On Holocaust Remembrance Day, people in Israel and around the world commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered during World War II.

It has been 79 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. The number of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, with roughly 245,000 still alive globally.

Among them is 97-year-old Aron Krell who lives in Manhattan.

“Looking back today, I don’t know how anybody got out alive,” said Krell, who was just 12 years old when Nazi forces invaded his hometown of Lodz — the second largest city in Poland.

“This was the demise of the Jewish people in Poland,” he continued.

Krell’s father died years prior, and his mother worked hard to support him and his two older brothers. Like all other Jews in Lodz, Krell and his family were forced to live in a ghetto, confined to a single bedroom.

“How we even survived. It’s maybe a miracle or whatever you want to call it. People were dying in the streets,” he said.

Krell said he almost became desensitized to all the death that surrounded him, until his brother fell gravely ill.

“The last thing he said to me, ‘Please don’t forget me.’ Those were his last words. And after that, I just couldn’t cope,” said Krell, still overcome with emotion decades later.

After four years in the ghetto, Krell, his eldest brother and mother were taken by cattle car to their first concentration camp: Auschwitz-Birkenau.

“The only thing we smelled was smoke from burning flesh,” recalled Krell, who said this was the last time he saw his mother.

It was also the day he was stripped of his name.

“B7998. We were never called by name, we were always called by number. It stays with you,” Krell said.

Over the next year, Krell was transported to four different concentration and labor camps.

“When they work you hard and the food is bad, you succumb to dead any way. How long can you last when you work under the worst conditions? And that was a very bad winter,” he said.

Krell spent the last six months of the war at Mauthausen in northern Austria before American forces liberated the camp in May 1945.

“It was such a surprising thing that all you can say is, ‘Oh my, we’re gonna live.’”

To mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, Krell lent his voice to the latest campaign by The Claims Conference called #CancelHate, which features survivors reading Holocaust denial posts from social media.

“The Holocaust did happen and I am a witness to it. Your words matter. Cancel hate,” he said in the video.

Krell said he hopes by sharing his story, he can help stop the spread of anti-Semitism and hate so that history will not repeat itself.

“The reason you have to tell is not to forget,” he said.

According to the Claims Conference, 245,000 Holocaust survivors are still alive globally. Nearly half of them live in Israel and 16% live in the United States. 14,700 live in New York state, more than 70% of whom live in Brooklyn.