Ibi Ginsburg

For 66 years, Ibi Ginsburg lived with the memory of the terrible hardships she endured at the camp after arriving there aged 19 in May, 1944, with her parents and three sisters.

And she never forgot the number 86711 the Nazis gave her only minutes after she and her family arrived along with thousands of other Jews who were transported in almost indescribable conditions in cattle trucks from the Hungarian town of Tokay.

Ibi, who died last month at her home in Elland, near Halifax, which she shared with her husband Valdemar, recalled how she and her 13-year-old sister Judith, who looked older than her years, were selected to work. Her mother Emily and two youngest sisters Rachel, 10, and Miriam, seven, were selected for the gas chambers. Her father Herman was sent to the Maut-hausen concentration camp and managed to survive and was reunited with Ibi and Judith after the war.

Ibi and Judith were taken into a chamber where all the hair was shaved from their heads and bodies. They were made to shower and given some garments to put on. Ibi recalled: "After that they gave us our numbers. My number was 86711. I have never forgotten it."

Towards the end of the war, Ibi and her sister were sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany and worked on the same construction site as Valdemar who was born in Lithuania and survived four years in ghettos and camps.

But they never met until after liberation when Ibi was sent to work at a monastery near Munich which had been converted into a military hospital. Valdemar – known to his family and friends as Val – and who had lost 13 members of his family in the Holocaust, had spent several months there recovering from his ordeal and had then been given a job as a security man at the hospital.

The two met and fell in love. They were married a year later and in 1948 moved to England to start a new life. They settled in Elland where they both worked for in the textile industry.

Ibi and Val, who is now 87, never talked about their experiences, not even to their family, but then decided 15 years ago that they owed it to the victims to tell their stories. Val told his in a book, And Kovno Wept, published in 1998.

The couple have told their story countless times in schools and colleges, at meetings and conferences to bring home the message that the past must not be forgotten. Their testimonies have also been videotaped by the Steven Spielberg Shoa Foundation set up in 1994.

In a letter published recently on the internet, Ibi said: "Val and I decided to tell younger generations our stories to warn them about the human capacity for inhuman behaviour. This behaviour is not carried out by invading monsters but more often than not by ordinary people. Both of us feel it is important to speak to as many young people as we can about prejudice and discrimination and hope they can learn from our experiences."

Despite her ordeal and the murder of members of her family, Ibi never lost her belief in God and regularly attended services at the Bradford Reform Synagogue.

Members of the synagogue and other members of the Holocaust Survivors' Association and many friends attended her funeral on Thursday at the Park Wood Crematorium in Elland along with her husband, daughters Mandy and Pauline, son-in-law Malcolm and grandchildren Samuel, Jacob and Amy.

For many years Ibi had suffered uncomplainingly with osteoporosis in her back which caused intense, unremitting pain and paying tribute to her, a friend for many years, David Edge, said: "She was a lovable, feisty woman whose indomitable spirit and will to live enabled her to survive. She was a very special lady."