this is bbc world news. the headlines. the coronavirus infection has killed 82 people in china with a dozen cases confirmed in more than a dozen cases confirmed in more than a dozen countries. calls have renewed for witnesses in president trump's impeachment trial, after a leaked manuscript from john bolton, an investigation into the crash that killed kobe bryant and eight others has formally launched. this comes as fa ns has formally launched. this comes as fans have been expressing sadness at the death of the player and his teenage daughter who were among those killed in this crash in california on sunday. that's the news this half are.

now on bbc news, stephen sackur speaks to holocaust survivor mindu hornick on hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. it is 75 years since allied troops entered the nazi death camp at auschwitz. the very word "auschwitz" still stirs a unique level of horror. it was the place where hitler's genocide of european jewry was industrialised with evil precision. my guest today, mindu hornick, is one of the remaining auschwitz survivors. now 90 years old, she continues to speak of the past in the hope that we will learn from her experience. that is her challenge to us — to listen and to draw the right lessons.

mindu hornick, welcome to hardtalk. i want to begin by asking you how you feel about this moment, where there is so much sombre reflection and ceremonial marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz. for you, as a survivor, how do you feel? for me, as a survivor, it's very important. memorials, school events, and commemorations are really important to me, because my fear is always that with the passage

of time, if we don't remember, we don't commemorate, and we do not teach children, that the memory of the 20th century, which was horrific, would erode and would disappear with the passage of time. let's make it personal. yes. over the 75 years, have your own memories in any way faded, or not at all? well, have they faded? for instance, for over a0 years, i could not speak about it. really? yes, i could not speak about the holocaust. you mean you didn't want to? you simply couldn't — it was too difficult? there are several reasons. first of all, to begin with, i think in the first ten years, people didn't want to know.

the media didn't want to know. the publishers — there were books published in yiddish and polish and russian, and they weren't interested to do translations. and the second reason is, i think when you're traumatised from a place such as auschwitz, you need a healing time in between, before you could speak. some people took less time and some people took more. but because of my life, how things worked out, it took me perhaps longer than some other ones. and we are going to get to that period, when you felt able to speak of your experience, but let us do it chronologically. let's take you back to your girlhood, being raised in a rural environment in slovakia,

what is now slovakia. yes, yes. close to prague, in fact. yes, yes, it was. you were 12 years old. nearly 13, 13 years of age. and the nazis, of course, were occupying your place of — of residence. they were, yes. they rounded up thejews. and as i understand it, in the end, your father was already taken. but in the end, your mother, your siblings and you were put on a transport, a train. we were put... first of all, we were taken in lorries to a ghetto in kosice. and as you know what these ghettos were, because they would take... they were sectioned—off part

of the city, and we would... we had curfew, we couldn't allow — we weren't allowed to go out there. and what i remember, we — it was again a very rural part of slovakia. we were in a hayloft for some weeks, and then suddenly they asked us to pack our luggage and took us down to the railway station and put us all into cattle wagons. i mean, at no point did we know where we were going or what was happening, because communication was not as we have it now, i mean, 75 years later. we didn't have mobiles. of course. we didn't have facebook, or anything. so really our communication was nothing, zero. and you were crammed, huge numbers crammed, into these railway wagons. 70 of us were in those wagons, and they put a bucket in the middle.

and there were mothers and children. there were no men. you arrived on the platform at the dreadful auschwitz railway stop. stop, yes. and you and yourfamily were offloaded. yes — well, we heard this terrible clatter. yes, the gates opened, and i mean, the shock and disorientation that set in was unbelievable. and was there selection straight away? no. well, let me tell you. a polish couple, the ones with the striped clothing, jumped into our wagon. and he said to my mother in yiddish, which are your children? and she said, well, these two are my little boys and these two are my girls. and he said to her in yiddish language, you must let

these girls go ahead. let them go ahead. you will see them later. he was so persuasive. and i think the fact that he spoke to her in her language, she looked at us and she said we'd better do as this man says. because you can imagine the disorientation. there were ss men marching up and down with guns on their shoulders. there were barking dogs and blaring loudspeakers. they always had this noise. so he was helping us down these carriages, and we weren't very tall, helping us down this cattle truck. and he said to me, he asked me how old i was, and he said, you say you are 17.

my sister says you are 19, and you are a seamstress, that you have to be. which wasn't true. which wasn't true, but that's what he told us to say when we got to — where? at that point, we never knew. but is it is extraordinary for me to think of you as that girl of 13, separated at that point from your mother. i know. and did you ever see her again? never saw her again. so let me tell you, as we joined this enormous trail of people, we did look back. and i think my mother had a spotted scarf, and we waved to them. so we proceeded. the selection came when we came to the main gate. the gate with "arbeit macht frei", works make you free, inscribed over it. the german. the german, yes. and we were directly proceeded to the main gate, through the main gate

to the main camp. in all honesty, years later, i thought about it, i never remember giving my name. i don't, because the shock was such. and people say, why didn't you talk? you didn't talk because the trauma of it, even years later, was still there. so we — we didn't. no, we didn't. we just went through the main gate, and the sight that greeted us beyond the selection gate will stay with me for the rest of my life. there were watchtowers with machine—guns pointed at us, and there were corpses everywhere, and these emaciated looking men walking around in striped clothing, dragging those... they were like trolleys,

full of these skin—and—bone bodies. so after we were collected, a whole train of people, we were marched to be stripped naked, our hair shaven, and to be tattooed with a number. from then on, we have no name. they were given a dress and a pair of wooden clogs, but no underwear. nothing. you were given that advice which probably saved your life, because you were regarded as useful. as useful, yes. and you survived for several months in auschwitz. yes, idid. before being sent to a slave labour camp. correct. looking back, when so many did not survive, what do you think gave

you the strength to get through it? was it luck, or was there something more? well, it is a known fact that people survived in pairs. my sister — you lived for each other, to have had a sister. and the second stroke of luck was my mother's older sister, who was a very beautiful lady, had already arrived in auschwitz, and she came to find us in block 14. and she decided — i mean, we were so terribly tearful and distraught, and we said this man promised we will see our mother, and she is not there. what happened ? and somebody shouted in, can you see the smoke, and all this terrible ash? they are already possibly burnt.

and we never heard of crematoria. i didn't know the word crematorium. nor — who has ever heard of people being burnt? can you imagine it? anyway, she did some kind of exchange, i think it was possibly a day or two later, with another cousin or some relatives that wanted to be with their relatives, and took us into her block to take care of us. and yes, we lived for each other and we cared for each other. and that was the reason i survived. and she was all the time, with her daughters, looked after us. it is almost surreal to sit here in this comfortable home of yours, which you have lived in for decades in the english midlands, and for your extraordinarily

expressive memory, to take us back to auschwitz. and when you talk as you do with me, again, do you sort of smell the smells, see the sights? how hard is it for you to conjure up these images? once i started speaking, can i tell you, i had to dig deep into my subconscious to think what happened. because, let's face it, once we survived, we wanted to get on with our lives. in a sense, you wanted to bury it. we wanted to bury it. we wanted to bury it, get on with our lives, and not live in the past. possibly that is why i am, i think, reasonably normal — because i didn't live in the past. because a lot of the people that

lived in the past and could never get it out of their minds ended up on psychiatrists‘ couches, and so on, and they were sick people, right through life. it was understandable. a lot of young fathers and mothers who have survived, and they have lost all their family, they were the only ones who survived, they couldn't come to terms with anything. interesting you say that. it seems to me the extreme trauma that you went through and, let's not forget you were just 13 years old, it involved seeing the absolute worst of your fellow human beings. and i just wonder whether, as you think back, for example, to the way that man, drjosef mengele was in your camp and walking up and down the lines virtually every day selecting

children such as yourself for the most horrifying experiments. he was called the angel of death. that is what we called him. did you use that phrase even at the time? yes, we did. we called him the angel of death. in the end, these were nazis, fanatical people who we cannot quite understand or get inside the heads of, but nonetheless, they are human beings. you have seen human beings at the very worst and yet you clearly, as you have said, you emerged and you were not consumed with anger orfear or damage. you got beyond it. we had damage. we had plenty of damage. we had nightmares, terrible nightmares for years afterwards. and in the nightmare you thought to yourself "well, if it happened,

this could not have happened again". you woke yourself up in the nightmare to, to convince yourself that you are dreaming, that it is not happening again. we had terrible nightmares for years. it was notjust me, i think. most people who survived auschwitz and the terrors of the cruelty of the german soldiers... i mean, how they could stoop to such cruelty is beyond anyone's imagination. they were cultured. germany was the most cultured nation in europe. how could they stoop to such inhumanity? of course, more than i million people died in auschwitz and the vast majority werejewish. not all but the vast majority were because hitler's plan was to eliminate europeanjewry.

so when you came to the uk, after that unimaginable experience, i guess you had to figure out how to live as a jew and find a comfortable place for yourself in this new country. was that easy? has it been a process? it was definitely a process. because i came to england with the last youth transport in 1948. so i went back to prague for three years because the russians were closing the borders and the family and the few people that survived were emigrating to australia and to israel and so on. and to help my aunt, i had an aunt and uncle here in england who were very

orthodox and they had a real traditional home. so to be quite honest, when i got back to prague i did not think we were the chosen people. religion did not mean anything to me. but when i came to england to a very observant home and on a stateless passport, it is some kind of stigma. you feel you need to belong. so ijoined a jewish community and reconnected with myjudaism which i had left behind for some years and i contributed to the community with my work and various activities that i did at the community. as you said for some time you really did not talk about the experience in auschwitz. i did not talk at all about it.

not at all. in the course of your life have you come to believe that it is vitally important that the story is told, particularly to young people, and that it is part of everybody‘s education? that is very important to me really. very important to me that we tell our story to educators, to children at school and that we have these events at school and we have memorials because otherwise, as i said before, with the passage of time it could just erode and that would be quite unbearable to me. what we're really talking about when we reflect on what happened to you in your childhood and the horrors of auschwitz, we are talking about the most extreme form of hate. genocidal race hate which was absolutely targeting

thejewish people of europe. you have since spent many decades living in the united kingdom as a jewish woman. have you, over time, come to believe that anti—semitism is slowly being eradicated or, in recent times have you come to fear that the horrors of the past have not entirely been eliminated? anti—semitism is on the rise which frightens me greatly as i get older and thinking of my grandchildren, heaven forbid they should have to go through anything like that. but i am always an optimist and i was hoping that this 2ist century will bring something better than the 20th century.

on that note i am interested to hear about your own return to germany. and to auschwitz which you did a few years ago. how was that for you? how difficult was it? it was difficult but the fact that i went with people who cared for me and looked after me and it made it that much easier. but the emotion, i felt drained when i got home, particularly when i went the first time. i just could not... it was surreal to think that i have come out of this hell. it was literally hell. so the memories come back and you go to germany and i am mindful that

in the last day or two the german president at one of the commemorations injerusalem, he, with real passion, he said we germans recognise the burden of guilt that we have to carry. oh, yes, yes, yes. in your mind and in your heart, when you go to germany and you meet german people, are you able to forgive? is that a word that is relevant in this case? i can't forgive them for losing my parents and my little brothers. and many many other members of my family. what we have been through as children, as young women. i cannot forgive them. but i am preaching not to hate.

that hatred has catastrophic consequences. you cannot live with hate, because hate hurts you all your life. i tell you what strikes me so very clearly, that you sit with me, 90 years old and so positive, still with such incredible faith in the ability of human beings to overcome their differences. we have to do. i have to believe that there is good in people. i really do. whether it is because of my religious belief, i don't know. but i must believe that there is some good in people and they will strive for antiracism, and anti—islamophobia and certainly against anti—semitism. so let's hope it is to be done. i must be hopeful. let us hope.

let us take you as an... let us hope that the 21st century will bring a more positive outlook than it has just at the moment. mindu hornick, it has been a privilege to talk to you and have you on hardtalk. thank you very much. hello there. if you are travelling through the first part of the morning, bear in mind wintry weather could cause one or two problems. a combination of snow and ice from wintry showers that have been falling over recent hours,

particularly over the north and west of the uk. your bbc local radio station will, of course, keep you up—to—date with travel updates where you are. more of those wintry showers to come, then, through the first part of the day and some more persistent snowfall for some parts of southern and eastern scotland, and not only over the highest hills. through the morning showers continue to pass across the south—west of england, giving a covering of snow over some of the highest ground of dartmoor and bodmin moor, and also for wales, snow mixing in over the hills and mountains with snow over higher ground in northern england, maybe even some to lower levels. certainly some icy stretches for northern ireland and for scotland. through the central belt, for example, there could be a covering of snow at lower levels. there could be ten centimetres or more of snow lying by this stage. so it could be tricky out there on some of the roads and pavements. as we go through the day it is a mixture of sunshine and showers. much of the wintriness becoming increasingly confined to higher

ground but more like rain, i think, at lower levels through the afternoon. eastern areas not seeing as many showers. there will be some sunshine but it's going to be windy, and it's going to feel cold. your thermometer will read between 4—8 degrees. when we factor in the strength of the wind, particularly brisk across southern areas, this is what it is going to feel like. it will feel like it has barely got above freezing. now, as we go through the night, we will continue to see some showers, especially across northern and western areas. the snow will continue to pile up across higher ground in the north and west of scotland. not as many showers by the end of the night, down towards the south and east, and overnight lows between i and 4 degrees. it is a rather chilly night, and there could be some icy stretches around, again, on wednesday morning. for wednesday, this little bump in the isobars is a ridge of high pressure, trying to settle things down. it will be a drier day for many of us, but this frontal system bringing some outbreaks of rain into scotland. you can see the cloud and rain gathering to the west, sliding its way in, some heavy

and persistent rain for the hills in the west and inland over the mountains, yes, some further significant snowfall. further south, much of northern ireland and certainly england and wales should be dry with some sunshine. turning a little bit milder by this stage. that's a process that continues as we head towards the end of the week. with that you will see some outbreaks of rain at times. that's all from me.

this is newsday on the bbc. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines... a 50—year—old man is the first person in the capital, beijing, to die from coronavirus — travel bans remain in place as china battles to contain the outbreak. even getting on a beijing subway train has become a surreal experience. workers in full hazmat suits checking every passenger. how a leaked manuscript from john bolton — the former us national security advisor — has renewed calls for witnesses in president trump's impeachment trial. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme... us officials confirm that one of their planes came down