Ilona Mermelstein says there were three specific moments during the Holocaust when she was saved from almost certain death.

Three hinge points that led to her being an 87-year-old grandmother living in a comfortable Vancouver apartment, rather than being among the 570,000 Hungarian Jews murdered in the closing months of the Second World War.

The first was a Hungarian gendarme stationed outside a police station on Budapest’s Mosonyi Street. As Mermelstein’s mother, Klára Kiss, walked towards the front door, the officer kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, but delivered a whispered warning.