Holocaust survivor warns people to 'guard against' repeat of atrocity 80 years after liberation of Bergen-Belsen

A Holocaust survivor has said it is “up to us to guard against” a repetition of the Second World War atrocity 80 years after the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated.

Warning - content may be upsetting Tens of thousands of people, including diarist Anne Frank, died at the camp in northern Germany, which was liberated by British troops on 15 April 1945. Mala Tribich, who was around 14 when she was deported to the camp with her younger cousin, said she still remembers what she went through there, because "you don't forget that".

Mrs Tribich, who spent less than three months there, said she hopes that "nothing like that will ever happen again, and of course, it's up to us to guard against it, and I hope that some people have learned the lessons. "We have seen that it could happen again, and we must take every step not to let it.

"The world is different today. Different things are happening which are not very palatable, not very acceptable, but we must just constantly work against those terrible forces around us that make terrible things happen," she added.

Born in Poland in 1930, she was around nine years old when the Nazis invaded, forcing her family to move into a ghetto. Her mother and eight-year-old sister were murdered by the Nazis in a local forest before she was taken to the Ravensbruck concentration camp with her younger cousin in November 1944.

Stripped of her identity Their clothes were taken and their heads shaved. They were "stripped of their identity," she said.

That caused people to "lose hope, and without hope, you can't survive, people give up and it showed itself very quickly". After about 10 weeks, Ms Tribich and her cousin were transported in cattle trucks to Bergen-Belsen, where, along with a "terrible smell.