Gerty HollandA WOMAN who fled from Austria as Hitler prepared to annexe the country has died at her home in Purton at the age of 91.

Gerty Holland's Jewish parents sent her to Britain in 1938 and she trained as a nurse at a London hospital, while her brother Erich was sent to Mexico.

Soon afterwards their mother and father were rounded up with thousands of other Austrian Jews and died in a Nazi concentration camp.

Yesterday, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, her son Matt, founder of Swindon's annual Festival of Literature, organised a Swindon service in memory of more than six million Jews and other victims of the holocaust.

"Jews in Austria knew there were going to be problems but at the time my mother and my uncle got out it still wasn't too difficult for them to travel," said Matt.

Gerty met her husband Leslie, an artist, in July 1940. He is now 97.

"His mother was having treatment at the hospital where she worked and said to my father, there's a nice nurse here. You should meet her," he said.

Three months later they married at Ealing Register Office.

The couple had six children Peter, who died in 2000 from myeloma, Matt, Luke, Andreas and Ruth and 17 grandchildren.

"Even though she wasn't imprisoned in the camps, as her parents were, she was a survivor, the strongest earth mother I have ever met, hard working and dignified," said Matt.

"She always had soup in the pot. I remember bringing a party of 28 home and she provided a meal for all of them at a moment's notice.

"She had stomach cancer last year but refused to believe the diagnosis."

Burial will take place at Purton cemetery tomorrow at 11am and at noon there will be a Jewish and secular ceremony at St Mary's parish church.

The family have asked for donations in Gerty's memory to the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Myeloma Foundation.