The Jewish Community of Bermuda last night marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with song and stories of survival.

Judy Maybury told the dozens of people in attendance for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony how her mother was twice sent on a death march from Budapest to the notorious concentration camp and twice escaped.

“I don’t know how she did it. I never got the answer. She never wanted to talk about it,” she said.

“In one of her escapes she was helped by a close school friend, who was a gentile and represented Hungary in the Olympics. Of course, you know what happens when a gentile is found helping a Jew, so it was quite a nice thing to happen.

“On the second march to Auschwitz she somehow found out that her father was sick and there was a strong catalyst, which gave her the strength to flee again prior to her arrival.

“My understanding is she was never on the death train, that both times she was marched to the concentration camps. That probably made it a little easier for her to escape.”

Ms Maybury said that during one of her escapes, her mother encountered a German soldier and was stopped and questioned.

“My mother let him know that her father was very sick and she needed to get back to Budapest to help him,” she said. “The soldier knew that she was Jewish. There was no way he didn’t.

“This soldier, fully aware that she was Jewish, just let her go. I always wondered why it happened, but she was lucky to meet that soldier that day.

“Thanks to his moment of kindness and humanity, her life was saved and she arrived back in Budapest and she brought her father back to health, so two lives were saved by that German soldier.”

More than a million people were killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland, including an estimated 960,000 Jewish people, before the Soviet Army freed the survivors on January 27, 1945.

Fiona Elkinson, of the Jewish Community of Bermuda, said that it was important to remember the horrors of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, along with the strength and perseverance of the survivors on the anniversary of the camp’s liberation.

“It is a day etched in the annals of history as a symbol of both human cruelty and resilience,” she said.

Ms Elkinson added that the passage of time had left fewer survivors to tell their stories, while the world has seen a resurgence of anti-Semitism.

“Across the globe, incidents of hate, discrimination and violence remind us that hatred of Jews in the past is not as distant as we would hope,” she said.

“It is our collective responsibility to confront these forces of division, to stand in solidarity against hatred, bigotry, anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination.”

Vanja Vukota, the Acting US Consul-General, said the Holocaust was one of the darkest chapters of mankind’s history with unimaginable suffering and loss.

“It is our duty to remember what happened and we have to make sure these atrocities don’t ever happen again,” he said.

Mr Vukota said that most of those who were sent to the concentration camp only survived a few months if they were not immediately killed.

“As the number of survivors dwindle and the memory of the Second World War fades, it is up to us to educate the younger generation and generations to come and prevent bigotry and hatred before it starts,” he added.

Andrew Murdoch, the Governor, agreed it was essential that we grapple with the past and recognise its lasting relevance.

“With each passing year, the opportunities to meet and to hear a survivor grow even fewer,” he said. “Those of us who have had that privilege to hear those personal accounts are for ever marked by the experience.

“We bear an almost sacred responsibility to preserve it by giving it life.”