A HOLOCAUST survivor from near York who gave real life history lessons about the horrors of Nazism to thousands of young people has died, just weeks after being presented with the BEM.

Marc Schatzberger, 94, of Skelton, near York, received the honour in December for services to Holocaust education and awareness, after he had made it his mission to ensure young people across Yorkshire had access to survivor testimony.

His daughter Lesley said he was originally due to receive the BEM last April but then the ceremony was postponed to July because of lockdown, and he then wasn’t well enough to travel. The Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, Jo Ropner, had then gone to his home in early December to present it to him.

The Press reported in late 2019 how, in the past six years alone, Marc had spoken to more than 10,000 young people, at schools including Barlby High School near Selby, and Bootham and Archbishop Holgate’s in York.

He said then he had been “really surprised but very pleased” to hear he was receiving the honour and said that when he went into schools, there was always one reaction from the students: “Without exception, it is always one of rapt attention.”

He said he spoke to pupils about the difficulties and challenges he had faced as a 12-year-old, leaving a loving family to come to a new country with a different language and a different school system.

Marc was born to Jewish parents in Vienna in 1926 and went to a highly regarded grammar school. But in 1938, the Nazi party annexed Austria to Germany and almost immediately the vicious racism directed against Jews made it increasingly difficult and his parents took the heartbreaking decision to send him, aged 12, away to Britain, on a Kindertransport.

He was first cared for in a Jewish children’s hostel before being looked after by an uncle and aunt, who had gained entry to Britain as domestic servants.

Tragically, he later received news that his parents and other members of his family had perished in Auschwitz. He later married Rosie, a Viennese Jewish woman, whom he leaves.