Yisrael, 96, was incarcerated inside Auschwitz where 1.1m Jews were slaughtered (Image: House of Commons)
Survivor Yisrael Abelesz was saluted by shaken MPs at a Parliamentary ceremony ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Monday’s global commemorations will commemorate the lives of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Second World War.
It also honours the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the scene of state-sponsored slaughter.
Ahead of the landmark anniversary concentration camp inmate Yisrael, 96, told a reception how he was just 14 when he was sent to the extermination camp to be met at “the gates of hell” by “Angel of Death” and SS commander Dr Josef Mengele.
He said: “Mengele asked me, ‘How old are you?’ I understood a bit of German, and said, ‘I’m 14, it was just my birthday’. And he said, ‘That’s very good, very good’ and he sent me to the right side.
“I didn’t know it at that time, but what he meant was, ‘Very good, you can stay temporarily alive’.
“I didn’t realise when my parents and brother were separated from me that I’d never see them again.”
January 27 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (Image: House of Commons)
The tattooed numbers on his left forearm serve as a permanent reminder of the horrors he witnessed inside the death camp 80 years ago.
His mother and father David and Haya, and younger brother, Aaron, 11, were sent to the gas chamber.
Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle led the event in Portcullis House in front of visibly shaken MPs.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Nazi-occupied Poland, became a central part of what was chillingly called the Final Solution – the systematic extermination of European Jews.
More than 1.1 million incarcerated inside, including Jews, Roma, political prisoners and others, were starved, shot or gassed to death before it was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.
Holocaust Memorial Day serves as a reminder of humanity’s gravest act and also honours victims of genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. It has been observed in the UK since 2001.