Charlotte lives alone in the New Forest with only her two beloved rescue dogs for company. She looks like any other 69-year-old. A keen observer might notice the Star of David she wears around her neck. But few would guess her harrowing ordeal at the Nazi's Dachau death camp. On Holocaust Memorial Day she tells her story to SALLY CHURCHWARD...

"AFTER I was in the concentration camp I stopped believing in anything.

If you go through things like I went through, you can't believe in anything. You say: 'Where's God? Why didn't he help the people? Why didn't he help the children?'. They shot newborn children - I saw it with my own eyes. I saw so much killing, I can't believe it.

I was nine years old when I was taken into Dachau.

My father had already been taken into the concentration camp. I'll always remember, a man from the Gestapo came to our home Ulm in 1944 and asked me if my father was in. I said yes and he asked to see him.

He said: 'You have to come with us or sign your house over'. My father tried to ask him why and he hit him in the face and said: 'All Jews are going to the concentration camp'. My father signed the house over and then two weeks later they came and took him to Dachau. I didn't know what Dachau was until my mother took me there. She wasn't my real mother - my real mum died when she had me - but I called her my mama.

My mama had friends in Augsberg, which was near Dachau, and we went to stay there. We went to Dachau and threw apples, bread and other food into the camp. My mum's friend had a friend who was a Nazi soldier. He was very friendly. Not all of them were bad but they had to do what they had to do, otherwise they'd get shot.

They caught my brother Max the second time we went there. We threw the food over the fence and we didn't know there were officers there. We were kids, we didn't know anything. They took Max and I didn't know for a long time what block they put him in because girls and boys were separated. My other brother, Ginder was caught the third time we went there - at the same time as my mum.

A Nazi grabbed my mum and pulled her through the gate and I started screaming. I said: 'Come back, come back'. She was holding my hand and she didn't want to let go of me because she thought I could pull her out. He shot her right in the head. Then he said to me: 'You'll be in soon too'. I turned around and tried to walk away and a Nazi woman came and she got me. It was January 4 or 5, 1945.

They took my clothes and gave me the stripy clothes they made us wear. They cut some of the kids' hair and made them bald. I was too young. They only did it from 14 years and upwards. I was hungry and they gave us bread that was hard and rotten potatoes and then we had to go outside and work. They came with the big pot and we said: 'We want some water', so they threw it in our faces and said: 'You can catch it'.

In March a Nazi who had a big scar on his face said: 'Charlotte, come out here. Look over there. That's your father, you'll never see him again'.

My father was naked and they put him in the gas chamber. We heard the people screaming and saw the smoke coming out. It was a terrible smell. He said: 'If you don't stop crying you'll be going in there too'.

My brothers were working, digging trenches. This is where they made the people take their clothes off and shot them. Max refused to do it because he was sick and he couldn't stand up. It wasn't his fault and he got... the Nazi took a long knife and cut his throat. I started to run over there and they did it to Ginder too. He died in my lap and I said 'I want to die too'.

The Americans got to the camp on April 29, 1945, at two o'clock in the afternoon. There was a big tank outside the gate. I remember that. This big guy came out and he had chocolate and he held it out to us and we put our hands behind our backs because we were scared. He took me to see the nurses and doctors and helped me. I still had it in my mind: 'I'll get killed'. When the Americans came, we were young, we didn't know who they were.

The American who rescued me was called Terry Rodriguez. We stayed in touch until he died last year. He sent me a ring to remember him by. He used to come with his family to see me every year - they are coming again this year.

After the war I was put in an orphanage. There were the families of American soldiers stationed there. They used to take us into their homes for Christmas, even though we didn't celebrate it. In 1952 a couple asked me if I wanted to go to America. I did but I felt like I didn't belong to anybody. I went back to Germany in 1968 to find my remaining family and I met my husband through a lonely-hearts advert in a magazine.

He was Romanian - he had come to Germany in 1940 as a refugee. We got married in 1970 in a register office. We came to Britain in 1974. I couldn't stay in Germany anymore because of everything that had happened.

My husband passed away in 1988.

We went to visit Dachau in January 1974 before we moved to Britain. When I went there it was like seeing ghosts of my father, mother, brothers and myself. When I came out it made me shiver.

My family never had graves. I never knew where they put the bodies. If I had a cemetery to go to it would help me.

I light a tabernacle (Jewish candlestick) every year for Dachau on April 29. Everyone talks so much about Auschwitz, why don't they talk about the other camps? It makes me feel hurt. We are all the same people."