My death camp hell as child began with tiny germ of hatred

For most people, Auschwitz-Birkenau exists as a haunting chapter of human history - a place they have read about or seen in documentaries. For me, it was my reality. I lived through it as a child. I was just 12 years old when I was torn from my home-town of Mako, Hungary, and thrown into this hellish place.

- Ivor Perl Holocaust Survivor

The moment I passed through the gates, everything changed. My name, my identity - everything that made me, me - was stripped away and replaced with a number: 112021. It was the Nazis' way of erasing who I was, reducing me to a mere statistic in their brutal machinery of dehumanisation.

However, that number was never tattooed on my arm. The day they lined us up, the line stretched too long. The next day, they ran out of ink. So, my arm remained unmarked - a glitch in an otherwise relentless machine of death and cruelty.

It was a small victory, a silent reminder even in such a dark place that I was a human being clinging to my own identity.

EIGHTY years may have passed, but for me the memories of life and death in Auschwitz remain painfully fresh. There is a reason why survivors refer to it as "hell on earth". When Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated on January 27, 1945, it revealed a horror that defied imagination.