Death camp pair reunite with pals they made playing at racecourse

haunt him today. He was sent from Hungary to Auschwitz in Nazi-occupied Poland with his parents and 11 siblings in 1943.

Only he and older brother Alec survived the camp and a death march to Dachau in Germany, with Alec saving Ivor three times from the gas chamber.

Ivor, 87, said: “One night there was an air-raid siren. My brother came looking for me and, even though I was scared of being punished, I went with him.

“That night all the children in that block were sent to the gas chamber.” Ivor was 13 when the war ended, with he and his brother liberated from Dachau.

They were flown here by the Central British Fund for rehabilitation and taken to convalesce at Woodcote House, a manor opposite Ascot racecourse, Berks.

Ivor said: “As we arrived, a few of the boys and girls there sang a beautiful welcome song. The whole thing just seemed like a dream in heaven.

“Can you imagine coming from where we had been to this beautiful place? We just wanted to taste life, live life and enjoy freedom.”

Sam, 93, survived the Warsaw Ghetto in occupied Poland and Germany’s Buchenwald concentration camp.

He said: “Ascot was a lovely place. I used to go and play football, ride a bicycle, and I remember the first time I started smoking.” He even forgives those who made him suffer. Sam said: “If I don’t forgive, I hurt myself more than I hurt them.

“I have friends who are German, they are very nice. Why should I hate people who I never knew in those days?” Sam went on to marry and have two sons, and worked as a salesman before running his own B&B. He now lives in Richmond, South West London.

Ivor also got married, settled in Essex and had four children. He worked in the rag trade. Widowed two years ago, he now gives talks at schools and colleges.

Ivor said: “Even now when I talk about the Holocaust, I almost can’t believe it happened and I experienced it. You cannot describe what happened there.

“Talking about it does help, but what happened has never left me.

“But arriving in England as a 13-yearold boy, I just had to think, ‘Dust yourself down and get on with life’.

“Nobody survived without luck, and not everybody who had luck survived. Anybody who went to the camps and through the selection for gas chambers could not have survived without luck.”

Do The Right Thing with Eamonn and Ruth, tonight on Channel 5 at 7pm.