Ferster was taken home in Poland, went through several concentration camps but survived and was living in England
After being arrested in 1943, Polish Jew Chaim Ferster was saved by Americans when he was run
A Holocaust survivor who escaped death in eight Nazi concentration camps during World War recounted his experiences to the BBC, the year that the liberation of the Auschwitz camp full 70 years.
"We arrived at midnight. There was a dead silence and the sight was frightening," says Chaim Ferster, who lives in Britain since 1946, recalling the first time he came to the notorious concentration camp.
"May we see in the distance the flames that rose four chimneys. At that time I did not realize they were the crematoria." he said.
Born into a family of Orthodox Jews in the city of Sosnowiec, Poland, Ferster he was 17 when World War II began in 1939.
In 1943, at 20 years old the Nazis came for him at home. Between 1943 and 1945 he lived in eight different concentration camps in Germany and Poland, where he faced forced labor, malnutrition and diseases such as typhus.
Now, with 93 years old and already great-grandfather, living in Manchester, he recalls the time when Jewish communities feared the military expansion of Germany.
"We could see the German planes. The Nazis invaded Sosnowiec very quickly. I remember that the Jews were very concerned about everything that was about to happen," said the survivor.
Living in fear
Ferster tells of the arrival of the rationing, widespread hunger and disease that proliferated by the Jewish ghetto in the Polish city.
"We had ration cards and there was plenty of food in the shops," he said. "I had no medicine. People were dying and life was very difficult. And at one point, gathered several city leaders and shot (against them). So, just like that."
Later, they began the deportation of thousands of Jewish families to concentration camps. Amid the chaos, he managed to avoid being taken in 1942, when her mother and her sister disappeared, and his father died. "Everyone knew that people selected by the Gestapo never returned," he said.
With that in mind, a relative convinced him to learn a skill that could be useful to the Germans: repairing sewing machines, which allowed it to be officially classified as "mechanical".
From 1943, when he was arrested, Ferster spent by the eight prison camps. He remembers that it was forced to carry cement blocks amid sub-zero temperatures.
Child survivors in Auschwitz - photo taken from images recorded by Soviet forces
"It was an unbearable cold, about 25 or 26 degrees below zero. The soldiers began to beat us, screaming that we were not fast. Many could not stand, had pneumonia. And some died," he said.
At the end of 1943 there was a typhus outbreak in the field where Ferster was and he became very ill. Many died from the disease, but he survived. Ferster remembers seeing dead bodies by the disease "stacked (...) forming high-rise towers."
Auschwitz
Ferster was deported to Auschwitz. He remembers very well the prisoners who were sent to the infamous "shower".
Chaim Ferster was 17 when the war began in 1939
"We put in a group. We all, an especially large group. The next morning, some of us were selected to go to the showers," he said. "We were there in the same room with showers where other people had died from the gas. But when we walked in, dropped water instead of gas and we could wash ourselves."
Ferster was one of the few survivors of Auschwitz, which was liberated by the Allies in January 1945. But that year, as Germany was losing the war, the Nazis began to speed up the implementation plan of the Jewish prisoners.
As a result, Ferster was placed in another group of prisoners sent walking to another famous concentration camp, Buchenwald. Buchenwald was that he thought he would die.
Freedom
The prisoners were being murdered en masse, day after day. Ferster awaiting a similar fate to that of fellow prisoners. But just as Ferster and the others were being called for execution, the camp was liberated.
Map of the Nazi concentration camps
"Suddenly reach US planes and all the German soldiers fled," he said. "Half or an hour later, an American tank passed through the gates of the camp and the soldiers (arrived) shouting 'you are free, you are free!'".
Later release, Ferster found that only two members of his family survived the Holocaust, the Manya sister and cousin Regina. "I could not believe it. I could not believe," said Ferster thrilled.
He went to England after the war and worked in a sewing machine repair shop to establish their own small business.
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