ON January 27, the bells of St James’ Church in Barrow will ring out to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp in Poland where over a million people are thought to have died between 1940 and 1945.

It is estimated that between five and six million Jews, over two million Soviet civillians, more than one million Polish citizens and over 200,000 gypsies died at the concentration camp. On January 27 1945, the Soviet army entered Auschwitz and freed several thousand of its remaining prisoners.  

For Andy Pollock, tower captain at St James’, the anniversary has added personal significance. His great grandmother was killed at Auschwitz on February 12 1943, along with the majority of her family.

Born in 1870, in Amsterdam, Mr Pollock’s great grandmother made a fateful to decision to stay with her family when evacuations in the Netherlands began, following the Nazi invasion in May 1940.

Mr Pollock said: “My father was born in the UK but the family went to Netherlands when he was a small boy, where his father ran a hardware business in Amsterdam.

“He and his family evacuated in 1940, leaving all possessions and business behind, except a few portable valuables including some silver teaspoons. After the war, they always regretted leaving behind family photographs.

“During the evacuation, their convoy had to stop while the soldiers guarding the convoy went off to deal with some German paratroops.

“Unfortunately my great grandmother Mirjam decided at the last minute to stay behind in Amsterdam with tragic consequences. She ended up being sent to Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands, and on to Auschwitz where she was murdered.”

“Mirjam was supposed to move with her sons to England. Everything was ready.

“She had her ticket, she packed everything. She looked back at her little house, her furniture and her son Samuel who stayed in Amsterdam, and then decided to stay too, at the last minute.

“It’s incredibly sad, she could have lived much longer if she had stepped on the boat to the United Kingdom.

“Sadly, almost all Mirjam’s brothers and sisters and their families that were alive at the onset of the war, even children as young as two, ended up dying in the death camps, with just a handful surviving.”