Here’s a remarkable story: in 1933, when Zigi was three years old, his mother divorced his father and moved to London, leaving her son in Poland. Continental Europe, as you may already know, was a dangerous place for Jews in the thirties, and Zigi spent years living in ghettos and death camps, including Auschwitz. To call it hell on earth is too mild a description. Few who stepped down from the trains survived even a day, or escaped incineration. Imagine the blizzard of human ashes – family, friends, strangers – billowing from the chimneys of the crematoria.

I’m happy to tell you Zigi survived. After his liberation he received a letter from a woman who’d found his name on a list of survivors, who hoped he was her son. He had no memory of his mother, he’d been told that she’d died, but the woman asked if he had a scar on his wrist, which would identify him. He did, and they were reunited.

Another remarkable story: late in his life Zigi gave talks to schools, institutions, even the England football team, about his experience. He accompanied the Prince and Princess of Wales to Stutthof, a camp where he’d once been a prisoner.

The survivors’ greatest fear was that the world would forget the effort to remove Jews from the face of the earth, and that it would happen again. As well as his terrible history Zigi had charisma, and energy, and educating people about the camps became his mission. If people knew what he’d endured perhaps it wouldn’t be repeated.

King Charles commissioned portraits of seven survivors, including Zigi. His was made by Jenny Saville, an artist whose work I’ve admired for many years. To my mind it is the best of the set, it looks deeply into him. It is a great work of art.

It is a remarkable passage, is it not, in the span of one lifetime, to go from suffering the genocidal cruelty of Auschwitz, to your portrait hanging in Buckingham Palace.

Zigi died last week, on his 93rd birthday. There were obituaries in newspapers, messages from royalty, and from many of the people he’d told his story to. The British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, paid tribute to him in the House of Commons. Zigi had touched so many lives by talking about his own.

My father, Krulik, also born in Poland, was another survivor of the death camps. After the war he was smuggled into what was still mandated Palestine, a journey which was, at best, difficult; the British patrolled the sea and the shore to prevent Jews entering the country, because their lives had been too easy so far. But he wasn’t daunted, and he fought in the War of Independence.

So, by the time he was 20, he’d survived the Nazi death machine, dodged the British blockade, and defeated the united nations of Arabia. He felt, at least subconsciously, invincible. Sixty years later I tried to persuade him to organise a power of attorney, “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he said, but it did, and he died a year later.

Krulik and Zigi met in London, and were close friends for over sixty years. Each married, and my parents accompanied Zigi and his wife, Jeanette, on their honeymoon. They’d go out for dinner together, and on leaving the restaurant Zigi would tell the waiter to check my mother’s handbag for stolen cutlery. I always knew him, he was family.

At wedding and bar-mitzvah parties they would shout jokes to each other across the room, entertaining the other guests. Both were loved by ‘The Boys’, which is what the survivors who’d come to England after the war called themselves. Even the girls are Boys. Their numbers are dwindling, and the few remaining are now in or approaching their nineties.

For a week after a Jewish funeral people gather to say prayers every evening. I was in Paris, but wanted to attend. I contacted one of Zigi’s daughters, Lulu, to ask if the service would be broadcast on Zoom.

On Saturday morning we exchanged messages, and talked about our fathers. She told me a story of how, maybe fifteen years ago, she’d given Zigi and Krulik a lift one evening. Passing through North London suburbs they sat in the back of her car making each other laugh like schoolboys, until tears ran down their cheeks.

I don’t know if their spirit was the product of survival, or if it was how they’d prevailed. There can be no adequate revenge for the crimes of the Nazis, but laughter is a start.

Lulu said something surprising: after she’d introduced her future husband to her father, he said, “It must be hard living with Saint Zigi.” The survivors weren’t saintly, but they had experienced extreme hardship, near death, then started new lives, and that, at least, deserves respect.

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of my father’s early life, even if I didn’t know the details. But in my early teens we watched, in silence, the episode of World at War about The Final Solution. Around the same time I was taken to Yad Vashem, and I remember looking at enlarged photos of mountains of eye glasses, human hair, and emaciated corpses. I’m still haunted by knowing that human skin was used to make a lampshade. So I knew. I knew.

Being the child of a camp survivor presents its own difficulties, but to fuss about my feelings against the magnitude of the Shoah is ridiculous. My life is trivial in comparison, which is perhaps the problem.

I searched for ‘children of Holocaust survivors’ and found that papers have been written about the phenomenon of intergenerational trauma, it is a recognised condition. Great stress can register in your genes, and be passed on to your children. I hadn’t heard of this before, it is amazing, isn’t it, and you can’t escape it. My father was a good man, and would have hated that I’m affected so by his experience. It is the fault of the Nazis and no one else, another consequence of their monstrous mission.

On Tuesday evening, ten minutes before prayers were to begin, I put on a kippa and logged in to Zoom. Maybe I tried too late. I watched the blue circle go round, without access, and for the length of the service I sat quietly, and thought about Zigi and Krulik laughing without restraint in the back seat of a car. May their memory be a blessing.

• A link to the Royal Collection Trust, which holds the portraits commissioned by the King.
• A link to a fine tribute to Zigi by Karen Pollack.
• Another link to something I wrote about a trip to Prague, to recreate a photo of survivors, this time with their descendants, and a chilling journey to a death camp.