'I will never forget those brave British troops who plucked me from among the dead and dying in Bergen-Belsen'

MALA Tribich was just a child when she was rescued from Bergen-Belsen by British soldiers - but 80 years on she has not forgotten their kindness as they ended her suffering.

- By Giles Sheldrick

She had contracted typhus at the camp and was close to death when the troops arrived.

Now aged 94, Mala will be the UK's only Holocaust survivor to attend a ceremony at Auschwitz, joining the King there as the world marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation as Holocaust Memorial Day.

Born Mala Helfgott in Poland in 1930, her mother and sister were murdered when the Nazis invaded her homeland in 1939.

She was put to work as a slave labourer and then in 1944 she was sent to Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps in northern Germany.

She said: "During those long five-and-a-half years, we would say to each other that it can't get any worse than this. But when we arrived in Bergen-Belsen, that was the ultimate. It was horrendous, beyond human endurance.

"The first thing that hit you was the smell and smog. There were skeletons shuffling along aimlessly in a daze and as they shuffled, they would collapse and die. There were dead bodies everywhere and piles of naked, twisted, decaying corpses.

"I heard that there was a children's home somewhere in the camp and we quickly set out to find it. We were lucky to get in, but I still succumbed to typhus.

"I remember coming into consciousness on my bunk by the window and seeing people running. That was April 15, 1945, when we were liberated by the wonderful British forces.

"I cannot describe what it meant to be treated with kindness as human beings - by these soldiers."

Mala received an MBE from the late Queen Elizabeth in 2012, in honour of her work to educate the next generation about the horrors of the Holocaust. On Monday at Auschwitz, where 1.1 million people were murdered - 90% of them Jews - her message will be steadfast and unequivocal: We must never forget.