this is bbc news, the headlines: israel has released 200 palestinian prisoners in return for four female soldiers held by hamas in the second exchange of the gaza ceasefire deal. the four israeli soldiers released were first led onto a podium in gaza city surrounded by dozens of armed hamas men. once back in israel, the women were reunited with their loved ones. the soldiers were captured in the october 7th attack 15 months ago. they were seized from an army base on the border with gaza. meanwhile, in wadi, gaza, palestinians are queuing to return to their homes, but this isn't guaranteed after hamas failed to release a civilian hostage today.

ahead of the anniversary on monday of the liberation of auschwitz, the nazi concentration camp, on bbc news now: what happened at auschwitz. on the 27th of january 1945, the soviet red army entered the gates of the nazi regime's most notorious death camp. with the liberation of auschwitz—birkenau, the world witnessed the profound horror of the holocaust. this happened 80 years ago, and you've still got to tell people about it. they had whips, they had guns, and any time you could have been sent to gas chambers. how many members of your family do you think you lost because of the holocaust?

i think it must have i been in the hundreds. 80 years since the liberation, we now live in a world of misinformation and denial. if this distortion of our understanding is allowed to take root, we run the risk that history will be rewritten and the true horror of the holocaust forgotten. i want to find out what, for someone like me, not ofjewish heritage and born nearly half a century later, it really means for the world to never forget. singing continues newsreel: war! precisely at dawn | on septemberist, without warning,

the german wehrmacht rolled over the polish border. - since adolf hitler's rise to power in germany in 1933, the nazi regime had fostered a hatred forjews, who the party held responsible for the country's economic and political instability. as this anti—semitism spread, the german state began systematically removing the rights of the jewish people. these were the first steps towards a plan that would become known as the final solution and see approximately 6 millionjews die at the hands of the nazi regime. making documentaries, you often end up talking about facts and figures and places, and that's often how history is taught. but i think, especially because of the world of misinformation and disinformation that, as a journalist, i see all around us, the lessons from the holocaust have to be remembered. and this happened —

it wasn't even a century ago. and for us to forget that means that we're going to forget how we got there. and that's so important, because this didn't just happen overnight. i was deported in auschwitz—birkenau with my mother, with my three younger sisters, and they put in one truck about 70, 80 people. in 2021, dov forman launched a tiktok account with his great—grandmother, lily ebert, a survivor of auschwitz. hello, tiktok. shabbat shalom. shabbat shalom, tiktok. have a nice weekend. how did you get your great—granny on tiktok? it was just after the covid lockdown. for a few months, she hadn't been able to go out and do what she loved for so long,

which was to educate about her harrowing holocaust testimony. and we started on twitter, sharing her story, and eventually i saw people going viral for dancing and doing silly things on tiktok. and so i said to her, "safta..." we used to call her safta, which is hebrew for grandma, "why don't we go on tiktok and start sharing your important messages? i think we can go viral." and she said, "i'll do it, but i'm not dancing." my younger brother and sister were straight taken to the gas chamber. i never saw them again. when did you start to notice that there were negative comments questioning about the holocaust? it was almost immediately. really? we would get positive and then we would get negative. and every day i would wake up, i would read the comments on my phone and there would be thousands of them. "hitler missed one." "the holocaust is fake." "we're coming to find you. we're coming to kill you."

in my work, i'm seeing much more disinformation — so people deliberately spreading things that are untrue. and misinformation — people spreading things that's untrue, but perhaps not deliberately. why do you think that, with the holocaust, this brings that out in people so much? when young children scroll, so many of the posts they're seeing, 16%, according to a unesco report in 2022, of all holocaust—related content on social media platforms — instagram, twitter, telegram, tiktok, we can go on — is holocaust—denying or distorting. that's a shocking number, 16%. we know that over 50% of people last year got their news from social media. so it's clear to me, at least, that that is the place where this disinformation is being spread and where that misinformation into society is seeping through. that means that those people who are scrolling through are absorbing pure disinformation, hatred and denial about the holocaust.

how do you tell a story that has the number 6 million? 6 million deaths. 6 million deaths i don't think is something that people can fully comprehend. the horror isjust too much. but people can comprehend a person. you know, they can comprehend someone who might be the age of their granny, their grandad. they can comprehend the story of loss, of fear and of love. renee, thank you very much for talking to me today... you're very welcome. ..and helping me to hear about your personal experience and to learn more. first thing i wanted to do was to find out more about your childhood in zdunska wola. zdunska wola, yes. did i get that right? you got it right. perfect. first time. my father was a chief accountant at the largest

textile firm in europe. he had a very good job. very good position. would he have been known by people in the town? everybody. you know, people used to bow to him when he went to the street, yes, with my mother. beautifully dressed always, very elegantly dressed. they gave him so much respect. and your mum, was she at home looking after you? my mother was at home, looking after the house, after the children. keeping us all happy. renee's family was integrated into polish society and lived peacefully alongside jews and non—jews alike. i was born in 1932, in southern hungary. i come from a family of... a very religious family. there was five boys, four girls, my mother and father. i used to get up in the morning, usually five o'clock, summerand winter, and go to, go to the school, to cheder. _

which are the jewish studies. and then the secular and go for lunch, and then more jewish studies. my name is arek hersh. i was born in 1928, in poland, in a place called sieradz. - i enjoyed life very much. i went out with my friends, | played football and hockey, all sorts of different thingsj what a young person does. and then the germans came in and everything changed. i by 1941, the implementation of plans to eliminate europe'sjewish population was under way. jews who had not managed to emigrate were being stripped of their businesses and property, excluded from society, and corralled into separate neighbourhoods known as ghettos, in preparation for forced deportation.

all the schools were burnt down. all the synagogues were burnt down or dynamited. it... absolutely terrible. and most of the jewish people were thrown away out of their houses. they took everything, all the silver, all the best china, all the linens. everything was taken. we didn't have a change of underwear. but ghettos were only ever going to be a temporary solution. and it wasn't long before the ss began rounding up thejews and forcing them onto trains. we were packed in very tightly. they shut and bolted the doors. without any food. they didn't give us any food — no bread, no water, nothing. not even any air. no windows. they only have a few

slats on top. death happened on the train. illness happened. and... and i can't describe it, because i can't see any point in describing the... ..the dehumanisation that we lived for the few days that we were onboard. unknown to them, the trains that renee, arek and ivor were on were destined for auschwitz—birkenau, which would become the most infamous and largest of the nazi regime's extermination camps. the camp, in southern poland, had started life as an old army barracks, originally used by the germans to hold polish political prisoners. but as plans for the final solution were rolled out, auschwitz was transformed into a death camp. by the time the first large transport ofjews arrived in march 1942, it was ready to become the regime's primary

killing ground. the train slowed down and came to a stop. immediately, we heard dogs barking. they unlocked the doors, opened them up, and they're screaming and bellowing, "get off the train! be quick! get a move on!" my father jumped off first, and ijumped after him. when ijumped off, i didn't see him any more. he disappeared, like into thin air. they took them away. we didn't know where to...

without a kiss, without a goodbye, he disappeared, like into thin air, and i never saw him again. guards were walking around, and they said, "you are here now in auschwitz—birkenau." we didn't know what auschwitz—birkenau meant. but they said, here they take us straight to the gas cha... they take us straight to the gas chambers. we were so frightened. the absolute endless scale of the place makes it... ..so horrifying. it's just so uniform. it is like a machine, like a factory. it's so still and quiet today.

but imagine standing here and your mum just being taken away, and i don't know where she's going if i'm going to see her again. as a child, to try and understand what was happening here. not only terrifying, but confusing... ..all at the same time. as each train was off—loaded, the old, sick and those too young to work were taken straight to the gas chambers. despite their young ages, renee, arek and ivor all managed to go unnoticed by the guards. the officer asked me, "how old are you?" . i said 14, so he sent me to the right side. - i was selected to go into the camp. - the people which were selected to go in the gas chamber- were sent to the left side. we started marching, and my mother was holding

the youngest brother, the youngest sister and two other sisters. . said. — "i want to come with you." she said. — "no, go back to your brother." so i went back to my brother. of course, that's the last time i saw my family alive. those who got through this first selection were stripped of their personal possessions and had their heads shaved. in the eyes of the ss guards who worked in the camp, they were no longer human beings. i noticed some men that had a tattoo, . so i said, "do i need to?" they said, "yes. - 0h, very much so. yes." so i went there - and they did mine. uh... i had b7608.

b7608. i lost my name altogether. the prisoners were housed in wooden or brick barracks, surrounded by electrified barbed wire. though many of the barracks were designed to only hold 300 or 400 people, as the war continued, they could be crammed with up to 1,000 men, women or children. few managed to survive the inhumane conditions. what gave you hope? what were you able to hold on to? my mother. i was holding her hands all the time in auschwitz. my mother. if it wouldn't be for her, i wouldn't have lasted a day. she kept me going, and i kept her going sort of thing. very poignant. yes.

the situation was horrendous. all i can say is that, eventually, when you used to go to bed, you hoped that the person you lived next to died overnight. why? you could pinch his shoes or his clothes. we were not human beings any more. violence and brutal punishments from the ss guards were a daily event, and the threat of the gas chambers and crematoria was ever—present. a type of gas called zyklon b was used in the gas chambers. it had originally been marketed as an insecticide, but as the nazis sought ever more efficient methods for mass murder, its potential as a chemical weapon was exploited. in humans, suffocation was swift if inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

however much horror you thought about, you'd never imagine what was happening. whoever imagines something about gassing people and burning them? you know, it never, never came into the mind. each day, prisoners could be singled out for the gas chambers. some would be given towels and told they were being taken to the showers to bathe. they would wait their turn, then undress and enter a chamber similar to this one at dachau. zyklon b would be released, and within minutes, everyone would be dead. other prisoners would drag the bodies out, and then the bodies would be burned. these photographs, taken secretly by an inmate

forced to work the crematoria, are the only ones known to exist of the atrocities that took place at auschwitz. how many members of your family do you think you lost because of the holocaust? i think it must have been in the hundreds. oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear. i would say... definitely say my mother. and my youngest brother and sister. i mean, i'm sure, i'm sure they died at auschwitz. painful. by the autumn of 1944, with the end of the war in sight, the authorities at auschwitz had begun transferring prisoners to other camps and systematically

destroying evidence of the atrocities that had taken place. i don't think i've ever come across a physical embodiment of hatred like this. if you've not been here and you've not experienced it, then i don't think you are as afraid as you should be of where hatred can go. and this is unthinkable, right? this is unthinkable for most people in their normal lives. this is unthinkable. but it happened. when the soviet red army entered auschwitz on the 27th january 1945, they found the last remaining prisoners. thousands of starving men, women and children. they found the burned remains of thousands more, several tons of human hair and the last remnants of the lives of those killed.

in less than five years, in auschwitz alone, around 1 millionjews were killed, approximately 70,000 poles. by the time auschwitz—birkenau was liberated, renee, arek and ivor had all been moved on to other camps. renee was freed from bergen—belsen and eventually managed to make her way to paris, where she fell in love with a british military policeman. they later married and had two children. instead of hate, i learned to love life and people, and i hope that everybody should live in peace. after liberation,

ivor and his brother, who had also survived the war, were sent to a displaced persons camp. i was hungry for life. i was more looking for the good things and forgetting about the bad things. both arek and harry, who had spent the war incarcerated in forced labour camps, working for the german war effort, were rescued from theresienstadt. when did you think, "i'm finally safe"? on the last day of the war, 8th may 1945. the whole camp was taken over by the red cross, and the nurse said the british government allowed to take 1,000 orphans to be taken to england. so i went to england. ivor, harry and arek were all selected for the british government scheme designed to help survivors recover. ivor was brought to southampton

before being moved on to ascot. arek, along with harry, was offered a new beginning at lake windermere. we sat on the floor, 15 on one side. that was me. arek laughs yeah. they took off, and we eventually arrived in the lake district, and we were taken to the encampment there, and we were put, so many children, into a barrack. we each had a little room and a bed and a little chest of drawers. and we all had our own door, and it was marvellous. windermere was a different place altogether. we arrived there at the dining hall, with plates and tablecloths and bread, white bread, on the table.

we hadn't seen bread for a long...for years! what was it like when you first saw the lakes and when you got off the coach? it's unbelievable. you just can't imagine it. we had clothes to wear, but it was... we were human again for the first time in years and years. we were human. today, harry and arek are revisiting the place where they were given the chance to live again. we're getting on in life. getting on... but you haven't changed a bit. except your hairs are grey. we are... we're the dinosaurs. arek laughs i used to swim in this lake. yeah, so did i. yeah? i was in one of the barracks. had my own little room — a bed

and a wardrobe and that was it! yeah, i know, but what number? what number block were you? i think it was number six. remember what block you were here? in block e. e. i think block e. yeah. i think so. those were the days. we were brought up here for holidays, _ not quite knowing what - our father had been through. and it was always a happy... ..positive place for him - and seeing him so happy here. he still seems to come alive when he arrives here — when he sees that lake and when he arrives here. he said they had such fun times here. they were family to each other,

because they'd lost everybody, and it was somewhere to belong and somewhere to start again. for them to have gone from such horror to such a beautiful place, and learning to just be boys again, learning to be human after everything they've been through, i didn't think that i would get to hear that in this story. that demonisation, that dehumanisation and that disinformation that the nazis used against the jewish people, well, it's notjust in books, in the cinema and radio like it was back then. now we get it direct. we all get it direct to our phones. i think we owe it to the people that have been through that to really ask, where are we getting this information from? who's giving this information and why? because that hatred that we have seen, it still exists in different forms, even today.

live from london. this is bbc news. scenes of celebration in the west bank, as 200 palestinians are released from israeli prisons. earlier, fourfemale israeli soldiers were released by hamas in the second exchange under the gaza ceasefire deal. the four freed hostages have been reunited with theirfamilies, and are now undergoing medical checks in hospital, where their story is inspiring the nation. it is an immense privilege to meet these four brave women and to be part of their healing process, which is actually a part of the healing process of the entire israeli people. but a delay in releasing another israeli hostage has prompted israel to halt the return of gazans to the enclave�*s bombed—out north.

hello, i'm luxmy gopal.