BEING born in January 1945, I am old enough to have known survivors of the greatest war known to mankind, and these include a Dambuster, men from D-Day and Cassino, and also from Leningrad and Stalingrad, heroes every one of them.

I also knew a man called Emile, a survivor of Dachau concentration camp, and, after I paid a visit to Dachau, I asked him about his 333 days as a prisoner.

He said each day began with a roll call, a guard would ride round on a cycle and count. If anyone was missing, the prisoners stood all night and half a day outside, no matter what the weather. If a prisoner fell down, he or she was beaten until they got up or died.

Savage dogs were set onto prisoners at times and Emile said they knew exactly where to bite a man or a woman to cause maximum injury and pain.

Emile also said that almost every nation had got some prisoners in the camps he went through.

The day I visited the camp, it was minus 11C and I could not stand being outside. I walked into the former SS offices and, at the rear, I looked up at some meat hooks fixed from the central beam of the ceiling. As I looked up, I stumbled off the edge of a sloping trough, a v-shaped channel to drain away blood. This was a real torture chamber. As I stared out of the windows in disbelief, I saw a strange-looking hillock at the side of the camp chapel, the bumpy outline seemed so odd. The Dachau camp prospectus says : "Point 17. Approximately 6,000 Russian prisoners of war were executed on the SS-Scheissplatz (rifle range). They ran across and were shot dead as moving targets. This is what all of the Allied nations fought to stop."

This letter is not taking sides in any way, but I would find it difficult to live in the same street as a person such as these killers. Indeed, I would not even want to be in the same country.

Prisoners of every faith were murdered in these places where today no birds sing.

Maybe we can remember what Emile told me when I asked him how he coped in the darkest days. He said: "We have a saying, if I fall down, then I will rise up again."

The large sign at each camp says "Never Again".

Neil Smith Lee Lane Horwich