British Holocaust survivor who also lived through Hamas' attack on Israel reveals why Palestinian terror group's ambush was WORSE than the Nazi regime's - on Memorial Day of the Auschwitz concentration camp's liberation

Mirjam Beit Talmi Szpiro's Kibbutz Zikim was attacked  by Hamas in October 

A British Holocaust survivor who also lived through Hamas’ attack on Israel has revealed why the Palestinian terror group’s ambush was worse than the Nazi regime’s.

Mirjam Beit Talmi Szpiro, born in 1935, was three-years-old when her home in Germany was attacked during the Kristallnacht, which saw Nazi leaders unleash a series of slaughters against the Jewish population.

Her parents were taken to concentration camps – her father to Auschwitz and her mother to the Lodz Ghettowhere – where they would both die.

Mirjam immigrated to Israel 10 years after the war having spent years in England, with the land becoming a safe space for her after years of fear and grief.

‘A decade after the war, I immigrated to Israel, a land that welcomed me and became my home. A place of relative calm. A place, for me, of safety,’ she wrote for CNN.

Pedestrians glance at the broken windows of a Jewish owned shop in Berlin after the attacks of Kristallnacht in November 1938

Three onlookers at a smashed Jewish shop window in Berlin following riots of the night in November 1938

Roses lay in the water of the Schwedtsee lake, at Ravensbrueck memorial on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in Fuerstenberg, Germany

This is one reason why Hamas’ attack on her community of Kibbutz Zikim in October felt even worse than the terrors Mirjam endured as a child, as the place she called home was once again destroyed.

‘The tranquility of my kibbutz turned into a fierce battleground as gunfire broke the air, shattering both glass and my sense of refuge I had found there,’ said Mirjam.

‘In the face of the terror, I told myself, ”I’m not afraid. I don’t know what fear is. I’m accustomed to this.” ‘

Israeli officials say around 240 people were taken hostage during the Hamas attacks which killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

Mirjam said she hid in her safe room for 12 hours after hearing gunmen outside her home.

‘I couldn’t help but feel that history was repeating itself,’ she said.

‘Thanks to the bravery of the military unit in Zikim, I and the rest of the kibbutz members survived. But again, so many others didn’t.’

The funeral procession of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath (1909 – 1938) passes through the streets of Dusseldorf on November 17, 1938

Mirjam was yet again forced to leave her home and has been living out of a suitcase in a hotel room for nearly four months.

‘I left my home, packing in just half an hour with a silent sense of déjà vu,’ she said.

‘I refuse to lose hope.’

Mirjam on Wednesday received an award alongside fellow survivors of the Kindertransport, which recognised the struggle and resilience of the children who suffered during the Holocaust.

With today marking Holocaust Memorial Day, Mirjam said this year will not be like previous years, explaining: ‘For me, this Holocaust Memorial Day is different. It does not just represent the past, but also the present. The flames of Kristallnacht may have gone out, but other fires, lit on October 7, have again burned homes and lives and dreams,’ she said.