Every survivor is special. Each represents the triumph of life over death and over evil. The memories they have had to live with are, thank God, something the rest of us are spared.

For some, those memories have been simply too much. But for others, the determination not to be defined by their suffering led to lives of remarkable optimism.

No one exemplified that spirit more than Lily Ebert, who died at the weekend having, quite wonderfully, reached the age of 100.

She may have been a centenarian but her spirit seemed to be that of a young girl. In recent years her insistence that she had a duty to tell her story led to her becoming a global force on social media, most notably reaching a young generation on Instagram and TikTok.

As the prime minister put it in his tribute to Lily, “In Auschwitz, Lily made her now famous promise, that if she survived, she would tell the world what happened. She kept that promise in the most remarkable way.”

With Lily’s passing we reflect that there are now so few survivors left. It is thus all the more important that their legacy – their witness and their testimony – is passed on to future generations and that the Holocaust denial which has grown in recent years is defeated.

Her family will of course mourn Lily’s passing most poignantly, but the rest of us mourn a woman who touched millions of souls and whose life-affirming attitude was inspirational. May her memory be a blessing.