Belsen survivor's death mourned

11.00.00am GMT Sun 11th Mar 2007

I have only just read on the West Midlands section of the BBC news website that Paul Oppenheimer a Holocaust survivor died on Thursday, aged 78.

Paul Oppenheimer survived five years under Nazi rule in Holland including time spent in the concentration camp at Belsen.

After his experiences of the Second World War Paul Oppenheimer came to live in the West Midlands and became an engineer however it was sometime until he started to share his experiences with others. His story which became known in the tale The Last Train From Belsen was told in book From Belsen to Buckingham Palace which was publisher by Beth Shalom Ltd in September 1996.

I met Paul Oppenheimer in 2004 when he attended a Holocaust memorial event organised my Zabir Ali and myself after our visit to former Nazi concentration camps in Poland.

My memory of Paul Oppenheimer will be of a polite man who was helpful to young people trying to understand what Nazi Germany was like and what life in a concentration camp was.