Len Tingle Political Editor BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

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Otto Toczek with his three sons before he was arrested

For 66 years John Toczek had never known that the grave of the father he last saw in 1940 lies in a cemetery at Perpignan in South West France.

That is approximately 1000 miles away from his home in West Yorkshire.

This week the intervention of the Politics Show allowed him to put flowers by the headstone for the first time.

Sanctuary in Bradford

John was just seventeen when his father Otto sent him and his twin brother Fritz to Bradford to escape Nazi persecution.

The Jewish family had been living in Brussels at the time, but were originally from Cologne in Germany.

Within months the Red Cross informed the teenaged pair that Otto had been arrested and later died in a concentration camp near Perpignan.

There was no word of their mother with whom they were reunited six years later.

She spent the war in hiding. They heard nothing more of their father or an older brother who was also arrested.

Rivesaltes - a Vichy era internment camp

Political sensitivity

The existence of concentration camps all over France has been something the French have been reluctant to admit since the war.

They were built and administered by the wartime French puppet administration for southern France during the German occupation.

It was not until the 1990s that the French government announced it would pay compensation to the families of anyone who died as a result of being imprisoned in the camps.

John Toczek applied three years ago. However, the modern day local authorities in the areas where the camps had been were not so willing to help.

Official denial

They claimed Otto's name did not appear on any of their records and so he could not have been there.

They refused to issue a death certificate which was required to process the claim.

"It is not the money," says 85-year-old John who built up a successful textile business in Bradford.

"I wanted acknowledgement that this had happened to my father.

"They simply refused to admit that he existed then refused to answer my letters, faxes or return telephone calls.

"They simply did not want to know."

Westminster muscle

He brought in his local MP Ann Cryer who had a similar response from the French Embassy.

She spoke to the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw but still had no reaction from the French.

"I think it was the embarrassment factor," says Ann Cryer, "They didn't want to confirm that these dreadful camps had been run by their own people."

The Politics Show drew a similar blank. Then we contacted the cemeteries around Perpignan.

Breakthrough

At the Cimetiere Du Nord the custodian told us: "Yes, he is here".

Otto had been buried there in August 1940. He died during an outbreak of typhoid at the camp together with over 100 other prisoners.

The camp had been closed on "public health grounds" shortly afterwards.

Faced with this evidence the local Town Hall agreed to issue a death certificate and John Toczek flew to Perpignan with the Politics Show's Len Tingle to pick it up.

Otto Toczek's grave was discovered in Perpignan

Grave visited

He also visited the site where just a small plaque marks where the concentration camp had been.

At the graveside John said "I cannot believe I am here. I never thought a grave existed.

"We always assumed he would be in an unmarked mass grave.

"If he had not died from typhoid here he would have joined all those thousands who were sent on to the gas chambers in the death camps at places like Auschwitz.

"It is sad, but it is something we must never forget."

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