I grew up with a friend whose mother survived the horrors of Auschwitz and then was forced on the death march, when the Nazis were trying to erase the evidence of their horrendous crimes. That wonderful, beautiful woman lived into her nineties and was loved by her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Throughout my childhood I met survivors and those who were the children of survivors. Stories began to emerge of those whose parents had sent them on the Kindertransport, how they said their farewells to their children at railway stations trying not to let their beloved offspring see their tears as they waved goodbye often never to see them again. Those children arrived in England to be raised by kind and humane strangers. Some lucky ones were reunited with parents, most were not. Later I met and became close with survivors who had been hidden by brave neighbours and priests and nuns in Poland. Others who had jumped off trains and lived with false papers until the end of the war. I visited the small town outside Warsaw, Gabin, where Jeremy’s maternal family had come from and where half the population were Jews before the War. At the end of the War no Jews remained. Most had been gassed at an early extermination camp at Chelmno. The handful of Jews who made their way back to the village after the war had been hidden or survived in the forests. They were alone, their families had been destroyed. They left for America and Israel and beyond. None live there now. Such horrors were repeated all across Europe in villages, towns and cities. Six million Jewish men, women and children were systemically destroyed by the Nazi machine.

With that in mind we sat down to watch the Channel 4 programme at 9pm, Holocaust: The Revenge Plot. The Nakam (Avengers) were a group of “survivors” who plotted a revenge attack against the German people with a plan to poison the water supply of several major German cities at the end of the War. Some of those who are alive today, in their nineties and all living in Israel, were interviewed for the programme. Some are glad that they did not succeed. Others are haunted by their failure. A riveting documentary.