by Catriona Stewart

AGAINST a backdrop of hatred, it was love that helped Judith Rosenberg live and thrive.

The 97-year-old East Renfrewshire resident is Scotland’s last remaining Auschwitz survivor but, despite the horror of the death camps, there is no trace of bitterness as she describes her experience.

Instead, the support of her close-knit family and the deep, devoted love of her husband are what shine through as she tells her story.

Judith, now living in sheltered accommodation in Giffnock, grew up in a comfortable, middle-class childhood in the town of Gyor, Hungary.

Along with her mother Irene, father Zsigmond and sister Kati, Judith was also close to her governess – an orphaned German girl taken in by the Weinberger family.

Zsigmond ensured his elder daughter learned English and French, which were later to become life-changing skills.

Judith left school at 18 with her baccalaureate and went to Budapest to live with her uncle and attend university.

After two years there, her father, who owned a sawmill, became alarmed at increasing attacks on Jewish people, so he brought her home to Gyor to be apprenticed to a watchmaker.

In 1944, the family were moved to a Jewish ghetto in the town where, not long after, they were told to board a train.

Judith, her parents, her sister and her grandmother were among them.

She said: “There was no space, no food and no water. We couldn’t even do our affairs as there was only one bucket in the middle.”

Her father, doing what little he could for his girls, lay his coat on the floor of the truck for them to sit on.

Several people died during the five-day journey and, when the train arrived at Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz complex, Judith’s grandmother was gone.

Read more: East Renfrewshire MP Kirsten Oswald marks Holocaust Memorial Day

She said: “We couldn’t help her. My mother’s mother disappeared, just like that.”

The men were told to go to the left while the women were ordered to go to the right.

It would be the last time the Weinberger women saw their husband and father who, they later learned, died while in forced labour for the Nazis.

Judith said: “The soldiers said ‘Everyone take your clothes off.’ They shaved our hair. You had to put up your arms and they cut under the arms and they cut even in the private parts.”

The group was sent to a large shed where there was barely enough room to sit down. Irene put her arms around her two daughters and the three huddled together.

Judith’s family were taken to Auschwitz at Easter – she remembers the Easter bells ringing out – and were kept there until September, when the three women were taken to a work camp in Lippstadt, Germany.

They were tasked with making hand grenades but Judith also repaired watches for Nazi officers in exchange for a little extra food.

She remembers the Easter bells were also ringing when they found out they were to be liberated.

After liberation, Judith and two other girls who could speak English were taken to be interpreters at British military headquarters.

During an afternoon tea, Judith met Scottish artillery soldier Harold Rosenberg.

Her face lights up as she remembers her dashing young captain and she becomes animated by her memories of him.

“I adored him,” she said. “And he adored me. He didn’t right away ask to marry me but fairly quickly, after three months.

“My mother said to him ‘Are you sure you love my daughter because soldiers and sailors go to another port and find somebody else?’

“But Harold said ‘No, I’m sure’.”

Judith’s mother and sister returned to Hungary, desperate to find out what had happened to Zsigmond, while Judith and her new husband moved to Glasgow. She opened up what became a thriving chain of baby clothes stores and enjoyed 60 years with Harold before he died, on the the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur in 2005.

Monday marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz but Judith is focused on the good life Harold helped her to build.

She said: “I am not angry. We are all just people. My father taught me that.”