Barnet United Synagogue dubbed it Shabbat Mala - the moment at which Mala Tribich was named Heroine of the Community to mark her 80th birthday.
Mrs Tribich, born in Poland in 1930, is the sister of Olympic medallist Ben Helfgott - the only members of their immediate family to survive. During the occupation, her parents moved her and a cousin to a Catholic family. But they were so homesick they asked to return to the ghetto.
One day they were taken to a row of lorries at an unknown destination. But Mrs Tribich, then 12, showed incredible chutzpah: she asked an SS officer if she and her cousin Hania, who was five, could return to the ghetto. Amazingly, the officer said yes.
She survived two death camps and was reunited with her brother several years after the war.
