Mala Tribich remembers the day her life changed forever. The Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, had implications the world over, but for Mala, they were instant and terrifying.

The bombing of her small town, Piotrkow, the following day was the catalyst for a childhood of fear. To look at the 94-year-old survivor of the camp, you would have no idea of the horrors of her teenage years. She has a warmth and kindness to her that stands in contrast to the hatred subjected towards her for the crime of being born Jewish.

She told the Express: “I didn’t know too much about politics in the lead up to the war, I was only eight, but I remember the second day sitting in the basement as bombs went off, it was all very scary.”

Despite her years, her mind is sharp, able to describe in detail her experience of the war, from German bombing to a Jewish ghetto, to Bergen-Belsen via Ravensbruck camp – her family taken from her but her humanity and will to live out of reach of the Nazis.

The silence in Bergen-Belsen is deafening. Hundreds of people walk by the mass graves quietly as a calmness fills the open expanse, once the scene of some of the human race’s worst atrocities.

Crowds gather at the symbolic graves of Margot and Anne Frank, two of the most famous victims of the Holocaust. They perished in Bergen-Belsen, but more prominent are the thousands of nameless victims. As many as 50,000 people died in captivity but only 10,000 have been identified in the years since. Those lost souls who history was unable to document are the people at the forefront of my mind and those of the people I speak to.

They lie in mass graves, many of which were dug by the SS guards under the watchful eye of British soldiers as they attempted to prevent the continued outbreak of deadly disease caused by poor sanitation.

Until 1943, Bergen-Belsen was exclusively a prisoner of war (POW) camp, but was subsumed into the Reich’s concentration camp system in 1943 and housed Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, Roma, ‘asocials,’ Jehovah’s Witnesses and criminals.

But as the Reich collapsed and the Germans retreated back to the Fatherland, many of the victims were forcibly marched from camps near the front and found themselves crammed into Bergen-Belsen. At the end of 1944, there had been 7,300 prisoners. By March 1945, the camp’s population had grown to 41,000.

The surge of prisoners did not correlate with an increase in food rations, with prisoners often going days without the brown bread and brown water that guards passed off as ‘food’.

Bergen-Belsen is different to the usual portrayal of the holocaust in popular culture

Here there are no gas towers. Unlike Auschwitz, this was not a site of industrial slaughter but of prolonged death through starvation, disease or the whims of SS guards.

So densely packed was the camp that on Mala’s first evening, she and her young cousin Hania were placed into a tent where they sat in the freezing European winter – room enough to lie down was out of the question.

Mala remembers her arrival vividly: “I had been at a few camps but this was the worst. I came from Ravensbruck which was a lot more organised.

“They put us up in a very big tent and we were there overnight and in the morning, they took us into the main camp, but there was no room in the barracks and so my cousin and I wandered around the camp.

“It defies description, it was so terrible. The first thing that hits you is the smell and the smog. The people there were like skeletons who would just shuffle along until they fell and died.

“When they died, there was nobody to clear them up, the bodies just lay there.”

Mala was saved by a children’s camp within Bergen-Belsen but was initially told that she was too old and only her younger cousin Hania would be admitted.

Only Hania’s determination not to be parted persuaded the nurses within the camp to allow the pair of them to be taken in, something that Mala credits with saving her life.

On liberation, Mala remembers: “The worst epidemic of all of those in the camp was typhus and I succumbed to it. I remember being dreadfully ill in my upper bunk, by the window and looking out seeing people running.

“I couldn’t understand how they had the energy to run but they were running towards the British soldiers.

“They came with a stretcher and I told them ‘I don’t need a stretcher’. I promptly got up and collapsed in front of them.”

Speaking to the Express before his death aged 99 last year D-Day hero Albert Fenton, described the satanic scenes that greeted him and his comrades.

of thousands perished inside as starving and mortally ill prisoners were packed together without food, water or sanitation, many suffering from typhus and dysentery.

On arriving at the gates Albert remembered: “We were confronted by the commanding officer asking if we knew where we were, which none of us did. He then told us our worst nightmare – we were at Bergen-Belsen.

“The first thing you noticed was the horrible stench in the air. It was nothing I had ever experienced before but was horrid and we could see the furnaces burning.

“Although we were not allowed into the other camps we could see through the fences with barbed wire around the top. From where we stood, we could see the pile of bodies stacked one on top of the other like a big bonfire.”

The commemoration comes at a time of heightened antisemitism across the world, something not lost on the patriotic Israelis waving and adorned in their nation’s flag.

It is addressed directly by the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth Sir Ebhraim Mirvis who draws parallels between those held hostage in Gaza and those who went before them in camps across the Third Reich.

A strong British contingent represents the liberators, led by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and supported by dozens of service personnel and Warrant Officer Class 2 Dan Fox believes that their presence here is vital.

He told the Daily Express: “Today marks one of the most significant moments in British military history, in Jewish history and indeed world history.

“Across the generations, we have remembered and we will never forget.”

Rayner, representing the British government said: “While the atrocities committed at Bergen-Belsen represent the worst of humanity, in its survivors and liberators, we see the very best of courage, perseverance and hope.