He remembers the “terrible, unbearable” smell in the air and the smoke from the chimneys although he did not then realise their significance.

Auschwitz survivor Zygmunt Shipper, now 79, was recalling his arrival at the Nazi extermination camp for pupils at Barr Beacon Language College, Walsall.

Watch the video report by Nicky Butler.

For most of the war, Zigi, as he likes to be called, starved in the Polish ghetto of Lodz, working by day in a metal factory “a lot like Schindler’s.”

His parents were divorced and, just three days after the conflict broke out, his father fled to Russia, leaving him with his grandparents, in the belief that the Germans would not harm women and children.

In July 1944, having survived numerous Nazi raids, 14-year-old Zigi and the remaining Jews were rounded up and put on cattle trucks for Auschwitz.

The youngster and his fellow workmates from the Lodz factory were among the “lucky” ones, who were destined for labour camps and would stay only a few weeks.

As a result, Zigi did not have to endure the notorious selection process by German officers who sat at desks as the trains pulled in and decided who would live or die by indicating left or right.

But he witnessed the heartbreak of others who did.

He said: “The women, the little children, the disabled people and all the old people were sent to the right. Some of the women could have saved their own lives if they had given up their children. Can you imagine giving up the baby in your arms?

“Some of them were ripped out of their hands. One mother ran after her child, she was shot and her baby was shot in front of her. It was horrific.

“How can a person do such things to another human being? The German officers who were doing this were living around the camp, they were sitting down to supper with their children and listening to music – two hours earlier they had been gassing babies.”

Inmates slept three to a bunk on straw and were fed a small piece of bread and black coffee in the morning and evening.

Zigi said; “Once I tried to save some bread until the next day, but I couldn’t sleep until I had eaten it. The hunger never goes away – we were starving for five years.”

He ended up on a death march, so called because anyone who fell was shot. They were headed for the naval town of Neustadt but the youngster had contracted typhus and, after eight days without food, water or medication, was too weak to continue.

He said: “I couldn’t walk. Had it it not been for my friends who carried me, I would have died.”

At Neustadt, they were liberated by the British. Zigi remembers crawling to an Allied tank and begging for water. A soldier obliged and also tossed a small package to him, which he stuffed down his shirt and shared later with friends.

He has been giving talks about his ordeal for 30 years and refuses a fee, because it would feel like blood money and might also attract imposters.

He said: “When I see that students have taken in what I’ve said, have thought about it and sent me letters, I feel paid.”