There are some childhood memories no one should harbour and yet no time can erase.

Kitty Hart-Moxon describing her time in Auschwitz is one of those.

In ITV1’s The Holocaust: A Story Of Remembrance (a must-see on catch-up), survivors of one of the darkest moments in human history shared stories that demand to be told.

Kitty remembers how, in the dormitory, crammed with 1,000 women huddled together like frozen sardines, she shook the gypsy woman lying alongside her. She then realised the woman had been dead for hours – no wonder she was so cold. And she describes, with that crystal-clear clarity horror often leaves in its wake, saying to her mother ‘we must take her clothes to keep ourselves warm’.

On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated, including the young Kitty, after two years of incarceration. When she arrived off the bus in London, for her new life in England, her uncle banned any talk of the past.

Kitty is one of the three women featured in this ITV documentary – The Tiger Who Came To Tea author Judith Kerr and Senior Reform Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner are the other two compelling subjects – who have spent long, successful lives trying to come to terms with the unthinkable.

The events of the Holocaust – and the nightmarish footage of bodies heaped - remain unthinkable. But this half-hour film – screened on Holocaust Memorial Day – showed with undeniable power why the world must never forget what happened, even as the survivors become rarer still.

Meanwhile, also on ITV1, ‘television experiment’ Bring Back Borstal came to a climax in a surprisingly uplifting fashion last week.

I had swerved the whole series, even though watching naughty young offenders dressed up in 1930s outfits like something out of Just William is right up my street.

The final episode offered a catch-up, watching the 13 young scamps brought to book by the strict yet kindly Guvnor – criminologist Professor David Wilson. It’s been a bumpy ride. For one thing, to the disgust of the red-top tabloids, most of the delinquents left in the first fortnight, preferring the cushier world on the outside, or even inside.

By the final week of BBB, the discipline system (no birch in this modern-day borstal – a picturesque castle in Northumberland) was starting to fray. Largely responsible for the general sense of menace were Ben and Craig Kearney – two brothers who came under the scrutiny of the law for clobbering a man with a golf club, amongst other antics. The damaged pair, who have gone a long way to reinforcing all the worst stereotypes about Liverpool, bullied one young, (let’s face it) extremely cute lad (Hopwood) to the extent that the poor mite was filmed crying on the steps and threatened with a savage beating after dark. The Kearneys were removed and Hopwood thrived, winning the borstal staff over with his resilience in the face of homelessness and other setbacks, resolved to study psychology at university.

The surprise success was Casey Spence – the Geordie drug user who earlier in the series walked out, with Trainspotting-esque aplomb, leading the Guvnor to hunt him down in his rubbish-strewn home. Gradually, this boy blossomed under the eye of the camera and the care of the staff. He talked about how he was scared to die. How he wanted to provide for his pregnant girlfriend. His young face, full of hope and experience, brimmed with hope in the final interview stage as he was offered a job by all three employers. These scenes, in which each young scamp disclosed his convictions to potential employers, resembled a much more heart-warming version of The Apprentice.

Often it’s the brightest boys who are the naughtiest, bored by school and distracted by extra-curricular activities far beyond their years. It was cheering to see the five boys who made it to the end of the process full of purpose, approaching self-esteem and (hurray!) gainful employment.

However, there’s always one, isn’t there? The one who wafts through life’s rules like smoke.

Budding chef Burniston was that man and, aside from a heartlifting game of rugby, he cheeringly refused to conform, which made for great telly at least.

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