Henry Schachter can remember quite clearly the last time he saw his mother.

It was his fifth birthday and, as a Jewish child living in hiding in Belgium, he had been re-homed three years earlier with a Christian family in a bid to keep him safe from the Nazis.

“I shall never forget it,” Henry, now 75, remembers.

“She had brought me a birthday cake. “She spent about an hour with us.

“As she was about to go, I ran to the top of the stairs and I remember it as if it was yesterday.

“She turned to me and waved for me to give her a hug. I was so angry she was going I didn’t. I sat there crying. I watched her put her coat on and go and that’s the last I saw of her.”

Seven weeks later, Henry’s mother and father were captured. They were taken to the concentration camp Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland on April 29, 1944.

Although his family was originally Polish, Henry’s parents were both brought up in Germany, where their families moved before the First World War as it was, at that time, a more liberal society.

“They were brought up as Germans, but also as Jews, which was possible in those days – you were able to be both,” said Henry.

“Some family left Germany in 1935-1936. They were wiser, perhaps. But mostly the Jews of Germany stayed on, because they just couldn’t believe that this madness would carry on.

“In 1936, things did improve. There was no more anti-Jewish propaganda, because the whole world was focused on Berlin because of the Olympics. Life became much better, so there was hope for people.”

However, it soon became quite clear that life was over in Germany for Jews. Henry and his family fled to Belgium, where Jews were going into hiding in their thousands. They eventually sought help from a Christian nursery school teacher, who took in 3,000 Jewish children and found them new homes with Catholic or Christian families.

Three-year-old Henry, who was born Ariel, was renamed Henri Dufet and given a new life and a new family, with whom he lived for the next five years, during which time his parents became slave labourers at Auschwitz.

“Each month there was a selection to see if anyone was not fit enough and for about nine months, they survived,” said Henry, who now lives in Bournemouth.

Henry’s parents were eventually forced on death marches to Germany.

His mother was taken to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, while his father was put on a march to Flossenburg.

“My father knew he would not survive another concentration camp.

“He had seen what happened in Auschwitz, where 7,000 who could not march were shot in one day,” said Henry.

“Realising he was back in Germany, he thought he might have a chance of escape. He ran to the woods, but was shot and left where he was. He died there.

“My mother, although she was healthy when she got to Bergen-Belsen, there was a typhoid epidemic, which was taking thousands of lives.

“She died three days before the liberation of the camp.”

Henry was found (but “that is another story”, he said), and eventually brought to England in December 1946 by family members who had moved to the country a decade earlier.

“I lived here happily ever after,” he smiled.

During the last year, Henry has started to tell his story in schools across Bournemouth and Poole and is now passionate about bringing his experiences to life for the younger generation.

“Talking to the children has really encouraged me,” he said.

“The next generation needs to know.”

  • Next week, read the story of Walter Kammerling, 91, who was just 15 when he left his family in Vienna to seek refuge in Britain with help from the Kindertransport.