My father found safety in Britain after the Holocaust. He would not recognise it today

He had a happy early childhood until the German invasion of Poland. Then everything changed. He and his immediate family were forced to stay in the Warsaw ghetto. Much of their wider family accepted what the Germans offered, a loaf of bread and some jam, and the promise of work and of staying together, and boarded the trains. Around 90 relatives left. None of them came back or survived the death camps.

My grandfather refused to go. He believed the war would soon be over and that they should stay. The family had run a metal foundry for seven generations and he would not work for anyone else. They held on until the ghetto was liquidated in the spring of 1942. My aunt Henia had already left after a huge row to join the resistance in the ghetto. My father never saw her again.

He was captured with his mother and taken to Majdanek. He was 13. Another Jewish prisoner told him to say he was over 16 and that he had a trade, a Schlosser, an engineer. He did, and it saved his life. He was sent to work, eventually in the kitchens, which offered some food. Later he was moved to a munitions factory, where he became the “soap boy”, carrying boiled soap to grease the machines because the Germans had run out of oil. Soap could be traded. His first trade was a small bar of soap for a pair of shoes.

He used what little advantage he had to help others, including a cousin, Marysia, who survived and later went to Israel. He also remembered one “nice story”. A gruff German in charge shouted at everyone, but quietly and undetected, left my Dad some of his own food each meal in his office and sometimes clothes, without ever acknowledging it or even looking at him.

At the end of 1944, he was sent to Buchenwald and then on a cattle truck to Theresienstadt. He said those two or three weeks were the worst of the war. He had double pneumonia, had been operated on by another prisoner with no equipment or anaesthetic, and arrived with dead bodies on top of him. A friend (Joe Rents, who much later became his best friend) pulled him out and saved his life. He was liberated by the Russian army in May 1945.

From Prague, he came to Britain as one of the Windermere Boys, the orphans brought here with the support of the British government and the Jewish community. He was 15 and three-quarters, just young enough to avoid being conscripted by the Russians. They flew in a Lancaster bomber to Manchester, then on to the Lake District. He used to say that camp life felt “normal” to him because it was all he had known, and that his job had simply been to survive. He was not religious but always felt that someone or some 3rd party was always looking out for him.

His brother Gerald, a pilot in the Polish air force attached to the RAF, eventually found him in Windermere. When they met, my father still had bread stuffed in his pockets. His brother asked why. “They fed me today and they fed me yesterday,” he said, “but who knows about tomorrow?”

He built a life in Brighton, learned English, ran a business, married my mother Dian and raised three sons. He loved this country, the rule of law and the sense of safety. He once wrote words that are now held by the Imperial War Museum: “My wish is for peace and understanding between all people. Future generations must learn the lessons of the Holocaust to prevent it ever happening again.”

I often think about what he would make of Britain now. He would have been bewildered and appalled by the return of open antisemitism, and by how casually the language of destruction is chanted on our streets. Recently, standing in Sydney and laying flowers after the murders at Bondi, and also when hearing "from the River to the sea" casually chanted in London, I felt that fear (and concern for our rule of law) myself in a way I never had before.

My father refused ever to return to Poland. He said it would be like walking on the graves of his family. Instead, he believed in education. He was persuaded, late in life, to record his testimony. That is why I support the Holocaust Education Trust and the 45 Aid Society who keep these stories alive, now that the survivors are sadly almost all gone.

My father survived because strangers helped him, because of luck, and because, as he believed, something guided him through. Britain gave him a home. Remembering what happened properly, honestly, and without distortion is the least we can do in return.

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Ash Faull is a former ITV executive and successfully created a TV shopping channel group. He now runs an online gold buying business and a recently launched company offering liquidity to Business Angels.

As told to Benji Hyer.

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