Jan 27 - Holocaust Memorial Day talk on Wednesday from Mr Arek Hersh MBE

As part of the Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations, Mr Arek Hersh MBE will give a public lecture on Wednesday 29 January at the John Mackintosh Hall.
The lecture will begin at 6.30pm.

Mr Hersh survived the Second World War despite being incarcerated in several infamous concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Buchenwald. 

Born and raised in Poland, Arek had four siblings and was brought up in the Jewish faith. On 1st September 1939 Germany attacked Poland and Arek's family left their home town. They walked 65km in three days to reach relatives in Lodz. 

In 1940, Jews of Lodz had to start wearing the star of David and soon were forced into a ghetto in cramped conditions with rationed food. In 1941, Arek was taken to a camp near Poznan, called Otoschno. After 18 months, only 11 men from the original 2,500 brought to the camp were still alive. Later Arek was brought back to Lodz, where the SS rounded up all the children from the Ghetto area and took them to Chelmno to be gassed. Arek was able to hide from the SS in a cemetery. He was accepted in to the orphanage where he worked in the textile mill and was able to find food. 

1944 saw the Germans liquidate the Lodz Ghetto and the remaining population were taken in a goods train to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 185 children from the orphanage were on board for the two day journey. Upon arriving at Aushcwitz, Dr Mengele selected people to work and people to straight to their deaths. Arek seeing that fitter and healthier people were on the right and ther rest on the left, decided to take advantage of a disturbance to run across to the right side. That day he was given a striped suit, his head and body shaved and he was tattooed with the number B7608. From that day onward, he lost his name and was only referred to by his number. 

On 18th January, the germans closed Aushcwitz camp. They decided to take the remaining prisoners on a forced march, known as a death march. Three days with no food, wearing only their striped camp uniforms in deep snow and temperatures as low as minus 25 degrees. The survivors ended up in Buchenwald in Germany, where Arek was put in to a Children's Barrack. In April, 3000 people, including Arek, were taken to Weimar in Germany and loaded on to open wagons, for a month long journey to Theresienstadt. Only 600 survived the journey, arriving in Czechoslovakia on 8th May 1045, to then be liberated by the Russian army.