The Times and Independent Series have teamed up with Jewish Care's Holocaust Survivors Centre in Hendon to tell the stories of those who saw first-hand the atrocities of the Second World War.

Lilly Ebert, 87, has survived the Holocaust. She was sent to Auschwitz at 15-years-old, and lived to tell the tale.

Here is her story:

Born in Hungary in 1929, Lilly was the eldest girl of six children and said she had the “best parents.”

She lost her father when she was just 13-years-old, and when Lilly turned 15, the Nazis invaded Hungary.

Lilly said: “In my life, I have experienced two of biggest events. I was in hell, and then in 1948, I was a part of the establishment of Israel. One of the worst and one of the best.

“I have had three very different lives, my protected childhood, and the life in hell and then I had to live after the Holocaust, without my parents in a new country, without the language and without belonging.”

Her family were forced into the ghetto, a place to segregate Jewish people from everyone else, and they had to give up everything they owned.

They were taken to a railway station in July 1944, and the journey to Auschwitz took five days, with just a bucket of water.

Lilly said: “My mother switched shoes with me, she had a piece of jewellery in the heel of her shoe. I took it out every day and put it in my small piece of bread. It was the only piece of jewellery that went into Auschwitz and came out again. I still wear it now.

“When we arrived in Auschwitz, we were told to line up outside. A man we didn’t know stood looking at us, holding a stick, and with one movement, he sent people to die to the left. My mother, my younger sister, brother, were all sent to death, to the gas chamber.

“Me and my two other sisters were allowed to survive, but only so we could work. They cut our hair, and we were told to shower. They took all our clothes away and only left our shoes.

“When we left the shower, it was dark, and we noticed smoke from a chimney, with a terrible smell, like burning flesh. We asked, what sort of factory is that? They said that is where they burn your family, and we thought they were mad. We didn’t believe it.

“The truth is, Auschwitz was a killing industry. The factory had to work day and night and the fuel, was the human beings. It was not meant for us to survive."

In Auschwitz, Lilly was given “black water” for breakfast, the Germans called it “black coffee”. Lunch was watery soup, and dinner was a small piece of bread and a small piece of margarine.

There were no toilets in Auschwitz, everyone in the camp had to share, and there was nowhere to wash.

Lilly was sent to work in a munitions factory near Leipzig, and worked 12 hour days.

But, in April 1945, the workers were told to leave everything and were taken on a death march, walking for several days and nights.

The Americans liberated the Jews on April 13, and placed them in empty houses in Germany.

When the war was over, Lilly and her two surviving sisters travelled to Switzerland and stayed there for a year, before Lilly moved to Israel.

She married and had three children, before moving to London in 1967, leaving her sisters to live in Israel.

Lilly still shares her story today in schools and in different organisations.

Lilly’s message is: “I promised myself, that if I survived, I will tell the world what happened. We have to be tolerant.

“It makes no difference if you are black, white, Jewish, Christian, or which religion or nationality you are, because we are all different. It does not mean that somebody is better or worse just different.”