Erbrich was seven years old when she, her sister and her father were deported by the Nazis to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt, Czechoslavakia. She survived. Some 11,000 other Jewish children died. Now a new exhibition about their fate has sparked an extraordinary and bitter dispute between the German government and the state-owned national railway.

The exhibition, put together by anti-Nazi campaigners Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, was inspired by stories such as Erbrich's and has already been shown at 18 French railway stations. Now the couple want to show it at train stations across Germany, but Hartmut Mehdorn, the chief executive of Deutsche Bahn, the national railway, has refused.

'Railway stations are not the right place for an exhibition on such a serious topic,' Mehdorn said. 'They are too crowded, people are in too much of a hurry to concentrate. "Shock and go" tactics do not work any more.' He claimed the exhibition was a security risk and that neo-Nazis could try to tear it down and added: 'We at the Deutsche Bahn do not need a new exhibition. We have already one in the national railway museum in Nuremberg.'

Serge Klarsfeld defended his exhibition: 'The aim of it is not to lock the past up in a museum, but to confront the people in public with it. In France more than 100,000 people have seen the exhibition. They all have been respectful; there have not been any security problems at all.'

The issue is causing a political storm in Germany. Social Democratic transport minister Wolfgang Tiefensee and politicians from other parties have backed the Klarsfelds. 'National Socialism was a dictatorship that was played out in everyday life and that was drawn from everyday life,' Tiefensee said.

He warned Mehdorn not to give the impression that Deutsche Bahn was trying to keep the subject away from the broader public and added that he had given permission to show an exhibition on press pictures from war zones from all over the world, which was also a 'serious topic'.

Politicians from the Green party claimed last week that the issue of the exhibition should be discussed in parliament if Deutsche Bahn continues to refuse permission for the exhibition.

Tiefensee has now asked the historian Jan Philipp Reemtsma to develop a German version of the Klarsfelds's project that focuses more attention on the German Jewish children who were deported. Reemtsma, who previously caused a controversy with an exhibition on how the German army, the Wehrmacht, was involved in the Holocaust, agreed, on condition that his exhibition would be put up in the stations.

In the meantime, Edith Erbrich and other Holocaust survivors have begun an initiative urging Deutsche Bahn to allow the exhibition to go ahead as planned and have organised demonstrations in several cities across Germany. Erbrich, now 69 years old, is determined to go on with the issue. 'I am not doing it for my sake,' she said. 'I am doing it for those who cannot do it any more.'

They are part of a £10m campaign to make people think about the dangers of inhaling cigarette smoke, well before the ban on smoking in public places comes into force in England on 1 July.

Using ordinary people taken from the street, the commercials show cigarette smoke winding its way between people as they sit in the pub or walk around a cafe. Ackroyd has used an 'alien revolution' system which can turn the camera through 360 degrees while still keeping the same horizon in view, giving viewers the strange sensation that they are part of the smoke itself watching it swirl around the customers.

The first adverts are due to go out in Wales later this month, as Wales will bring in its smoking ban from April, at the same time as Northern Ireland. Scotland became smoke-free earlier this year.

The new adverts are due to be screened in England before Christmas - making people more aware of the dangers in the run up to the new laws coming into force next summer.

The adverts, created by the agency Golley Slater, aim to educate people who regularly go to a pub or a club that they are putting their health at risk. The script highlights the potential cocktail of 4,000 chemicals which enters people's bodies from second-hand smoke around them.

'The TV commercials feature second-hand smoke personified as a malignant, unseen predator which stalks customers at a pub and cafe location' said Phil Hickes, creative director at the agency.

The second-hand smoking campaign, which will be broadcast on all the major commercial TV channels between now and the ban.

'The cast for the two 30 second TV commercials is drawn from real-life with people who were "recruited" off the streets and from pubs and cafes', said Hickes.

The campaign will be accompanied by radio public awareness drives and a series of beer mats and posters to be displayed in the toilets of bars and clubs. The 'Fancy a cocktail? Don't cover up the facts' and 'Second-hand smoke can seriously damage your delicate bits' messages have been designed to bring home the dangers of second-hand smoke in a hard-hitting fashion and persuade people that the ban should be followed and not flouted.

It centres on research which shows that regular exposure to second-hand smoke can increase a non-smoker's chance of contracting lung cancer by 24 per cent and heart disease by 2 per cent.

One insider said: 'The government is now going for more gritty, shocking commercials, such as the current one aimed at educating motorcyclists to look for drivers. There's a sense that a lot of people don't know much about the smoking ban, and they need to understand why it's coming into force.'

The commercials present second hand smoke as an enemy silently invading the lungs of innocent people.

In the first advert, shot in a cafe, the script says: 'It is there, when you are drinking, eating, relaxing. But you won't notice it, floating, clinging, killing. Second-hand smoke kills.' The scary tone is carried on into the second advert, which is shot in a pub. 'Anywhere there is laughter, music, crowds, you will find it, hanging, drifting, harming,' the narrator intones.

The adverts will also carry the number of a helpline which the public can ring to get advice about giving up smoking.

Campaigners have welcomed the news. Deborah Arnott, director of Action on Smoking and Health said: 'This is just the sort of advertising campaign that's needed to make sure people get the message that second-hand smoke is a complex killer.

'The reason ventilation can't protect you from second-hand smoke that it can only remove the largest, most visible particles from the air, but many of the thousands of chemicals in tobacco smoke are tiny particles, odourless and invisible, but deadly all the same. That's why the legislation to ban smoking from all workplaces is vital.'