POLISH-born Marcin Bialecki was well-known in Clitheroe for incredible yarns about his five-year ordeal in Nazi death camps during the Second World War. Following his death, his family told Adrian Worsley how his love for life came from what he had to endure at the hands of his cruel captors.

MARCIN vividly remembered his moment of salvation.

It came in the form of American soldiers, 'one white and two black', who came across the broken remains of humanity at Gusen-Matthausen concentration camp at 3pm on Wednesday, May 5, 1945.

Marcin, at 23, weighed just five stone when he hobbled away from the freshly liberated Austrian camp, but the fact his skeletal frame survived at all is testament to his youthfulness, cunning and willingness to learn.

His son Stephen, 56, of Back Lane, Grindleton -- who plans to write a book detailing his father's extraordinary life story -- describes what his dad had to endure on the long journey from Nazi death camp to his subsequent new life in the Ribble Valley.

Arrested by the Gestapo as the Germans over-ran his western Polish town of Poznan in October 1939, the 18-year-old had been taking bread from his mother's house to his sister's when his world changed forever.

Five years and seven months later, Marcin had survived the entire war in three different camps -- Poznan, Dachau and Gusen-Matthausen. From a total of 3,000 Poles taken to Gusen he was one of only four believed to have lived to tell the tale.

Stephen, a building surveyor, said: "My dad talked about those years in the camps all the time. He was a philosopher who really knew how to tell a story. He would describe, in graphic detail, what he had to do to survive. Learning from his elders saved his skin more than once.

"He said how one day a friend tried to escape from the camp. The friend was caught and killed but the rest of the camp was punished by being given no food for two days.

"When they were eventually given cabbage soup on the third day an older prisoner told my dad not to eat it. He didn't and the next day 500 prisoners died. The cabbage had been left to ferment and had become poisonous.

"He quickly learned other tricks such as always sleeping on the top bunk because everyone had diarrhoea and, if you were on a lower bunk, you would get covered.

"Everyday the guards would line up the prisoners and poke their cheeks with their fingers. As people become more emaciated their skin stays in if poked (and they would be killed). He quickly learned to put his tongue in his cheek, but he never knew if he would be taken away to be killed."

Living on wits alone, Marcin survived long enough to experience liberation at the hands of those US soldiers.

Unable to return to Poland due to the Soviet Union's occupation, he found himself in limbo and decided to join the Polish army stationed in Italy.

Like many Poles, he was given the chance to start a new life in Britain and jumped at the opportunity. He always described leaving a red hot Naples only to arrive in dark, damp Glasgow. From there he followed many former Polish refugees to Clitheroe and Low Moor.

He married his wife Phyllis, who came from Burnley, and went on to have six children. He also got a job at Castle Cement, then known as Ribblesdale Cement Works, and, after starting as a labourer, he rose through the ranks to become a shift foreman. He worked for Castle for 30 years.

He died last month at his home in Windsor Avenue, Clitheroe, after a short illness.

Stephen added: "Surviving such ordeals, and seeing life reduced to its bare essentials, had a profound effect on my dad. It taught him to love life and that's exactly what he did.

"He would tell stories about the war and he was fluent in English, Polish and Italian and could get by in Russian and German. He came to Britain without a cent and he died a relatively wealthy man. As a result he always loved England for the warmth of the welcome and the opportunities it gave him.

"Inspired by my dad's stories, I have been to visit the camps several times. It was emotional for me but my dad never did it. He regularly went back to Poland to see relatives, but he couldn't bare to see the camps.

"I plan to visit his homeland again next year and I have been told here will be a church service in his honour in Granowo, the small village near Poznan where he was from, in July.

"I've been piecing his life story together for some time and I hope to write a book about it at some point."

Marcin is survived by his children Stephen, Susan, 55, Celena, 53, David, 46, and Paul, 36. All live in the Ribble Valley.