Yesterday, North-East Holocaust survivor Harry Nagelstein told how his town was destroyed and most of his family killed by the Nazis. In the second part of his story, he tells Owen Amos how he survived three concentration camps.

‘THE train went through half of Poland,” says Harry, remembering the journey from his hometown, Hrubieszow, to the concentration camp, Majdanek, 80 miles away. “They picked up Jews in Czechoslovakia, in Romania, all over Poland. It took days. It was like a cattle truck. They wanted some to die before they got to the concentration camp. People’s bodies were that tightly packed, they died through lack of air. People were banging the windows, shouting.”

Harry pauses, thinks, stands up and declares: “It’s cold in here, isn’t it? I’ll put the heating on.”

And, with that, he strolls to the kitchen to nudge the thermostat. From 20th Century Holocaust to 21st Century heating in a heartbeat.

I sit alone in his front room and wonder. What would 16-year-old Chaim Nagelstein say, stuck in a cattle truck destined for Majdanek, if you said 65 years later he would: a) be alive; b) live in a cul-de-sac in North-East England; c) be called Harry; and d) make a room warmer by nudging a tiny dial? The odds he’s beaten are infinite.

The Second World War, with its barbarity and black and white pictures, seems like a different epoch. That won’t happen again, we say. Things – people, countries, wars – were different. Maybe so. But it was less than a lifetime ago. Harry proves that. And, if we don’t listen now, when will we?

In 20 years’ time, journalists won’t have this privilege. In 20 years’ time, we won’t be able to hear first-hand Holocaust horrors, and you won’t be able to read them. Not new, anyway. So yes, the Second World War was a different era.

But we’d be wrong to close our eyes, blinded by our bright, beautiful new world and say it won’t happen again.

Harry, back from the thermostat, continues, crisp and clear. “We went into Majdanek and a man said ‘If you’re 14 or 15, tell them you’re three years older, so you can work’. I took his advice and said I was 18. I had no birth certificate.

Everything had been destroyed.

“They took away all your clothes, shaved your head. We had a stripey uniform. It was terrible.

But what could you do? You couldn’t say a word.

If you anger a Gestapo he’s going to draw his pistol and shoot you.”

Like in Hrubieszow, his home town, work saved Harry. Those days when Jews were banned from school and Harry helped his bricklayer father at work, were well spent.

“The guards asked if anyone had a trade,”

says Harry. “I said I was a builder. Straight away we went to work. They were building a women’s camp a couple of miles away. They were laying out barracks and we had to help them, do the dirty work. That’s one thing I was, always have been – a good worker.

“Then one day it was terrible – a windy day, it was blowing up my back, terrible. There was nothing I could do. I knew I would get something.

I got pneumonia, typhoid, and I knew not working would be a bad thing. I liked work – it got you away from the camp, the day passed. But I was ill, couldn’t work and was taken to hospital.

“There was a Czech doctor there, but he had no medicines. All I could do is sit there and lie.

I was in a coma for a few days. I was so thin and white. I couldn’t stand on my left leg. I didn’t look like a person at all. I was so weak, I didn’t care – I thought ‘That’s it’. I thought I was definitely going to the chamber.”

The Germans came to the hospital and demanded 25 people, destined for death. There were 27, including Harry. “The doctor told me ‘Go back to bed’,” says Harry. “I said ‘Why did you save me?’ He said ‘You are a young man, you have a life’.”

Hard, of course, to say a 16-year-old in a concentration camp lived a charmed life, but you take the point. Harry kept beating the odds. His leg was bandaged and he was discharged. “If they came back next week, this time they would pick me,” he says. “So I had to go.”

Soon, he answered another call for builders and was sent by the Germans to build, of all things, a pickle factory. Yes, they occupied much of Europe, yes, they were fighting in Africa, but the Germans knew what was important: sauerkraut.

“The food was a bit better there. The soups were better, we put weight on,” says Harry, before adding, with the glee of a man who knows starvation: “We had turnip three times a day.”

While building the pickle factory – “A fantastic building,” says Harry – Majdanek was liquidated.

They could not return, so The Working Jews were sent to lay an airfield. From there, it was Auschwitz. The gates, famously, are crowned with Arbeit Macht Frei – “Work Makes (one) Free”. Harry had worked within days of death and this was where it got him: the place where, according to testimony at the Nuremberg Trials, three million people died. Work did not free them.

‘THEY never called us by name,” says Harry. “They just shouted ‘Jew! Dirty Jew!’ after us.” Again, Harry – skilled and comparatively fit – was spared death to work. “Because we worked, we got a little bit more respect than others,” he says. “The soldiers got to know you, what you could and couldn’t do. People ask how I survived ten months at Auschwitz and I’m not sure. We got thinner and thinner and thinner.”

By the end of 1944, the Russians were closing in. The prisoners were marched away from Auschwitz, no destination planned. Those too weak were shot and left behind. At night, they slept on the ground, huddled together. Come morning, those who couldn’t continue, due to cold or exhaustion, were shot. Eventually, they reached a platform and were taken by train to Ebensee, in Austria. It was Harry’s third concentration camp.

“It was the worst camp,” says Harry. “It was there for two reasons: to work you and to kill you. They were building tunnels in the mountains.

We had to load the carts with big, heavy stones. Imagine that when you’re five and a half stones.”

It was 1945 and the Americans, and the war’s end, were approaching. The Germans had one final, desperate, tactic. “All 30,000 prisoners were ordered into a tunnel packed with explosives,”

says Harry. “We refused to go in. For once, our guards didn’t know what to do. Many had replaced SS men who had fled, knowing if we didn’t take revenge on them, the Americans probably would. At last they backed down. I had survived – but only just.”

■ Tomorrow: Harry’s release from concentration camp; plus an incredible reunion.