...There were about 30,000 slave-labourers in Bochum, some 3,000 in John’s part of the plant. He had to work a 12-hour shift in atrocious conditions at a steel-forging press operating at 1,000 degrees centigrade, and with no protective clothing. Many of his fellow prisoners were killed or injured. In such conditions, people got very weak and succumbed to illnesses, including his father, who died there in December 1944.

“Life then became very difficult for me,” John wrote in ‘Survival’. “ We relied so much on each other, and now I was alone.”

When the Allied forces reached the Rhine, John was evacuated with 1,500 other prisoners to Buchenwald. On arrival, he was taken to the camp infirmary – adjacent to the crematorium. His fellow prisoners in the crowded bunks included Elie Wiesel, later a Nobel prizewinner, and Max Perkal, who would go on to become a successful American writer. A photograph taken on the point of liberation by American troops in April 1945 shows the three of them among other inmates together at the infirmary. By that stage, John was too weak to move from his bunk and weighed just 56 lbs (25 kg).