Survivor who travelled to the UK by bomber

BORN IN 1927 to a traditional Jewish family in south-west Poland, Chaim “Harry” Olmer was one of 1,000 children who found refuge in Britain in 1946 — landing in a bomber, where he remembers sitting on the floor singing Hebrew songs with the other children.

Now after a career as a dentist, the 88-year-old grandfather of eight lives in Mill Hill, north-west London, with his wife Margaret.

His experience as a refugee and Holocaust survivor has made him passionate about educating young Britons about the war.

He said: “The memories are always there with me. I don’t see why we shouldn’t talk about them now. Some people still do not know what the Holocaust is — and it has been 70 years since then. They are pre-occupied with pop music and other things.”

One o f s i x s i b - lings, only Mr Olmer and one brother and sister survived the Holocaust. Before the persecution started, his family intended to move to British Mandate

A young Chaim Olmer Palestine — but never made it.

“I was around 12 when the war started,” he recalled. “I went to a Jewish school, but when we left school all the non- Jewish children would throw stones at us and shout at us: ‘Jew, go to Palestine’.”

He survived six concentration camps — before he was finally liberated at Theresienstadt. “I don’t know what I had but I was at death’s door,” he said, recalling being ill for weeks.

But he recovered. He then joined a group of child survivors who were travelling from Theresienstadt to Prague, where they were met by British planes that took them to Amsterdam, before finally landing in Carlisle.

He said: “I am pleased that I came here because of the opportunities I have had. Britain gave me a life and a home. They gave me a future — everything that I could have possibly had as a free man, I got.

“I had to work for it; I did not get it by doing nothing. I worked hard and I got whatever I wanted: I got a family, a home, friends and I belong to a community — that is what life is all about.”