Strictly’s Judge Rinder opens up about his Jewish grandfather’s horrifying experience during the Holocaust

ROB Rinder has opened up about the "indescribable trauma" suffered by his Jewish grandfather, who survived the Holocaust.

Polish-born Moishe Malenicky survived the Nazi death camps but lost his parents, brother and three sisters, the Strictly star reveals.

Rob, a.k.a. Judge Rinder, told the : “My grandfather did not speak of it often but there were dark shadows, poisonous drips of stories, that were always in my psyche."

Moishe moved to London after the war and married there, welcoming two daughters and eventually five grandkids.

Rob recalls how his grandad, who was starved at the camps, would hide food around his house.

It had only been half a year, yet he was so emaciated. He just said, 'We are hungry all the time here'

He said: “It was a relationship with food that was pathological – you need to eat, eat. There was this sense of insecurity.”

Moishe was 15 when the war began in 1939. He and his family were crammed into a ghetto with 28,000 other Jews.

In 1942 Moishe's parents and siblings, Nathan, Frumka, Surela and Miriam, were transported to Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, where they were killed in the gas chambers.

Moishe was sent to slave at a series of labour camps, including in Schlieben, Germany, where he was reunited with a friend, Ben Helfgott, after six months apart.

Ben, now 85, recalls being offered rotten potato soup when he arrived at the camp, but despite being famished he couldn't eat it: "It smelt of excrement."

Then he saw a skeletal figure running to devour the foul broth. It was Moishe.

"I still have the image in my mind," says Ben. "It had only been half a year, yet he was so emaciated. He just said, 'We are hungry all the time here'. I could only think, 'How long will he last?' Soon we were all the same."

Rob tells other horrifying stories of Moishe's experiences.

Once a drunk German soldier came up to him on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and barked: "What do you Jews sing on Yom Kippur?" before whipping him till he sang. Rob has seen the marks left on his back.

Another time when Moishe was working at a munitions factory, he tried to move into a different assembly line, thinking the work looked easier.

A guard caught him and attacked him, and Moishe was forced to do an even more difficult job.

Windermere was my grandad's paradise. He loved this country. He loved life

Later, however, he discovered that the easier-looking work involved putting poisonous chemicals into tank shells — a task likely to have killed him within months.

When the war finally ended, Moishe was among 732 young survivors offered a home in the UK, arriving in Windermere on August 15, 1945.

"Windermere was his paradise," says Rob. "The locals may never have met a Jew before, but they were so welcoming. He loved this country. He loved life."

Rob was called to the bar just before Moishe died in 2011

Moishe began working at a bakery in east-end London, where he met Rob's grandmother, Lottie, now 93.

He kept on as a baker for the rest of his life, rising at 4am every day. He enjoyed life, and took great pride in his children and grandchildren, including barrister and TV star Rob.

Rob says: “Although he went through indescribable trauma you never thought of him as a victim."