THESE days the words and actions of Reginald Pringle cannot always keep up with his quick mind.

His eyes are the clue. The eyes that once took in the horrific scenes at Dachau concentration camp are twinkling blue, alive with humour and intelligence.

Look into the eyes of Reginald Pringle, and take in the details of his face, and you will quickly see that it is the same face that appears on the German passport stamped with the swastika.

Reginald Pringle, now 85, is really Paul Rosenzweig, the young German who, because his grandfather was a Jew, suffered the stripping of his civil rights and ultimately, incarceration in a labour camp the very name of which still lingers as a stain upon Germany's name.

If you are patient, Reginald Pringle will tell you the story of how he was born in the Rhineland, growing up just as the Nazi party under Adolf Hitler was beginning its rise to power.

Ostracism, and unpleasant remarks made to Jewish people were the first indications of what was to come. The young Paul could have turned his back on the Jewish part of his background, for although his grandfather was Jewish, he had himself been brought up in the Protestant faith.

An epiphanous moment came when he was asked to join the Hitler Youth.

"Most of my friends by this time belonged and to their credit, when they found that they could no longer associate with Jews, they tried to persuade me to join, which, with my blond hair and blue eyes I could easily have done," he recalls.

"I did go with them a few times, but then the question came,'Are you going to join or not?' and I said I would ask my grandfather.

"In fact, my respect for him was so great that there was no question of it."

But by 1936 the escape routes were being closed down and the spectre of arrest stalked ever closer until finally the evil day dawned.

"My first impression of Dachau was of a place frightening and deeply depressing. Around the camp was an eight-foot-high double barbed-wire electrified fence, and around that a moat. At intervals there were towers manned with SS men with machine-guns.

"A tannoy system crackled loudly with harsh voices barking orders."

Escape, though, for a 15-year-old boy with little money, was impossible. Amazingly, the hellishness of the first few months in Dachau began to abate slightly as prisoners who it was deemed "no longer need be protected from the wrath of the German people" were released.

In these pre-Holocaust days food became less scarce and Paul's spirits soared when he heard he was to be in the next batch of prisoners to be released.

"When it was time to go they made us sign a document undertaking not to divulge what had gone on in Dachau, and we were warned that if we were brought back then it would be curtains for us.

"Over three months in Dachau allowed me to observe human behaviour after the thin veneer of civilisation has been stripped away. It is not pretty."

Although not technically Jewish, Paul Rosenzweig was an enemy of the state. To his surprise, the German state in the form of the dreaded Gestapo took an unconcerned view of his request to flee the country and to make a new home in England.

On his 20th birthday Paul Rosenzweig joined the British Army, taking the name'Pringle' from a stranger he met on a train.

Now, he and his Welsh wife, Gwyneth, live in a residential home at Llantarnam, near Cwmbran. They have three children, two of whom live locally. It is a safe and happy life.