WITH a sense of anticipation, Maria Korfanty climbed on a chair and reached up for the beautiful leather-bound photograph album belonging to her father.

Knowing that she really shouldn't be doing this, but carried along by her curiosity, she carefully opened the heavy volume. What she saw was to change her life for ever. Images of half-starved waifs clinging to each other for support, piles of bodies heaped shockingly on patches of waste ground and the sad remnants of human life - a pair of spectacles and a gold tooth - swam before her eyes.

Looking back, it was at this point that Maria first understood her legacy as a second generation holocaust survivor.

Until then, she had believed, as children do, that her family was just like everyone else's, and that her father's screams in the night were normal.

But at the age of five, she was forced to realise that what had happened to him in the three years he spent in concentration camps had set them apart for ever.

Maria, now 48 and married to Douglas Chapman, has faithfully committed to memory every detail related to her by her late father, Tadeusz Korfanty.

Unlike most inmates in concentration camps, Tadeusz was not a Jew. He had been arrested, along with his father Edmund and brother Richard, after they had tried to cross the Polish/Hungarian border to join the army abroad.

As Tadeusz's mother was from the Sudetenland, and the family lived in southern Poland, the prisoners were classed as German, so were tried for treason against the German state.

Edmund received a life sentence and died in a Nazi prison, while Richard and Tadeusz were condemned to seven and four years hard labour respectively.

Their first experience of what Maria describes as "the nearest thing to hell" was at the so called "feeder camp" of Mautthaussen, in Austria.

"Mautthaussen was a quarry with high steps. The prisoners used to quarry the rocks and were then required to carry them up the steps on their backs. As they were so emaciated, one person would often fall and cause everyone else to tumble down to their deaths," says Maria.

Having survived this experience, the father and sons were transferred to Gusen. It was there that Richard, formerly a strong and healthy young man, fell ill and was admitted to hospital - a move which was welcomed by his devoted younger brother. But when Tadeusz, then in his late teens, realised what happened to patients, he was overcome with anxiety and a deep depression.

Richard died from an injection of petrol into the heart and was cremated on January 17, 1943.

Maria says: "My father and my uncle were very close. When he heard what happened to people in hospital, my father went into a depression and lost his memory. Eventually, he was thrown on a pile of corpses. Luckily, he was recognised by someone and they lifted him off and shared their food with him. After that, my father turned a corner and became determined to get through it."

Despite the deaths of his father and brother, Tadeusz remained true to his resolve and held out until the allies arrived to liberate the camp. But in the meantime, he suffered appalling torture at the hands of the guards who presided over it.

"One of the questions I asked my father was how could people do that to other people? He said some of the guards were actually criminals. It was like Fred West or the Yorkshire Ripper being in charge."

This was graphically illustrated when Tadeusz had his hands fastened in a press and his nails ripped off as a punishment. Other methods of discipline left him with a broken nose, permanent injuries to his neck and back and inactive tuberculosis.

When Gusen was liberated, on May 4, 1945, he weighed only 4st, 1lb. For two years he was unable to eat solid food and he would never regain a normal appetite. But he was alive. He married and settled in Darlington, where Maria and her younger sister Helen were brought up. His dream of starting a computer firm kept him going until, at the age of 70, he died peacefully at home with a computer magazine by his side.

Maria, who now has two children, Christina, 18, and Nicholas, 16, and lives in Stapleton, near Darlington, says: "My father liked to talk about the fun side of any story. He would tell me how he stole potatoes from the guards and how he rammed all the wicker baskets inside each other so that when they took them out, they all shattered. When he started to tell you the other side he would get very depressed."

It is only in adulthood that Maria realises she was shielded from her father's darkest hours, when the horrors of the past would invade his dreams and make him put his hands around his wife's throat.

"There were times when his hatred for the Nazis would cause conflict between us, as the slightest thing would spark his anger at them. But there was an incredible amount of compassion in him."

Having started life as part of a strongly Christian family, Tadeusz's faith ebbed away as he struggled to live through what he could only describe as hell.

Maria is ambivalent on the question of religion. While she can't be sure of God's existence, she feels her upbringing has bestowed on her a unique understanding of the suffering of others. By ensuring that the memory of her father lives on, she hopes to reduce the risk of future genocides and atrocities. She plans to write a book one day, and will take part in a memorial service at Darlington Town Hall today. She has already contributed to a display charting the history of genocide.

She says: "As the years pass, I'm afraid that when I tell people my father was in a concentration camp they won't understand or care. It's wonderful to have recognition for what happened."

Tamar Burman, of the Holocaust Educational Trust, says: "Genocide did not end with the Holocaust and this Memorial Day offers the opportunity to reflect on other acts against humanity."

Which is why people across the country are being encouraged to remember the horrors the world would rather forget.