How Lotte ended years of silence about Auschwitz

Between March and October 1945, tens of thousands of Slovakian Jews were taken to various concentration camps. Only 236 survived.

After the war, Lotte Weiss made her way back to Bratislava - where even her aunt and uncle did not recognise her.

'When I told them my family had perished in the gas chambers, they were shocked and they looked at me as if I wasn't normal ... it hurt me deeply.

'Having not experienced it, they couldn't believe it. So from that moment, I never spoke about my time at Auschwitz. I felt punished for being alive. All the people I loved had died.'

Lotte married another Holocaust survivor in 1947. Ali Weiss had been married to her aunt's sister but she had died shortly after the war.

Lotte was eager to fill the void left by the loss of her family, but it wasn't until four years later that their first son, Jonny, was born in 1951 - after they had emigrated to New Zealand.

'When my first son was born, I returned to the God I had lost faith in when I saw humans being burnt to death.'