Armistice Day is being commemorated at North Ayrshire Heritage Centre with a talk by local author Saskia Tepe.

“My mother told me she jumped off a train bound for Auschwitz, when I was thirteen,” explained Saskia, former resident of Ardrossan and West Kilbride.

It was only in 1968, 23 years after the end of World War II, that Brigitte Langer told her daughter Saskia a secret she had kept hidden all that time.

Brigitte had been designated a mixed race Jew by the Nazis, and, after working as a slave labourer some 50 kilometres west of the notorious death-camp until the winter of 1944, she was thrown onto a train headed to certain death.

“The only thing that saved her was knowledge of the area, deep snowdrifts, and the courage to take a leap of faith.” Although she had escaped the ultimate fate experienced by some six million Jews and five million other nationalities, that didn’t mean that things got any easier for her.

The remainder of the war and the aftermath were equally traumatic, in different ways, and it was the discovery of these events, unearthed after Brigitte’s death in 1992, that led to Saskia writing down her and her mother’s experiences.

“It might be shocking to some to learn that survivors and other displaced persons had to live in camps for many years after the war had ended.

"Who would have guessed it would be the 1960’s before people were able to start re-building their lives?” Saskia describes how she and her mother were finally able to emigrate from West Germany to the UK with the help of the UN’s 1959 World Refugee Year initiative, in her book “Surviving Brigitte’s Secrets: A Holocaust Survivor. Her Daughter. Two Traumatic Journeys” which was published earlier this year.

She will tell her and her mother’s remarkable story in greater detail on Tuesday, November 11 at the North Ayrshire Heritage Centre in Manse Street, Saltcoats.

Those interested in attending should call the Centre on 01294 464174 to reserve seats.

There is a £2 charge.