Moshe Peer was 11 years old when he was held captive at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II. In 1942, at age 9, Peer and his younger brother and sister were arrested by police in their homeland of France. His mother was sent to Auschwitz and they never saw her again.
He says the memory of the separation from his parents is excruciating and he does not think it is possible to explain the living hell he experienced in the concentration camp. Surviving the horrors was his only priority.
Peer was sent to the gas chamber six times, and survived the horrible experience six times but witnessed the death of the women and children that was with him in the gas chamber. He watched as they all collapsed and died around him.
He said he does not know how or why he was able to survive the ordeal. "Maybe children resist better, I don't know," he said in an interview. Moshe is still haunted by his memories of those times and finds it difficult to sleep at night.
He is very bitter about the way the rest of the world allowed these atrocities to happen for so long. "No one told the Germans not to do it. They had the permission of world," he said.