Books: Remembering life of Holocaust survivor who 'wanted mind to stop'

Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling, by Mark S Smith, is published by the History Press, priced £20

HERSHL Sperling settled in Scotland after the Second World War having survived seven Nazi concentration camps – including the infamous Treblinka.

From the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau to the fears of the Czestochowa ghetto, the Pole withstood all that was thrown at him, ending up as one of fewer than 70 survivors of Treblinka – despite 800,000 people having been forced through its gates.

Yet one day, in 1989, he took his own life, throwing himself from the Caledonian Railway Bridge on the River Clyde, 68 years after Treblinka was razed.

Treblinka Survivor, by Glasgow-based writer Mark S Smith, is Sperling's story in his own words – a long-forgotten account of Treblinka in Yiddish published in Germany in 1947 and translated into English for the first time in this book.

But it is also Smith's response to his story – as a young teenager he knew Sperling well. He was the father of his best friend.

On his suicide, Smith says: "He wanted his mind to stop."

• Mark S Smith will speak at Waterstone's, George Street, on Wednesday at 7:30pm.