Among the vivid memories Nate Leipciger has of Auschwitz is his arrival at the Nazi death camp on Aug. 2, 1943, with his father, Jack, from the Jewish ghetto in Sosnowiec, 35 kilometres to the north.

“I had no idea where we were. It was unreal and beyond my imagination,” recalled Leipciger, 96, a well-known figure in Holocaust education in Toronto, in a Post interview. “After being tattooed (with the number 133628) and inducted as a prisoner and losing my identity, I thought this was hell on earth, from which I had little or no hope of getting out. I was in total despair. Only my father’s presence gave me some hope.”