long before our fickle public started drifting off with murmurs of ‘rubbish!’ or ‘boring’. At the next meeting of the Drummond stalwarts, I declared that our performances in the playground were no more than childish entertainment for a stupid audience. We should, therefore, stop trying to recruit others to our cause and go underground. Had I been entirely straight? No. The truth was that I simply couldn’t bear the ghastly shame of losing our playground fans. We’d gone from loud cheers to louder boos in less than a fortnight. In my book, that was extreme humiliation — the kind that could only be tolerated by professional actors. I distinctly remember thinking: ‘Well, that’s one profession I’ll never sink to, thank you very much.’ Ha! Or as a certain Spanish waiter might have said: ‘I know nothing . . .