A Bradford-born Rabbi will today be presented with a Polish knighthood in honour of his work to remember victims of Nazi death camps.

And tomorrow Rabbi Walter Roths-child will lead Jewish prayers at the Holocaust memorial Service at Auschwitz.

Former Bradford Gramm-ar School pupil Rabbi Roths-child left Bradford at 18. But he still regards it as home.

In 1983, he returned to the city to marry in the Bowland Street synagogue, where he is still signed as a member, and he regularly brings his children to visit their grandparents in Frizinghall.

Mr Rothschild, 50, has worked in Germany for almost seven years. Each year he has made the trip to Auschwitz in Poland on Jan-uary 27 to remember those who suffered. "We make speeches and lay wreaths, and I say a few Jewish prayers," said Mr Roths-child, whose father-in-law died in the camp where more than a million people died from 1940-45. "It is important to be there."

But he said, despite the significance of the ceremony, few people normally visit Auschwitz on the memorial day. "People tend to commemorate the day in their own countries," he said.

Tomorrow's ceremony, the 60th anniversary of the camp's liberation, will be a much bigger event attended by world leaders.

"Auschwitz is a coal-mining town like Barnsley - most people don't realise how close the camps were to the town," he said.

Although the Rabbi will be saying Jewish prayers at tomorrow's ceremony, he is there to remember every person of every faith who was taken to Auschwitz.

"So many were killed there, I am there to acknowledge their suffering," said Rabbi Rothschild, who also makes trips to the camp with educational groups in the summer.

And it is for his dedication to educating young Polish, Jewish and Christian groups about those who died in the camp that Rabbi Rothschild was nominated for the Knight's Cross of the Rep-ublic of Poland, the Polish version of a knighthood.

"It was a complete surprise," he said.

His wife Jacqueline will accompany him to the Presidential Palace in the Polish capital Warsaw where President Aleksander Kwas-niewski will present him with the title.

"Although we cannot do anything about the people who went to the camps, we can make sure they do not get forgotten," Mr Roths-child said.