Arek Hersh

In 2019 Arek was one of the subjects in the BBC drama "The Windermere Children" telling the story of the child survivors of the Nazi Holocaust that has devastated Europe's Jewish population on arrival to Calgarth Estate by Lake Windermere in 1945.

In 2017 he was immortalised in a sculpture by Frances Segelman for the Leeds Makor Jewish Culture Office.

In 2009, he was awarded an MBE for voluntary service to Holocaust education.

Hersh was the subject of the award-winning documentary "Arek" (2005) produced by UNISON and directed by Tony Lloyd.

Hersh met his wife Jean at a dance in Leeds at the age of 32. They have three children and several grandchildren. He currently lives near Leeds, England. In 1995, as part of his first public discussion of his Holocaust experiences, Hersh published his book, A Detail of History. All the proceeds go to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre, where he often gives presentations about his experience.

In 1948, Hersh volunteered to fight in the Israeli Defence Forces "to contribute towards the war of independence".

Arek Hersh, MBE (born 13 September 1928) is a survivor of the Holocaust.

Arek Hersh (Herszlikowicz - הרשליקוביץ׳) was born in Sieradz, Poland on 13 September 1928. He was the son of a bootmaker for the Polish army and a homemaker. At the age of eleven, following Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland, he was taken to his first concentration camp. The camp started out with 2,500 men; eighteen months later only eleven were alive. Hersh was moved around several camps before being taken to Auschwitz. Even as a young boy at the time, Hersh deduced that those who were placed in a group with sick, young or old people were considered by the Nazis to be of no use and would be killed. Consequently, while Jews were standing in queues of fitter and weaker people before entering the camp, Hersh crossed to the fitter queue during a commotion near the rear of the line (SS officers tried to take a child from its mother), and in doing so, saved his own life. As the war approached its conclusion and Germany was surrounded by the Allies, Hersh and the other Jews at Auschwitz were transported across the country. He was eventually liberated at Theresienstadt (Terezin, Czechoslovakia) on 8 May 1945 by the Soviet Army. There were 5,000 Jews in his town but only 40 of them came out alive.