The Times and Independent Series have teamed up with Jewish Care's Holocaust Survivors Centre in Hendon to tell the stories of those who saw first-hand the atrocities of the Second World War.

Here is Rene Salt's story.

HOLOCAUST survivor Rene Salt will always remember meeting her husband – as he was a soldier who helped liberate the concentration camp she was held captive at by the Nazis.

Ms Salt and her mother working in the demolition of buildings in the Hamburg area, before being transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they were eventually liberated by British forces.

Ms Salt said her future husband was among the first soldiers who arrived at the camps, although they did not meet at the time, with fate only bringing them together in Paris in 1947.

Back in July 1939, 10-year-old Rene Salt left school for the summer holidays. She would never return.

At the end of the summer, Germany invaded her home country of Poland, and Nazi officers forced her family out of their home in the village of Zdunska,vola.

Now 86, Ms Salt remembers it clearly: “We were left standing in the street with nothing but the clothes were wearing.”

The family was forced into a nearby ghetto designated for the Jewish population and, from the age of 10, Ms Salt worked in a factory making socks for the soldiers.

Brutality and executions were a daily occurrence, she described ten men being picked out at random and hanged on gallows in the city centre simply to instil fear in the ghetto’s population.

Then, in 1942, all children under 18 were ordered to be handed over to the Nazis.

Ms Salt, 13 at the time, said: “There were rumours of older people and young children being slaughtered all over the country. One day we were ordered out into the street, so we hid our grandparents and a four-year-old cousin in the attic. Later I’d discover they were found and shot.

“To describe the scene on the street would be impossible. People were screaming, crying. Mothers were trying to hide their children.

“They got a hold of my sister, and beat my mother. I never saw my sister again, she was 10 years old.

“I do not know why I was not taken. Maybe it was God’s will.”

Ms Salt and her parents were taken to the Lodz Ghetto. In the appalling conditions, she contracted typhus.

The ghetto inmates were later moved on to Auschwitz, getting off the train Ms Salt was separated from her father and never saw him again.

Her mother did live to see the end of the war, but badly weakened by her experiences, she died 12 days after liberation.

Ms Salt moved to Paris with an aunt, and eventually to London with her husband. She has two children and five grandchildren.

For 50 years, the memories meant Ms Salt was unable to share her story, but she became a prominent public speaker on the subject in later life, and says the HSC has played a big part in allowing her to confront the horrors.

She said: “It is like a second home, I cannot praise the staff enough. It has made me feel so much better.

“To any young people who might read this, I would just say to be tolerant, and live in peace.”

For more information on the Holocaust Survivor’s Centre, call 02082029844.