'I was 11 years old when I saw lined up and shot for hiding

MANFRED Goldberg survived five brutal Nazi camps before being liberated aged 15.

- By Lotti O'Brien

He was only nine years old when war began, but now, at 95, he recalls the harrowing years of survival as if it were yesterday.

In the late 1930s, the Nazis began a wide spread propaganda campaign, turning much of the population against Jews who were belittled as “human cockroaches”.

Prior to the war, Jewish businesses were targeted by vicious youth groups who marched through towns, looting, burning synagogues and murdering innocent people.

Starvation

“As an eight-year-old, I was terrified - I could look out of the window and see flames rising above the rooftops,” Manfred says.

Jewish people began frantically applying for visas to flee to the US before war broke out, but the odds were slim. Only 30,000 visas per year were available, with more than 300,000 people on the waiting list.

In early 1939 Manfred’s father was arrested and sent back to Poland. The Polish authorities refused to take him and he was returned to Germany. In a desperate attempt to save him, Manfred’s mother traveled to Berlin and secured a visa for her husband to the UK. But the visa was only for his father, not the whole family, and he left Germany believing the rest of them would follow in six weeks.

Days later, war broke out. Manfred and his family were trapped in Germany.