The Times and Independent Series have teamed up with Jewish Care's Holocaust Survivors Centre in Hendon to tell the stories of those who saw first-hand the atrocities of the Second World War.

Here is Hedi Fisher's story.

Sixteen-year-old Hedi Fisher was at a wedding on March 19, 1944, when a Rabbi came running in. “The Nazis are here. Stop the celebration, go home quietly and pray”. He ordered.

It was the day that Nazi lieutenant Adolf Eichmann, arrived in her native Hungary with the SS Soldiers and a day she says she will never forget.

They placed a curfew, ordered Jewish people to stay inside their homes at night and were forced to sew a yellow star onto their clothes.

Soon after the Germans took over her hometown, her mother bought her false identification papers she became Borishika Kovacs.

She changed her hairstyle and was taken in by a kind Christian family – unaware it would be the last time she would see her mother and three of her siblings. They were captured by the Germans and died in a camp.

Hedi said: “I thought, please God, when this is over, we can come back home. My mother thought I would survive, and that we would meet when it was over.”

But she was caught by Nazi officers and thrown onto a train bound for a transit camp in Strasbourg, France, close to the German border.

The journey took five days and five nights and they were packed into carriages with no food or water.

Now 86, she said: “When we got to Strasbourg, we had to stand in a line, and were told to take our clothes off in front of each other including older men.

“I was only 16, and it was so humiliating. How many times have I been humiliated by the Germans?

“There were several times in the camp where I almost died, but I didn’t. I was meant to survive, that was my fate, but we were always hungry. I was hungry for a year. It was a miracle I survived."

Between 1944 and 1945, Hedi undertook forced labour at the Siemens Electronic Company.

Herr Meier, a foreman at the factory, took pity on Hedi and her friend Alice, and gave them both food and clothes.

He helped them escape before giving them his home address in Vienna, telling them to meet him there, and kept them safe until the war ended.

Three months later, she found out her older brother had managed to escape Auschwitz and at the end of the war, was almost dead from malnutrition.

Their uncle, who lived in England, sent an investigator to find out whether any of his family survived, and sent his niece and nephew money. They later flew out to England to join him.

Alice found safety in Israel and the pair stayed in touch until her death a few years ago.

After the war, she married another Holocaust survivor and the pair have three children and two grandchildren.

Her book, ‘Matchmaker Matchmaker’, a series of short stories, has sold 4,000 copies.

She said: “Being an optimist by nature, I would like people to realise that Hitler was unable to kill everybody. "Those people who were meant to survive, did. I do not carry hatred in my heart, if I hated the Germans only I would suffer.

"Because hatred only hurts the person who hates. That is my legacy: stop hating. Build a new life and don’t look back.

For more information on the Holocaust Survivor’s Centre, call 02082029844.