Holocaust survivor's two-day tour of Lancashire

Holocaust survivor and educator Dr Martin Stern MBE came up from London on a two-day tour in Lancashire.

- By Danny Bergson Contributor

The tour was facilitated by Rabbi Danny Bergson, the Rabbi at St Annes Hebrew Congregation.

He spoke at St Annes Hebrew Congregation, Preston City Council, Baines High School and St Mary's Catholic High School of Blackpool (children aged 14-17).

Dr Martin Stern is a retired Clinical Immunologist who worked at the University Hospitals of Leicester. As a child he was transported with his one-year-old sister to the Westerbork prison camp in the Netherlands and then to the Theresienstadt Ghetto north of Prague.

Both survived due to the care of a woman prisoner who took them under her wing.

His father died in Buchenwald concentration camp having passed through Auschwitz, his father's brother died in Auschwitz and his grandfather also died in Nazi captivity.

The gentile man in Holland who hid him from the Nazis and looked after him (together with his wife) for 1 1/2 years was discovered, arrested, interrogated and killed. Only his spectacles and a fake death certificate were returned to his wife.