Holocaust survivor Walter Kammerling explains why he still tells his story, and how 'death book' told him he would never see his family again

There, listed in black and white in the 'Death Book', are the names of his father Maximilian, mother Marie and sister Ruthi and the date they each arrived at Auschwitz - the largest mass murder site in human history.

Sorrow etched on his face, the 92-year-old holocaust survivor is still haunted he never got the chance to tell his family he loved them after hoping for years they would be reunited.

Speaking out on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, Walter says: “I had the shock of my life when I saw it and I realised that is it. At that moment any hope I had disappeared.

“Time passes but it’s just as painful every time I see it.”

Walter's memories of 1938 in Vienna when Jews were persecuted by the Nazis are still as vivid as they were when he was 14.

Synagogues were burned, shops looted, flats taken over and Jews rounded up and taken to concentration camps.

“The whole thing was terrifying. Going to school was like running a gauntlet. You tried to go not too fast, not too slow. You always tried to be invisible,” recalls Walter who was once ordered to scrub the streets in an act of humiliation.

“It was a terrible thing. You were, in the truest sense of the word outlawed.

“They enjoyed humiliating people. We weren’t allowed to kneel down, only crouch. The chap next to me fell over and was kicked and abused.

"A smile went through the crowd and a lady held her little girl up high so she could see better. They were all smiling and I thought to myself ‘Good Lord.'

“I felt afraid, afraid and helpless.”

A bill was passed in Westminster on November 21, 1938 allowing up to 10,000 refugee children to be temporarily admitted to Britain with a sponsorship of £50 so they would be no burden on the public purse.

Walter’s parents ensured he was on the first ‘Kindertransport’ and left Vienna on December 12, 1938 leaving behind his parents and two sisters when he was just 15.

“I was in a daze,” says Walter who went to a holiday camp before being transferred to a farm in Northern Ireland for three years.

“My father was in the Jewish hospital at the time. When I said goodbye, he started to cry. I had never seen him cry before and that really choked me. I think he realised it was maybe the last time he would see me. And it was.

“I don’t even know if I hugged my mother and sisters on the platform.

“Looking back now, that train saved our lives. Otherwise I know exactly where I would be.”

Walter’s oldest sister Erica was able to get a work visa to come to Britain but Ruthi was just 17 - too young for a work permit and too old for the Kindertransport.

Walter explains he never gave up hope he would be reunited with his family.

When the war ended he returned to Vienna with his wife Herta, who had also come to Britain on the Kindertransport.

“We thought we should go back to help build a new country.

"I remember hearing the trams going, the sounds, the smells, the sights, it was the same and it was very painful.

“On the first day we arrived, I tried to go back to where my family lived to a first floor flat. I got half way up the stairs and it was far too painful. I thought: ‘What am I trying to do?’ I know they are not there. To look at a door doesn’t mean much without a family behind it so I turned around.”

Walter's worst fears were confirmed when he was passed a copy of the Death Book from Theresienstadt, the concentration camp where his parents and Ruthi were sent.

Records revealed that Walter's father was transferred to Auschwitz on September 29, 1944 and his mother and sister on October 23, 1944, on the penultimate transport to the extermination camp, just three months before Auschwitz was liberated. His father was 54, his mother 44 and his sister was murdered just days from her 23rd birthday.

Walter, who moved back to the UK with his wife of 71 years Herta, visited Auschwitz in 2006 and Theresienstadt just last October to retrace his family’s last steps.

“The conditions under which they kept were shocking. They slept on bare boards and had a ration of bread for the day made up mainly of sawdust and two glasses of water - one brown, coffee and one green, soup and they lived on that. They starved.

“Auschwitz was a very painful experience but something in me had to see where they arrived, where the railway landed. There was a small bridge over a ditch and it’s about 200 yards to the gas chambers and I know my parents and my sister walked that way."

Walter, who has two sons, five grandsons and one great granddaughter, recalls: “While I was there both my boys took me aside. They said ‘dad, don’t be so sad. You have won. We have a large family and we’re all together' and they are right. Nevertheless, you think what could have been.”

Walter, a retired engineer who lives in Bournemouth, has dedicated his life to sharing his story with local schools and groups in a bid to keep the memory alive for today’s generation.

“One child asked me what I was sorry about. I said I missed out on a lot. I hardly spoke to my parents and I took a lot for granted. I said I was sorry that never did I tell my mother or father I loved them or showed them any affection. One girl wrote to me and said when she got home, she hugged her mother.

“I say to the kids if ever they see something and see it is wrong, trust your judgement because it is probably right. Say something and do something.

“They say for evil to succeed, it only needs good people to be silent and that’s still just as relevant now.”

Events are taking place across the county to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Everyone is invited to an act of commemoration at the Holocaust Memorial Day monument near the Cenotaph in Bournemouth Gardens at 3pm on Wednesday, January 27.

The BIC will host a special remembrance event with the theme 'Don't Stand By' on Sunday, January 31.

To find out more go to hmd.org.uk