Horrors of Auschwitz remembered

One of the images shows the gates of Auschwitz

The victims and survivors of the Auschwitz are being remembered in an exhibition of photographs of the horrific WWII extermination camp.

It comes ahead of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27 January.

The Heartstone Auschwitz Memorial Exhibition is being held in New Lanark until the end of the month.

It features the living conditions of camp prisoners and the ovens and crematoria used to slaughter them.

"Testimony - The Heartstone Auschwitz Memorial Exhibition" was opened by Leo Metzstein, 72, who escaped Germany at the start of the war. It is made up of pictures taken by photographer Nick Sidle.

Mr Metzstein, who now lives in Hamilton, was the youngest member of a Jewish family living in Berlin.

I think of the poor people who had no chance, they were just taken away and killed Leo Metzstein

In the summer of 1939 he was one of thousands of Jewish children evacuated to the UK as Nazi persecution intensified.

He has spent most of his life in Scotland.

Mr Metzstein told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme: "I do remember a small case being packed and early morning making our way through streets, nobody on the street, and then just finding myself at a station.

"It was a horrendous place, full of weeping women, children weeping, trains blowing steam.

"The fact that Jews were being targeted, I honestly did not realise."

Birth hut

All Leo's family escaped to Scotland where he learned of concentration camps like Auschwitz as he grew up.

He said: "We were so lucky, I think of the poor people who had no chance, they were just taken away and killed.

"Occasionally I even have dreams and I am very disturbed."

Another of the pictures from the exhibition

Organiser Sita Kumari said the exhibition covered all the "paraphernalia" which went to make up the death camp.

She said: "You're going to see the crematoria, you're going to see the ovens, you're going to see the barracks where people lived, you're going to see the sort of conditions they had to live in.

"You will also see places like the hut where the women had to give birth.

"And the sad part of the story was that as soon as they gave birth both the mother and the baby were killed.

"It begs the question 'why allow the women to give birth in the first place?'"

It's worse than I ever could have imagined Leo Metzstein

Mr Metzstein said the stark images of Auschwitz unsettled and angered him.

He said: "It's worse than I ever could have imagined to think that these ovens, designed by German industrialists, couldn't handle the number of people that they tried to burn every day.

"It's just too horrible to contemplate."

Pupils from schools across South Lanarkshire will visit the exhibition.

The event at New Lanark Gallery, the Robert Owen School, New Lanark, is being staged by South Lanarkshire Council.

Holocaust Memorial Day, being staged on behalf of Scotland's local authorities on 27 January, aims to remember those who died during the Holocaust and bring together survivors and liberators.