"I DON'T know how my parents managed to get me, my brothers and sister on the Kindertransport when so many other children didn't, but it saved our lives.
"To stay behind in Berlin was a death sentence. Had we not left, we would not have survived."
David Fertig, 83, lost 24 of his close family including his mother, father, both sets of grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins during the Holocaust.
Some were killed in concentration camps; the fate of others will never be known.
Had Mr Fertig, then 16, his younger brothers Alfred and Josef and sister Lola not been sent to England with 10,000 other Jewish children, they would not have survived the war.
Mr Fertig said: "I am so grateful to the British people for allowing us to come here.
"Our lives were saved and for that I am forever grateful."
He was born into a Polish Jewish family in Berlin in 1922.
Hitler came to power in 1933 when Mr Fertig was still at school and the Nazis soon made life impossible.
He said: "We lived in a climate of fear. I was old enough to realise what was happening. Month by month, draconian new laws were passed against the Jews.
"We were not allowed to work. People were taken out of their professions which made it impossible for parents to provide for their children. We still could not foresee what was to happen in the future."
By 1938, following Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass) when mobs destroyed synagogues and Jewish stores and beat up Jews, the family all slept with little suitcases beside their beds.
Mr Fertig said: "In December 1938, a month before my 17th birthday, I was selected to go to England on the Kindertransport.
"I believe I may be one of the oldest Kindertransport survivors."
Before the war started in 1939, 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia were sent by train and boat to British foster families, orphanages or group homes.
Many children, who were all between five and 17, never saw their parents or other family members again.
Mr Fertig was the first of his siblings to be sent away.
He was followed by his 15-year-old brother Alfred, and his 13-year-old sister and seven-and-a-half-year-old brother arrived in August 1939, just before war started.
Mr Fertig said: "It was terrible for my parents but it saved our lives.
"My father, Arnold, was arrested at the outbreak of war and imprisoned by the Nazis in Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. He was killed there in 1940.
"My mother Sarah was left in Berlin on her own with no family. She was to survive until 1941 when she was deported to Poland in a cattle truck.
"She died, date and place unknown.
"All I remember is my parents taking me to some organisation where I had a medical and a few days later I was at a railway station with hundreds of other children getting on a train to Holland."
Mr Fertig arrived in Harwich in the middle of December and was taken to a pre-war holiday camp in Lowestoft during one of the coldest winters on record.
He said: "There was no heating and it was absolutely freezing. We slept in our coats, it was too cold to undress.
"All the youngest children went to different places and I was taken in by the Salvation Army in Harwich with 20 others.
"I had never been out of Berlin before, spoke no foreign languages and had no money. I am so grateful to them for providing me with shelter.
"I had some distant relatives in London and after the New Year I was taken to them in the East End. They gave me shelter and provided for me and later for my sister for a time. For this I and my family will be forever grateful."
The British Government allowed the youngsters in as long as they had guarantors providing a surety of £50, now worth about £1,500, to make sure they would not be a burden on taxpayers.
The children were given permits on condition they had no paid employment.
However, thanks to the British Refugee Committee, Mr Fertig was given a post as a trainee engineer in Bristol at ten shillings a week which he paid to the family he was living with as his keep.
He said: "I met some wonderful people there. Again I am grateful to the Bristol community." His sister Lola went to live with him in Bristol.
He added: "I had very limited English but I have to say that English people always behaved very well and I have wonderful memories of my time there, especially as I had come from Germany where there was a climate of persecution and despair.
"I received nothing but kindness and understanding."
As the Fertig siblings arrived in Britain at different times, they were placed in different parts of the country.
Mr Fertig said: "My brother Josef ended up in a small mining village in Staffordshire and spent a couple of years there attending the local village school. He was looked after in the most fantastic way."
When he was 18, Mr Fertig joined the Royal Air Force.
He said: "I was in the RAF from October 1941 until September 1946 as an engine fitter. I wanted to give something back to Britain and that was my way of doing it. I hated the Germans and what they had done to my family.
"I was sent to Canada for two years, then after the war I was stationed in Germany.
"After I left the RAF and during demobilisation leave I went back to London and met my wife and we fell madly in love."
The couple married in 1948 and have have lived since then in Walthamstow. They had two children, Alfred, named after Mr Fertig's father, and Marion after one of his grandmothers.
They now have five grandchildren and two great grandchildren, two-month old twin girls.
Mr Fertig went back into engineering and started up his own business.
He has been back to Germany a number of times on business but it was just two years ago that he visited the concentration camp where his father died and his former family home in Berlin.
Before that, he rarely talked about his experiences.
He said: "It was a taboo subject, we never talked about what happened during the war or the Kindertransport.
"Since coming to England, my family and I have never spoken in German. I think we were trying to put it behind us.
"It is only recently, with my children pressing me and my interest in genealogy, that we have begun to talk about it."
Mr Fertig and his three siblings all made good lives for themselves.
His sister moved to America when she was 25, his brother Alfred lives in London and Josef became a doctor of chemistry and now lives in Israel.
Mr Fertig said: "We all received wonderful support in this country.
"We were four Jewish children, living in a country at war with our home country and we were treated so well and I would like to make my gratitude and thanks known to the British people."
