A Holocaust survivor from Buckinghamshire who was rescued on the way to a concentration camp has warned people to ‘stand up against hatred and prejudice’.

Ivan Shaw BEM, 84, who lived in Amersham with his aunt for years before moving to London, was just five when his Jewish parents were arrested by Nazis and sent to a concentration camp.

He was being marched towards a train bound for Auschwitz when his aunt saved him in a daring rescue, ‘grabbing him and running into a nearby forest’.

Mr Shaw, who has been married for nearly 60 years and has three children and six grandchildren, said he has never been conscious of antisemitism in the UK until a recent rise caused by the Hamas-Israel conflict.

The number of anti-Semitic hate crimes recorded by many of the UK’s largest police forces jumped sharply in the weeks following the outbreak of the conflict, figures show.

He told the PA News Agency: “I would never have believed it, I thought Britain was different.

“We have to stand up against hatred and prejudice, hatred leads eventually to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.”

The 84-year-old was born in 1939 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, part of modern-day Serbia.

In 1944, Germans began to round up and deport Jews, including his mother and his father decided to go with her, despite only being half-Jewish.

Mr Shaw was hidden by one of his father’s sisters until his concealment was given away by a neighbour.

He recalled: “After about 10 days, I was betrayed by one of the neighbours. Who would want to betray a five-year-old boy? The mind just boggles.”

He was taken to prison by the Gestapo and spent the night alone in a cell before being moved to a transit camp where he was reunited with his family.

The inmates were being taken to a train station to be moved to the Auschwitz concentration camp when one of Mr Shaw’s aunts risked her life to save him.

“I was taken with thousands of other prisoners to the railway station with a view to being put on a train to Auschwitz.

“The road to the station bordered along a public forest. I was force-marched along this road when, much to my amazement, I suddenly found my aunt dashing out of the forest, grabbing me and running back into the forest.

“The whole incident must have taken a few minutes.”

Both his parents died in the camps, while Mr Shaw was hidden for about nine months by his aunt and her family.

“Had she been betrayed, she would have been shot, the whole family would have been shot, and the house would have been burnt down.

“I have been lucky, I was saved by my family. But millions have not been so lucky. Ninety per cent of Jews in Yugoslavia did not survive the war.”

Speaking ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Sunday, he added: “There were good people and bad people, the Germans who looked the other way saved my life.

“I’ve got a photograph of the family, which I always point to as my revenge on Hitler. He was determined to exterminate my family, and this picture shows he did not succeed.”