A Jewish refugee today told Hounslow students the moving story of his childhood escape from Vienna to England, as the borough marked Holocaust Memorial Day.
Ernest Simon was just eight when he left his family behind in Nazi-controlled Austria and fled via train and boat to Harwich in January 1939.
He was one of 10,000 young Jews evacuated to the UK via 'Kindertransport' between November 1938 and August 1939, before the Second World War broke out.
He recounted his experience to a packed audience, including pupils from St Mark's Catholic School, this morning at Hounslow Civic Centre.
The memorial event finished with him and other dignitaries, including Hounslow mayor Corinna Smart, lighting candles in memory of the estimated six million Jews killed during the Holocaust and of those killed in other genocides worldwide.
Mr Simon, who today lives in Pinner, recalled growing up in Austria and experiencing the growing persecution of Jews after the country's annexation by Nazi Germany in March 1938.
He remembered vividly watching from his bedroom window on Kristallnacht on November 9 that year as Nazi sanctioned rioters torched 267 synagogues and killed at least 90 Jews across Germany and Austria.
"We lived in the same street as a synagogue and I remember watching the bonfire of prayer books and Torah scrolls that night," he said.
"The events of that night acted as a catalyst in certain quarters of the UK (to do something for Jews) and the idea of Kindertransport was born."
Mr Simon told how the then prime minister Neville Chamberlain had initially turned down requests for Jewish children to be given refuge in the UK before a group of influential Quakers and his home secretary Samuel Hoare convinced him to have a change of heart.
So it was that at midnight on January 11, 1939, he waved goodbye to his parents at Vienna West station and embarked on a two-day journey to Harwich and then Liverpool Street station, where he and thousands of other Jewish children were welcomed.
The majority of children evacuated by Kindertransport would never see their parents again, with most of those they left behind perishing in concentration camps.
But Mr Simon, who settled in Leeds, was one of the 'lucky' ones. His parents and brother followed him over soon after, having obtained exit permits in exchange for working as domestic servants in the UK.
However, even in the UK the persecution was not over. Their father spent a year interned on the Isle of Man as an 'enemy alien', despite as Mr Simon put it, having more reason than anyone to despise the regime he had fled.
After studying at Leeds University, Mr Simon would go on to work a a manager for the now defunct chemicals giant ICI.
Today he regularly visits schools to talk about his experience of the Holocaust and said it is important the atrocities are never forgotten.
"The sort of experiences I have described are things which are not dead. They're happening all the time in this day and age," he said today.
"People haven't learned but the more we talk about it and remember what happened the less likely it is that it will happen again."
Today's ceremony was led by the Reverend Derek Simpson, with Basil Mann, representing the Jewish community, leading the audience in rendition of the Jewish Prayer for the Departed.
Speaking at the end of the event, deputy council leader Amrit Mann told Mr Simon: "Your words were very moving and an inspiration to us all. It's hugely important that Hounslow and the nation honours Holocaust Memorial Day, especially given the spectre of antisemitism has recently reared its ugly head again."
