'We haven't learnt a thing': Holocaust survivor Rudi Oppenheimer speaks to E&S

Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where they had been imprisoned for 14 months by the Nazis, had been liberated. They were free.

But there were no celebrations. Just weeks earlier their parents had died at the camp - and in the coming months, 13-year-old Rudi Oppenheimer would end up in a coma as his weakened body struggled to fight off the bacterial infection typhus.

He and his brother and sister were, in his own words 'under-nourished, starving, exhausted skeletons' following their time imprisoned at the Nazi camp, surviving on scraps of food and surrounded by sickness and death.

Today, seventy years on, people across the world are marking the anniversary of the day Germany's Bergen-Belsen camp was liberated by British soldiers.

And Rudi, now 83, shares the harrowing tale of his experiences with schoolchildren across England on behalf of the Holocaust Educational Trust to give them a first person insight into the horrors of the persecution of the Jews.

But he admits it took him decades to even begin coming to terms with the evil brutality he witnessed.

He told the Express & Star: "It took a long time to sink in. When I came to England I hated Germany and wouldn't even buy a pencil if it was made there.

"But I have since been to a couple of reunions there and the people I talk to now have no responsibility for what happened. Many of them feel guilty but it is not their fault."

Along with his brother Paul and sister Eve, Rudi was bundled on to the last train out of Bergen-Belsen two weeks before the liberation.

They were classed as 'exchange Jews' as Eve was registered as a British subject Mr Oppenheimer's father had registered Eve as a British subject with the Swiss embassy in Amsterdam in June 1942, because she was born in the UK. They were taken out of the camp in case they needed to be swapped with Germans interned by the allies.

It transpired Bergen-Belsen had been voluntarily handed over to British soldiers on April 15, 1945.

When the 11th Armoured Division of the British Army finally entered Bergen Belsen on April 15, 1945 they found thousands upon thousands of bodies, surrounded by the sick and dying.

Major Bob Barnett, one of the earliest officers to enter the camp said: "The things I saw completely defy description. There are no words in the English language which can give a true impression of the ghastly horror of this camp."

In all there were 13,000 unburied bodies and around 60,000 inmates, most of them sick and starving.

The prisoners had been left without food or water, and in the days that followed were dying at a rate of around 500 per day, mostly from typhus.

The Oppenheimer parents Hans and Rita had both died that March - after succumbing to the filthy and freezing conditions, although the exact nature of their illness was never known as bodies were simply disposed of in pits.

Rudi was born in Berlin and lived there with his parents and older brother Paul until he was four years old. His family left Berlin in 1936 to escape Nazi persecution. His father worked at the Mendelsohn Bank in Berlin and managed to obtain a transfer to the Amsterdam branch in 1936.

Before they moved to Heemstede in Holland, he lived for six months in Britain with his mother and brother, although his father didn't join them.

Rudi said he and his brother were told they were going on holiday but they were both enrolled in school when they got there and told they would not be going back to Germany because it was too dangerous.

In May 1940 German troops invaded Holland. He said he had at first been excited about the news because he did not know what war was like.

A number of laws were passed, including that all Jewish children must attend Jewish schools, Jews were not allowed in public places like parks and zoos and from April 1942 had to wear yellow stars on each item of clothing to show they were a Jew.

In 1942 Jews in Amsterdam were being rounded up and deported from the city but Mr Oppenheimer and his family, who had lived in Amsterdam since May 1942, managed to avoid deportation for the time being because his father was working for the Jewish Council, giving them temporary exemption.

But in June 1943 and sent to the transit camp Westerbork, in the north-east of Holland. He says his parents must have already foreseen what was happening as everything was packed when they were told to leave.

Being 'exchange Jews' allowed he and his family to remain in Westerbork until February 1944, when, after spending seven months in the camp, the Oppenheimer family were deported to Bergen Belsen.

By this time Paul was 15, Rudi 12 and Eve, just seven.

There were seven watch towers, electrified fences and SS soldiers with bloodhounds, machine guns and searchlights and rules forbidding schooling, playing and entertainment.

As exchange Jews, Mr Oppenheimer and his family received certain privileges in Bergen-Belsen.

They lived in separate compounds from the other prisoners; they did not have to wear the striped uniforms that other prisoners were forced to wear, they did not have their hair shaved and they were able to keep their luggage.

But like other concentration camp inmates, they lived in male and female barracks and slept in three-tier bunk beds. They got three 'meals' each day – a mug of warm brown liquid in the morning, a bowl of turnip soup for lunch and about one and a half inches of bread in the evening.

As they were relatively strong when they arrived, they could cope with the harsh Bergen-Belsen regime - but a harsh winter that followed left them struggling to cope.

But during the winter of 1944 to 1945 there were dire living conditions and in 1945 his parents died within months of each other.

Rudi said: "We had been in Belsen for more than six months and were very hungry, under-nourished, starving, exhausted skeletons. The daily roll-calls became more and more traumatic. We had to stand in line for hours, even in the rain, sleet and snow, when it was freezing cold and the icy winds blew across the heathland area around Belsen.

"This was when many people fell ill with diarrhoea, pneumonia, tuberculosis and various other illnesses, and they were unable to resist or recover. In January 1945 our mother fell ill - she went into the hospital barracks and we visited her every evening. We never knew what precise illness she had because there were no doctors, no nurses and no medicines.

"And there was no extra food. We could see that she was getting worse, but there was nothing we could do to help her. And one evening when we came, she was no longer there. She had died and her body had been taken away to make room for someone else in the hospital barracks. Our mother was not yet 43 years old and we realise now that we never really got to know her very well."

Speaking about his father's death, he said: "Again we didn't say goodbye to him. We were orphans now desperate to be liberated."

When bundled onto the train to leave Bergen Belsen the trio had no idea what awaited them - until one day they realised the SS guards on the train had gone.

But even then their ordeal was not over. Their train journey continued for another week, with people dying every day and burial ceremonies becoming a regular occurrence next to the railway.

The youngsters finally arrived in Leipzig with the help of Russian troops along the way, and then began their return to the Netherlands, which they had previously called home.

The Oppenheimers had a relative in England, so it was here that they headed to join their uncle and aunt, in London, a few months later.

But with their parents gone and the knowledge that, while they escaped, tens of thousands suffered miserable deaths, the liberation was an anti-climax - as it was for many of those who survived the camps.

Rudi said he will forever be haunted by the harrowing five years he spent in concentration camps.

"I went back to Germany briefly when I was 21 but other than that, I did not mark the anniversary until the 45th in 1990," he said.

"We went back as a family and started telling our story, and since then it has just grown. I am busier now than I have ever been, but in the years after we didn't want to talk about it and no-one seemed to want to listen anyway.

"In those days we didn't think about the Holocaust too much. When we came to England people said it would never happen again. We used to mark the day of our parents dying but now I feel like it is a part of my history and the country's history again."

Rudi spent some years in Solihull and worked as a train engineer in Birmingham before moving to London, where he now lives.

He said he will continue giving talks in the hope that society will learn from the atrocities, but he is not optimistic that this will happen - and says humans are 'a really terrible race who want power and money'.

However the shock displayed by new generations as they hear what his family and friends went through has given him hope that one day the persecution of races and religions will be consigned to history.

The Middle East, Kosovo and Darfur are just some of the examples he gives to demonstrate that there is still a long way to go.

He said: "As a society, we haven't learnt a thing from what happened to people like me.

"That is why I want to keep talking about it. I tell young people that it is up to them to make a better job of running their countries than the previous generations did, and I really hope they do."

Earlier this year there were emotional scenes as Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors - many of whom were just children when they were taken from their homes to endure a life surrounded by death and unimaginable horror - returned to Poland to mark 70 years since their liberation.

World leaders and the world's media attended the event on January 27 where survivors of the infamous death camp, where 1.1 million people died, shared their stories, lay wreaths and lit candles at the Auschwitz Memorial.

Belsen was not the same as camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau – there were no gas chambers at Belsen and there was not a policy of systematic murder. The victims of Belsen died as a result of brutality and neglect on the part of the SS, of sickeness and starvation.

Following the liberation of the camp Bergen-Belsen was burned to the ground by the British army because of the typhus epidemic and louse infestation.

And while Auschwitz still stands as a museum and lasting memorial to those who died at the hands of the Nazis, for a long time the site of the Belsen camp went unmarked.

Following the closure of the nearby displaced persons' camp, where prisoners were taken following liberation the area reverted to heathland.

However, as early as May 1945, the British had erected large signs at the former camp site and ex-prisoners began to set up monuments.

A first wooden memorial was built by Jewish survivors in September 1945, followed by one made in stone, dedicated on the first anniversary of the liberation in 1946 and others followed.

The British military authorities ordered the construction of a permanent memorial in September 1945 after having been lambasted by the press for the desolate state of the camp and in the summer of 1946, the design plan was presented, which included the obelisk and memorial walls.

The memorial was finally inaugurated in November 1952, with the participation of Germany's president Theodor Heuss, who called on the Germans never to forget what had happened at Belsen.

Now, 70 years after the first soldiers entered the camp in 1945 a programme of events has been organised to remember the dead.

A conference exploring the consequences of the end of the war , on the prisoners, Nazi perpetrators and German population will be held, as well as a photography workshop focusing on the memorial and exhibitions and concerts, with a wreath laying ceremony planned for April 26.