Back in 2019, the BBC reported that Britain’s oldest poppy seller Ron Jones died aged 102. He collected for the Royal British Legion’s poppy appeal for more than 30 years, eventually stopping aged 101.
The retired steelworker from Newport was a prisoner of war in the Auschwitz concentration camp while serving in the 1st Battalion Welch Regiment during World War Two.
Auschwitz remains a symbol of pure evil, a place of genocide and inhumanity, of total disregard for the sanctity and dignity of life. An estimated 1.1–1.5mn men, women, and children died there, 90% of them Jewish.
Others included Roma and Sinti people, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, socialists, and LGBTQIA+ people. What is also less well known is the internment of 1,400 British prisoners of war at Auschwitz.
Among them was Ron Jones, who had joined the South Wales Borderers in 1940. He was captured in Benghazi, Libya, and was initially transported to a POW camp in Italy.
