From Auschwitz with Love

LIFT BELL RINGS

It's Saturday, and Welshman Ron Jones has come to watch the footie.

He may seem like an ordinary senior citizen,

but he's a man with a remarkable past.

A few years shy of his 100th birthday,

he's going to relive an extraordinary love story,

set in one of history's darkest chapters.

This is Ron's tale of survival in a place that's become synonymous

with hatred and death on an industrial scale.

The smell was terrible. Sickly, sweet smell.

-Could you imagine those final moments?

-I know, exactly.

When he shot him, he looked at me and he said, "You're next."

We were all frightened to death.

You're bringing back memories now!

PROJECTOR WHIRRS

SHOUTING AND CHEERING

'A former footballer himself,

'97-year-old Ron is Newport County's oldest fan.'

-Both our goalkeepers are injured.

-I know!

So they've signed him for a month to us.

-And if he gets injured, you're up?

-RON LAUGHS

-You brought your boots, I hope?

-Yeah! Ha-ha!

-Did Gwladys ever used to come to the football with you?

-No.

-No?

-No.

-You couldn't persuade her?

-No, she wasn't interested.

So this was always your thing? Your other love?

RON LAUGHS

MUSIC: "Love Is The Sweetest Thing"

Come on, Ref!

'Ron's lived in Bassaleg, on the outskirts of Newport, all his life.'

-Oh, that was when we were courting.

-Weren't you a good looking couple?

-RON LAUGHS

-Fantastic. You look great in this.

I met her when she came out of Girl Guides,

-when she was 16 and I was 15.

-Oh, really?

What was it about Gwladys that really attracted you to her, do you think?

I don't know. Just... I think it was love at first sight.

-Just something caught your eye?

-Oh, yeah, I fell for her straightaway.

And then, we realised that... we felt a lot for one another.

Had you had many girlfriends? Was Gwladys the sort of...?

-No.

-..the first one you took to?

-She was the only one I've ever had.

-No, I've never had anybody else.

-Wow.

-No.

-There you are in your morning suit.

She was 20...22 then. And I was 21.

Wow. So this is the summer of 1938?

Yeah, 1938. Oh, God, she was gorgeous!

I loved Gwladys from... right from the day I met her.

CHEERING

CROWD REPEAT: Sieg heil!

For the Newport lovebirds, married bliss was short-lived.

Nazi Germany was spreading its wings.

SHOUTING IN GERMAN

GUNFIRE

Ron was called up to fight with the Welsh Regiment,

but he was captured in the Middle East, becoming a prisoner of war.

70 years on, Ron's returning to the Polish prison camp

where he was held by the Germans, 1,000 miles from home...and Gwladys.

'They put us 40 in a truck, cattle trucks,

'and travelled all over Germany then.

'We were in there for four or five days.

'We were covered in lice and...we were in a bit of a shocking state.'

You couldn't lie down. We just stood up, sort of shouldering one another,

and then, of course, we were using one corner for a latrine.

And it was pretty bad, believe me.

'With 300 other captured British soldiers,

'Ron arrived at a place he'd never heard of before...

'Auschwitz.'

Ron, when you arrived in Auschwitz, what did you notice?

We saw all this big barbed wire.

And men apparently in pyjamas digging trenches and all.

I said to one of the guards, like, "Who the heck are they?"

He said, "Jews!" like us always should have known.

I mean, we didn't realise.

We didn't know they were persecuting the Jews.

But it didn't take us long to find out.

The first thing that we noticed was a peculiar smell, but, er, I mean,

I didn't register it, I didn't register what the smell was.

Until about four, five days after,

and I was talking to the Poles there.

We thought they were pulling our legs, like, you know.

And when you realised it was true, the shock you must have felt...

-Terrible shock!

-..when you realised this was...

-We didn't think that people could do things like that.

-Yeah.

And if the wind was in your direction, the smell was...

Well, it turned you off your food.

The smell was terrible, a sickly, sweet smell. Terrible.

I can smell it now.

Downwind of the infamous crematoriums,

Ron was interned at Camp E715.

From there, British prisoners were forced to work

in a factory owned by IG Farben.

'We've come to the site of Ron's old camp

'with Dr Setkiewicz of the Auschwitz Museum.'

Peter, how would things have been laid out?

Where would everything have been?

Er, so the... the road was right here.

There's an aerial picture taken by the Allies during the war.

The camp for British PoWs right here.

And about 300-400 metres this direction,

it was the camp for the Auschwitz inmates, for Jewish

and other prisoners of the concentration camp Auschwitz III.

-That was very close by, then?

-Yeah, yeah.

The Jews from there then worked in the works with us,

or alongside us.

And so, the factory we're talking about, where you worked, IG Farben,

-is right there, it's a huge site.

-Yeah.

-In front of us.

-Yeah.

Yeah, about half of the buildings physical here,

they're still original, they were built during the war by IG Farben.

Infamous for manufacturing deadly Zyklon B, used in Nazi gas chambers,

IG Farben was a chemical industry conglomerate.

Their massive synthetic rubber and fuel plant

was being built at Auschwitz,

using the plentiful supply of Jewish slave labour.

It's a little-known fact that British prisoners of war

were also forced to work there, making aircraft fuel.

-Were you a good worker for the Germans?

-No, we didn't...

We didn't like working. As a matter of fact, when we came here,

-we argued about it was, er, working for the war effort.

-Yeah.

And Geneva Conventions wouldn't allow it.

So, er, Charlie went in to see the Feldjager,

and he put his Luger on the table.

"That's my Geneva Conventions," he said.

-So we had no option but to work.

-Wow.

They had these... It was a big cylinder of about 60-70 foot high.

We had to go up on the top and, one day, Corporal Reynolds was with me.

They asked him to go up and change the pipes over

and he kept making excuses, genuine excuses mind,

that if he went up there, he didn't like heights,

he'd fall off and, don't forget, it was very cold and icy and he said

he didn't have quite the gloves and the clobber to go up there.

In the end, Meister Bieber, who was in charge of us,

called a guard over.

"Are you going up?" like, and Reynolds kept arguing.

In the end, he shot him.

He looked at me and he said, "You're next!"

You should've seen the way I went up there!

I went up there like a monkey. A bit quick.

We were all frightened to death and shook, you know.

It went right through the camp.

I'd never experienced anything like that.

Ron, what is it like to be back here?

Oh... Nostalgic.

Bitter memories.

-I've got a lump in my throat half my time.

-Yeah.

-Really concerned.

You know... Very unpleasant at the moment.

You've seen things you can't unsee, haven't you?

Yes, it's in your mind's eye, isn't it? You know.

I can remember it as... as plain as anything.

Unlike the Jews at Auschwitz, who were imprisoned by the SS,

British soldiers fell under military administration.

As prisoners of war, they were permitted to receive

Red Cross parcels and to write to their wives and families.

Back home in Wales, Gwladys kept all Ron's love letters safe.

"My dearest wife, I have just received

"the sweetest letter I have ever had from you, darling.

"It's so full of love, I could almost imagine you

"in my arms each time when I read it.

"I had your photograph too, and it's a good one of you, dear.

"You will be getting younger every photo I get.

"I'm afraid it isn't the same with me.

"I feel about ten years older now.

"But it doesn't alter my love for you, dear.

"In fact, it's greater than ever.

"We are still waiting for that second honeymoon.

"Still, it'll be all the sweeter when it do eventually come.

"I lay awake planning where it will be,

"but I always plan a different place,

"so I think I will leave it entirely to you, sweetheart.

"Remember, I still love you, darling.

"More than ever, I love you. Always yours, Ron."

So, are these sort of concrete structures relics from the wartime?

-Would they have been here?

-Yes, there was, um, a shelter.

Over there was the foundation of a barrack for the guards

and, over there, there was the kitchen area

and behind the kitchen was the camp with such barracks for prisoners.

-So those are the huts you'd have lived in?

-Yes.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

I notice the windows are open there, though.

That must've been the summer, cos, in the winter, the frost was

so heavy, sometimes we had icicles inside...

-Inside the windows?

-Inside the windows.

What were they like inside?

-Um...

-That's exactly how they were.

I had that one, right on the end there.

-Did you?

-I'm going to fill up...

-HIS VOICE CRACKS

..seeing that.

All emotional, yes, I can see me in that...

HE SOBS

-You can see yourself back there, can you, in that bunk?

-Yeah, yeah.

'Although uncomfortable, the British barracks were palatial

'compared to conditions in the concentration camps.

'Jews who hadn't been gassed on arrival

'were stacked like animals in sub-human conditions.

'Exhausted by cold and lack of food,

'they were forced to work by the kapos,

'privileged prisoners who'd beat them savagely.'

They treated the Jews, you wouldn't believe it. Shocking!

We used to boo the...the guards and all sorts, and the kapos.

But what can you do? We were prisoners of war.

One day, I had a food parcel,

so I had a piece of sausage and I took it to the works

and I gave it to one of the Jews, he said his name was Josef.

And a couple of days after, look, he gave me that ring.

-This ring, that you still wear...

-That's the actual ring, yes.

-..the ring he gave you?

-I still wear it. Very sentimental.

What it must've meant to that man to get

a bit of food from you that he would give you that ring.

He was overwhelmed, staggered.

Yeah. He couldn't believe it, I suppose.

'Not only did the British get better food

'than the concentration camp inmates,

'but they were also allowed surprising privileges.

'On Sundays, they were let out of the camp to play football!'

The Red Cross found out that we played football on Sunday afternoon,

so they brought four lots of shirts, English, Scots, Welsh and Irish.

That's the Welsh football team.

-I'm the goalkeeper.

-Amazing! That's you right there?

-Yeah.

Everyone's got the feathers on their chests?

Yes, they were the paper ones.

But that one, I embroidered it out of old socks.

-That's amazing! So you did this?

-I did that, yeah.

We used to look forward to Sunday afternoons.

Even the guards looked forward to it!

They used to cheer and...

The factory workers used to come round.

The whole pitch was surrounded.

Few men can say they've played for Wales.

-RON LAUGHS

-Fewer still representing Wales...

-Yeah.

-..here in Auschwitz.

-Yeah.

Peter, it seems almost against our understanding of this place that

these prisoners would be allowed to play football, or enjoy themselves?

-Yes.

-Why?

But I think because the, er... British prisoners of war were under

the military administration and, as such, they had certain rights.

And, of course, from time to time, the representatives

of the Red Cross could visit this camp of the British.

They would hear complaints about it and so,

that was why the Germans, um, tried to keep certain standards.

-Er, I mean, to be having fun...

-RON LAUGHS

..which is not a word associated with this part of Poland.

I mean, did it seem strange having this release

-when other things were going on?

-No.

The Germans wouldn't believe that they couldn't get us down.

-Even here?

-No, never got us down.

-With the most terrible and horrific

-deeds of humankind going on around you?

-No, never got us down, no.

'Whilst British prisoners were able to escape

'into a fantasy world of football once a week,

'for Jews, like Josef, Auschwitz held a very different reality.'

Do you know what happened to Josef?

Yes. About a fortnight after, he gave me the ring.

And when he disappeared one morning...

I asked one of his colleagues,

"Where was Josef?"

And that's all he said, "Gas chamber. Kaput."

That's just how he put it. That's just how he said it.

They were too weak to work so they took them to the gas chamber.

Could you imagine those final moments for Josef

in somewhere like this?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

I knew exactly.

We used to get terrible nightmares.

We all thought that if the Germans were pushed,

they'd put us in the gas chamber.

"I am like you, dear,

"wanting the day when we are together again

"and we don't need to write.

"We'll be able say all we want to in each other's arms.

"Sometimes it gets unbearable.

"Then I lay down and try and sleep to forget.

"More often than not, it is impossible, darling.

"I love you terrible and it seems as though I love you more now

"than when I left.

"They say 'absence makes the heart grow fonder',

"and I believe it's right too.

"I'm longing to give those luscious kisses you are waiting for, my dear.

"You're not fading from my memory, dearest.

"Your ever-adoring, loving Ron."

NEWSREEL: 'People of Western Europe,

'a landing was made this morning

'on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

'The hour of your liberation is approaching.'

-NEWSREEL:

-'Fighter planes roam Europe

'knocking out railroads and highways,

'harassing enemy motor transport, tanks and troop concentrations,

'and chewing up German communications.'

As the Allies drove Hitler back,

American bombers set their sights on targets deep within enemy territory.

IG Farben's massive factory complex was hit

but not all the bombs were on target.

Ron wanted to visit a nearby cemetery.

Interesting. This is, um,

a plaque "commemorating

"the following British servicemen who died

"in the British POW Camp E715, Stalag 8B..." That was your...

That's it.

That was your camp.

-"..On the 27th August 1944."

-I'll see if I can remember anybody.

Do you recognise some of these names?

Harold Rush, yeah, I remember him.

-So this is from a bomb that fell...

-Yeah.

-In our camp.

-An American bomb?

-Yeah.

-And all these men...

-..died on that one...

-Yeah.

-From that one bomb?

-Yeah, 39.

Did you see what happened?

Yeah, of course I did. Yeah. I helped to get them out.

What happened?

-Well...

-Where were they?

-In the slit trench.

And one bomb dropped right in the entrance to it.

-Right in the entrance?

-Right in the entrance.

-So all the men that were sheltering...

-It was chaos there.

Chaos. There was a lot of men injured.

Why weren't you in the shelter?

Because I was a bit claustrophobic. I never liked the shelter.

Lucky.

You came close a few times and probably none closer than

when that bomb went off that day.

Evidently.

There's another plaque on that gate there.

-It says, bizarrely, an American bomb landed in this cemetery...

-Yes.

-So they say.

-..in 1945.

-I didn't know that.

-On the grave of the 38.

-I didn't know that.

-And they were bombed twice.

-I didn't know that.

Once in life and once in death.

I... I didn't know that.

In January 1945, with fighting drawing closer to

Auschwitz, Nazi guards evacuated 56,000 prisoners

from the concentration camp

in what's become known as the "Death March".

British prisoners, from Camp E715, were also moved out.

It was absolutely freezing.

-I think the temperature was 15 or 20 below.

-Wow.

Three foot of snow on the roads.

No food.

I remember kicking a pig out of the way once

and pinching the potato he was eating.

So there weren't any rations?

-There were no sort of provisions for you in

-any way? Nothing at all.

-You were just scavenging? Just whatever you could get?

-Yeah.

I remember once it was a couple of chickens. We ate them an all, raw.

-Raw?

-Yeah.

Our boots started to fall apart,

so in the end we threw them away.

And I found some old sacks

and wrapped some sacks round my feet.

So, how far was the march?

17 weeks.

Oh...

And some actually died.

The guards used to just push them in the snow on the side

of the road and left them there.

I had this Rolex Oyster watch, and on the march

I had a haversack on my back and I was holding it like this.

And a German officer seen my watch.

"You may as well give it to me now,"

he said, "you're going to die anyway.

"You're never going to complete this march."

Cos men WERE dying on the side of the road. Anyway, he didn't take it.

And one day he came one morning with a sack of bread.

There must've been eight or ten loaves of bread in the sack.

I was starving. I couldn't get the watch off quick enough, could I?

So three of my mates and me, we had a meal.

It was only dry bread but, believe me, it was like eating honey.

It lasted about four or five days so maybe that's why I'm still alive.

Having crossed Czechoslovakia,

the Brits stumbled into Southern Germany - 500 miles from Auschwitz.

The end of April '45,

they shut is in a van at Regensburg, as usual,

and they didn't open up the following morning.

It must've been three or four days.

And then one morning, there was a rumbling noise outside,

and bang, and the doors burst open,

-and it was an American tank.

-Oh!

-It must've been amazing.

-Oh, amazing. It was. Exhilarating.

We were cheering and shouting.

I even saw one of our boys caught hold of the driver of the tank

and hugged him.

Although close to death, Ron was one of the lucky ones.

As Hitler retreated, the Allies

and Red Army broke open Nazi concentration camps across Europe.

They filmed what they found. The world watched in disbelief.

NEWSREEL: 'Allied leaders came to the camp

'soon after the troops overran it.

'And civilians of the Allied Investigation Commission

'came to authenticate to the world

'horrors that human beings found hard to believe.

'Thousands of garments were stripped from prisoners.

'Women's clothes.

'Infants' shoes.

'Even toys and dolls.

'Human hair cut before death dulled its lustre.

'Wedding rings.'

At Auschwitz, Soviet troops discovered 7,000 prisoners

'abandoned by the Nazis,

'and evidence of genocide on an industrial scale.'

'These are children who survived at Auschwitz.

'Their parents and relatives had been murdered by poison gas.

'Nothing left to identify them

'except the numbers the Nazis tattooed on their arms.'

It is estimated that more than a million people

were killed at Auschwitz.

10,000 of those died working for IG Farben.

A group of Ron's fellow prisoners from Camp E715

gave evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

13 managers from IG Farben were imprisoned

and the conglomerate broken up into smaller companies,

including BASF and Bayer, which still trade today.

Ron Jones has never been compensated for his years of slave labour.

Ron, when you finally arrived back here in Newport,

you'd been through so much, what state were you in?

Oh, I was in a shocking state.

Nerves...

weak...

couldn't straighten up.

I couldn't carry my kitbag - I was dragging it.

-I was just over 7st.

-Wow.

-From 13st weight.

I lost seven teeth, loose through malnutrition.

-What state were you in mentally, you know?

-A bag of nerves.

I'd be like this all the time,

thinking there was somebody behind me.

I'd walk up the stairs backwards. I wouldn't walk up frontways.

-You'd walk up the stairs backwards?

-Yeah,

-walking upstairs backwards.

-Always watching your back?

-Always walking back.

-Always trying to protect yourself?

-Yeah.

-I suppose today we'd call it post-traumatic stress disorder.

-Yes.

-Yes.

-Sounds like what you had.

-I didn't realise it then, of course.

I used to wake up shouting and covered in perspiration.

How similar were you to the Ron that had left five years before?

Oh, nothing. Nothing like it at all.

I was an extremely fit fellow, bright as a button,

full of life

but when I came home I was like an old man.

I lost it all.

-In service...

-You're bringing back memories now.

I know. I know. It's hard, isn't it?

It must've taken me all of about... oh, five years at least

before I would say I was a normal man again.

In May 1945, Ron finally returned home - to Bassaleg.

We were a little village and everybody knew everybody else...

-Yeah.

-..in those days.

-Yeah.

Today it's like a small town.

Did you have any doubts about whether she'd...

Well, she'd hopefully recognise you. But you were so different.

-Were you worried about that?

-Yes, I was. Of course I was.

This is your street.

-That's right.

-Which one was your house?

-Number five. That's the one.

-Just there?

Rosemead.

And out here they had a great big banner up on the top there -

-"Welcome home."

-Did they?

Balloons hanging from everywhere.

Come on then, Ron, let's have a look inside, see what you remember.

RON LAUGHS

-Well, well, well.

-Your first home as a married couple.

-And it's still called Rosemead.

-Yeah.

-Hello, sir.

-How are you?

-Very pleased to meet you.

-How are you?

-How are you doing?

-When I was here, a Mrs Jobyns owned it.

-Oh, right.

-Do you remember Mrs Jobyns?

-I don't know, no.

-No.

And she split it into two. So we lived downstairs and she lived up.

-Really.

-Well, well, well.

That was our bedroom, of course, downstairs.

And the door was there.

How does it feel to be back?

-Does it feel a bit strange?

-Good God.

THEY CHUCKLE

Gwladys and all my family were there.

I walked up the steps and who should come out from the door?

It was Gwladys.

She was the first person I met. I... Oh...

Oh, I can't describe it, how you feel.

I was in seventh heaven.

I never let her go for hours.

HE CHUCKLES

I remember her, the first night she put in me a bath.

I couldn't climb in a bath.

She put me in the bath and she started to cry.

I said, "Oh, Gwlad, don't cry, love.

"I left men out there that are never going to come home."

So it has brought back plenty of memories?

It comes flooding back when you stand in here again?

I can remember. I can't believe that I'm in here.

Talk about excitement.

But how lucky were you to come home to Gwladys?

She'd waited for you. She...

-Terrific.

-Five years you'd been missing for.

-Terrific. Terrific.

I couldn't believe it.

Yep, those were the days.

# Love is the sweetest thing

# What else on earth could ever bring

# Such happiness to everything

# As love's old story... #

It's been a real honour to get to know Ron

and find out more about his story.

The fact that he's not far off 100 years old

yet his spark is undimmed,

his recall is perfect and, quite frankly,

it's hard to tire him out

just give you a small hint of what an incredible man he is.

Of course it's impossible to comprehend some of the things

that happened during the war, but one thing is very clear,

in this time of extreme hatred, it was love that drove Ron on.

Well, that and perhaps a bit of football.

# ..This is the song without end

# Love is the strongest thing

# The oldest

# Yet the latest thing

# I only hope that fate may bring

# Love's story to you

# Love is the sweetest thing. #