For years, Auschwitz survivor Naftali Furst kept his story to himself.

But since his granddaughter survived the October 7 massacre at the Kfar Aza kibbutz -- one of the bloodiest in Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza -- the 92-year-old is more determined than ever to testify.

With anti-Semitism at levels rarely seen since World War II, Furst warned that "if we forget our history, we risk seeing it repeat itself".

Eighty years after the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on January 27, 1945, AFP reached out to Holocaust survivors who rebuilt their lives in Israel.

Several came through the horrors of that slaughterhouse in occupied Poland where one million of the six million Jews killed in the Shoah were murdered, and which has become a symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany.

Here are their stories:

- Naftali Furst, born in Slovakia in 1932: daughter, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren -

Naftali Furst was only 10 when he and his family were rounded up and sent to a concentration camp, ending up in Auschwitz in November 1944. He was separated from his parents and a number was tattooed on his arm.

But with Soviet troops approaching, the Nazis forced the remaining prisoners on a "Death March" through the winter snow towards Germany and Austria.

Those weeks were the "worst of my life", Furst recalled.

"It was an indescribable experience." He and his brother saw "lots of people drop dead or collapse by the roadside. Those who could not keep up were killed on the spot. Survival meant fighting not to be left behind.

"We encouraged each other when we were about to drop, forcing ourselves to keep going and stay with the group to avoid being killed."

When they finally arrived at Buchenwald in Germany they were saved from death by a Czech communist resistance member called Antonin Kalina, who was later honoured by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing hundreds of Jewish children.

Furst was 12 when American soldiers liberated the camp. You can see him in one of the most iconic images of the Shoah, stretched out on a plank in a barrack with other survivors including, Elie Wiesel, who would later win the Nobel Peace Prize.

He now heads a group of former Buchenwald inmates and told AFP he intends to talk about what happened to them as long as he can "so people will never forget what happened.

"Many who lived through these horrors are no longer there and I consider it my responsibility to testify. But I am afraid that in 50 or 100 years, the Shoah will become just another page of history, and that we will forget how unique and tragic it was."

Furst was at home in Haifa in northern Israel when Hamas militants launched their attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.

But his granddaughter Mika and her family were living in a kibbutz less than two miles (three kilometres) from the Gaza border and he could not get through to them on the........

© Al Monitor