As Holocaust Memorial Day approaches, Ruth Campbell discovers how one survivor, imprisoned in Auschwitz as a child, affected hundreds of pupils with his moving story.

THE 300 teenagers in the school hall are sitting quietly, faces full of concentration as they absorb the speaker’s every word. This is the Facebook, iPod and Twitter generation.

Yet, here they are gripped as an old man stands in front of them quietly telling his story.

From the moment 81-year-old Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper stood to speak, the room, at St John’s RC School, in Bishop Auckland, fell still.

Mr Shipper told them how, starving and thirsty, he was crammed into a cattle truck heading for Auschwitz-Birkenau and ended up desperately hoping others would die to make some room. “I was dehumanised. That’s what they did to us. I was 14 years old and I hoped people would die in the night, so that I might be able to live,” he said.

There are 14-year-old students in the hall. I imagine they must be wondering how they would have felt if this had happened to them.

“After a few days, there was enough space to sit down,” said Mr Shipper, visibly upset.

Of all the horrors of the Holocaust, this is the one he thinks about often, the one experience he cannot eradicate from his mind. “I still feel ashamed,” he added quietly.

He tries to explain it, as best he can. “How could a child of 14 think that? I was completely alone. At that age you don’t want to die, you want to live. You are starving, you want food.

You become immune to everything else, you don’t care.”

The pupils at St John’s are aware what a privilege it is to hear this story first hand. Zigi – short for Zygmunt – is one of only a handful of Holocaust survivors who travel around the UK on behalf of the Holocaust Educational Trust, talking to young people about their experiences.

“There are only a few of us left who can do it,” he said.

It is not an easy story to tell. But Mr Shipper’s tale is much, much more than a grim and depressing factual account. It is, ultimately, a surprisingly uplifting one, and not only because his is the story of a survivor.

As he speaks, full of warmth and humour and exuding a love of life, it is Mr Shipper’s humanity that shines through.

Now happily settled in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and with children and grandchildren of his own, he is not a bitter man. Children always ask him if he hates the Germans. The answer is a resounding “No”.

He warns of the dangers and potential effects of racism and prejudice. “What does hate achieve? If you hate, you are the one that suffers, you become miserable and bitter. Would that have helped me? Would it have brought back my family? No.”

But he owes it to those who did not survive to talk about what they went through, and said: “Families were wiped out. Who will tell their story? Young people are our future – it’s important for me to talk to them.”

He was only ten when his native Poland was overrun by the German army. “I wasn’t allowed to return to school. Everything changed overnight.”

Mr Shipper’s father fled to Russia to escape the Nazis. He believed his mother, who had divorced his father and moved to Belgium, was dead.

Mr Shipper was put to work in a metal factory.

He and his grandparents were forced out of their comfortable three-bedroomed apartment and into a single room in a Jewish ghetto, where food was scarce and death was everywhere.

His grandfather died from malnutrition. “When I was ten, I stepped over dead bodies in the ghetto.”

Aged 12, he was hurled into a lorry by a German soldier and told he was going to work. “I jumped off and ran. I knew they would shoot me in the back if they caught me. I was lucky, I escaped.”

He came out of hiding to return to his grandmother for a few more years until, at14, he was called away again, to Auschwitz. “We were told we were being put to work for the war effort,”

he said.

THE first thing Mr Shipper noticed when he got off the train was the terrible smell. “We saw chimneys with smoke coming out. Rumours spread it was a crematorium.

I still didn’t know what that meant.”

He was lined up for selection and separated from his grandmother, aunts and uncles. “The guard sent children, disabled people and the elderly to the right, and those capable of working to the left. Many women wouldn’t be separated from their children and they were shot in front of us, along with their children.

“I’d seen such horrible things already, but I couldn’t believe I was seeing children killed before my eyes, for no reason.”

Within an hour, those who went to the right were gassed. Mr Shipper was considered fit to work.

“Our clothes were taken and we were showered.

As I was given the now famous striped pyjamas, I realised I no longer owned anything. I didn’t even have a name, just a number – 84303.”

That was his lowest point.

“It was the hardest time. It wasn’t a physical thing. I felt totally alone for the first time. I did not have my parents. I did not have my grandparents.

I did not have any possessions. I did not even have a name. I thought, ‘I am completely alone’.”

But he never gave up. The survival instinct kicked in: “At that age, you think, ‘Where can I get food?’ You are too young to die.”

Not having siblings helped, because he had less to lose: “If I had seen a little brother or sister taken away, that would have been worse.”

Mr Shipper went on to work in labour camps.

By the time he was liberated by the British Army on May 3, 1945, he had almost died of typhus and malnutrition.

He spent months recovering in hospital.

Years later he discovered his grandmother, detained in the Terezin concentration camp, near Prague, had died on the day it was liberated.

He said: “She didn’t even have one day of freedom.” He regrets not being able to thank her for what she did for him.

When he settled in England in 1947, he met other young Auschwitz survivors: “We had so much in common, I felt I had found my family.”

He also met Jeanette, a French Jewish woman to whom he has been married 56 years, and established his own successful stationery business.

He returned to Auschwitz in recent years and found it painful. He understands why people find it hard to believe. “How can you believe one human being can do that to another? Taking babies, children, old people, women, men and slinging them into a gas chamber?”

He came to Bishop Auckland to tell his story.

It is a story that has made an impact, said Jo Hopper, the school’s citizenship co-ordinator.

“Staff and students were clearly moved by the experience, recognising it was a once-in-alifetime opportunity to listen to a first-hand account of the tragic events that took place.”

One pupil, Conor McCready, said: “His story was really sad. I am so glad he survived and was able to tell us about it in person. It was a privilege to listen to him.”

Amazingly, Mr Shipper concludes that he is one of the luckiest people alive: “I have never been miserable, never had bad dreams. I have got on with things. I don’t relive the Holocaust.

I am so proud of my children and grandchildren, they are my life.

“I survived concentration camps, I jumped out of a lorry without being seen. If you had told me when I was a boy I would be alive at 60, let alone 80, I would have laughed at you. After all that Hitler tried to do, he didn’t succeed. I am still here.”

* Holocaust Memorial Day is on Thursday. The Holocaust Educational Trust’s website is at het.org.uk, or call 0207-222-6822