HOLOCAUST survivors in Hendon were visited by the Israeli ambassador on Monday to remember the six million Jews who died during the Second World War.

Some 80 survivors met at Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors Centre in Church Road for Yom Hashoah, a day marked on the Jewish calendar since 1951 to remember the victims of the Holocaust.

The ambassador, Ron Prosor, said he was “privileged and honoured” to meet and speak with survivors.

He said: “It is important to tell the story because people from the outside don’t understand our reactions, our anxieties.” Holocaust survivor, Erna Scott, 77, from Stanmore, was emotional after having visited the recently opened Jewish Museum in Camden on Sunday.

She said: “Today my feelings are a mixture, but I feel hope for the future. Jewish people always live with hope, that’s how we’ve survived, you have to stay hopeful or otherwise you don’t get through it.”

Henrietta Kelly, 73, from Queens Gardens, described how her mother used to play in the woods in her hometown of Auschwitz before the area was turned into a concentration camp, where more than a million Jews were killed.

She said: “Today, I’m serious, not despondent because we do have Israel. We have our lives here, we’ve got to get on with being Jewish.”

Mr Prosor shared his experiences of the Holocaust legacy as a second-generation survivor. He also spoke of what he called the demonisation of Israel in the media.

After answering questions, candles were lit and a heads were bowed as the survivors joined together in a memorial prayer. Several wiped tears from their eyes.

The director of the centre, Judith Hassan, said: “If Israel had existed, millions of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust wouldn’t have had to go through that because they would have had a homeland.

“The significance of Israel is huge and to have the Israeli ambassador here on this particular day when they commemorate the people who were murdered in the Holocaust is absolutely profound.”