Winter in the camps: Holocaust survivor who almost died at Auschwitz and worked in concentration camps aged just 13 recalls the bitterest months of Nazi persecution Ivor Perl, a Hungarian Jew, was sent to a ghetto aged 11 Was sent to Auschwitz in 1944 with his parents and eight siblings He pretended he was 16 to be sent to a labour camp instead of killed Was sent to Allach and forced to work on Nazi projects in the snow Ivor was liberated by Allied forced in 1945 and moved to England Only he and his brother survived The Holocaust Young: Ivor Perl was sent to Hitler's camps when he was just 11 years old. In this picture, taken after he was liberated, he is 14 In February of 1945 Ivor Perl, 13, was standing in the snow cold, hungry, desperate, and dimly aware that under normal circumstances it would be time for his Barmitzvah. But instead of a celebration, Ivor, staring through the fence of Allach, a Nazi concentration camp, had been put to work for months on end with nothing more than thin prison clothes to protect him from the bitter winter, and a slice of bread a day to sustain him. Remembering his desperation, Ivor, now 81, recalls: 'The camp was in the middle of the forest, and a fence ran through the trees. I was praying to God "help me, if you let me get out of this place, I shall not ask anything else of you in my life." But his liberation was not to come for months, when the American soldiers would sweep into Germany and, horrified, stumble upon the hellish camps where Ivor and millions like him were held. So Ivor, suffering not only from terrible deprivation and could, but a typhus infection, worked on through the winter. The gruelling regime hit him especially badly as, having pretended to be older than he was to avoid being killed, he had to do the work of an adult to keep up the act. Ivor, a Hungarian, was imprisoned in 1944, after his country had been occupied by the Nazis for attempting to defect to the Allies. Transported: Ivor was forced on to a crowded railway car and transported to Auscwitz in awful conditions (file picture) He, his parents and his eight siblings were sent first to Auschwitz, where women and children would be separated from men, and killed. Ivor was saved because he mother ordered him to join the adults despite still being a boy. The decision saved his life, as his mother and seven of his siblings died in the camps. 'Of course at the start, I ran over to my mother's side, with the children and the women', Ivor says. I told her: "I want to come with you, mum." She said: "No, don't come here."' He pleaded but gave in and joined one of his brothers in the other line. However, even then he was almost sent back to die by the notorious Auschwitz camp Dr Josef Mengele. 'I could see a German officer with white gloves', Ivor says, 'who we heard later on was Dr Mengele. He was pointing left and right. And as he came to me, he suddenly stopped and said "how old are you?" Remembering what I was told, I said I was 16. Fortunately I was big for my age. 'I've often, even now after all these years, I can remember his eyes as he was thinking to himself which side he should put me to. He must have thought that if I'm lying I won't be strong enough so it doesn't matter.' In Allach for the bitterest months of the year, Ivor's strength was sorely tested. An average meal in the camp was a slice of bread, a cup of hot water and, perhaps, a dab of margarine. To protect them from the weather, prisoners had only the infamous black-and-white striped prisoner underclothes and a thin cotton overcoat. Desperate: These Jewish survivors, mostly children, were photographed when Auschwitz was liberated (file picture) Skeletal: Children were kept in horrible conditions inside the camps Alongside hundreds of others, he was put to work on gruelling projects such as digging underground bases for military equipment with only rudimentary tools. Order was kept with a combination of fear and extreme force. When Nazi guards realised some prisoners were hiding in a cave to avoid work, they thought nothing of throwing grenades in after them. When a register of prisoners was taken in the morning, everyone faced an agonising decision of which group of labourers to join. Some tasks were easier than others - and the hardest work could easily drive struggling prisoners to death. One day Ivor made a different choice to his brother, and didn't see him for three weeks. While his brother was posted to a farm, and allowed to eat decently for a time, Ivor grew so emaciated and ill that his older sibling did not recognise him. Marched: Hungarian Jews, marked with a Star of David, queue on their way into Auschwitz in 1944, the same time Ivor was taken to the camps (file picture) Work: Children are seen behind barbed wire in Auschwitz Indeed, at one point Ivor's typhus, which was ubiquitous in concentration camps, grew so bad he was referred to the camp hospital. 'The hospital block was laughable', Ivor recalls. 'Twice a day - in the morning a camp doctor would come along, you would uncover yourself, he'd see how much flesh you had on you, whether you were able to work. Those who were not considered workable were pointed towards, and those people had to be taken away to be killed. All of us would push our stomach out to pretend we were more healthy than we were. With the help of his brother, Ivor sneaked out of the hospital, where there was clearly no prospect of getting better. Haunting: A recent images shows a wintery Auschwitz as it is now, with the infamous slogan 'Arbeit Macht Frei' written above the gate But outside, in the camp, things began to change, as the noise of Allied war planes gradually began to fill the air. But for those still inside, it wasn't a symbol of hope. 'They said the worse the Germans treated us the more we were losing the war,' Ivor remembers. And indeed, the worst was yet to come. After weeks of restlessness in the camp, the order was given that it be abandoned. Ivor and his brother were told that they must march, for days, to a larger camp. Recollection: Ivor Perl, pictured recently, was able to start a new life in Britain They were given a single loaf of bread to sustain them for several days, and warned that if they finished it too soon there would be nothing else. Part way through this gruelling journey, with a pace so uncompromising prisoners would die on their feet, it became too much. 'We were walking along in the mud and suddenly my brother and I accused each other of taking bigger bites than we should have done,' Ivor remembers. We started fighting and wrestling in the mud. And as we were fighting in the mud suddenly I could see a pair of army boots and the butt of a gun on the floor. The two thought - with good reason - they would soon be brutally punished. 'Then suddenly we heard this soldier talking to us in Hungarian', Ivor says. 'He said "Don't fight, because you'll soon be liberated and then afterwards you'll be sorry you fought each other." That was about the only kindness that I experienced in my camp life. Even this was only a blip in the otherwise unrelenting suffering of Ivor's year under Nazi persecution. But, as he marched towards Dachau, where he would soon be liberated by the American forces, it was a sign of better things to come. After the war, Ivor was granted a visa to come to the UK. He spent his working life in fashion retail, married and has four children and six grandchildren. Ivor Perl shared his story in conjunction with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Visit www.hmd.org.uk for more information