RAYMOND Meade admits he switched off when history appeared on his timetable at Holyrood Secondary in Glasgow. “I wasn’t interested … but I think that says more about me than the school. I knew nothing of events like the Second World War or even the Kennedy assassination,” he says. “I’d sit in class staring out the window. I was much more interested in becoming the guitar player in Oasis.”

Twenty years on, the Glasgow-born musician concedes he would still relish the opportunity to share a stage with warring siblings Liam and Noel Gallagher but his views on history – and the Holocaust in particular – have changed radically after a trip to Poland and meeting an extraordinary woman.

Meade and his wife Leanne booked a budget flight for a city-break to Krakow last year. Like many tourists, they visited Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau, the death camps where an estimated three million people were exterminated by the Nazis as part of Hitler’s Final Solution to the “Jewish question”.

Meade was so moved by the sights that confronted him that it proved the catalyst for an EP called The Railway People, and its songs evoke the suffering of the prisoners who were transported to the camp in cattle trains. The lead track, At The Top Of The Stairs, includes a haunting poem, How Can It Be?, which is spoken by Eva Mozes Kor, an Auschwitz survivor whose parents and two elder sisters were killed in the gas chamber in 1944.

Meade, 34, says: “I’m not Jewish or of any religion so I did a bit of research and found Eva, who is 82 years old, and was born in Transylvania in Romania. I sent her the poem and she recorded my words. It sounded so poignant.”

While Eva has written books, made films and given lectures on her Holocaust experience, she has never been involved in a rock music project. It’s a world completely alien to her. But her determination to ensure the recording had real authenticity surprised Meade.

She volunteered to travel from her home in Indiana, US, and return to Auschwitz. It was her 18th visit to the camp since being liberated on January 27, 1945. The singer describes the moment they met in Krakow last July. Eva took one look at Meade’s emaciated rock-star chic look and exclaimed: “You’re so skinny … don’t they have food in Scotland?”

He recalls: “I was nervous about meeting her but we hit it off instantly. She asked me about The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and snooker. She loves the game but says I should give up playing it because it gives me no joy.”

Eva suggested re-recording the poem at the location of the selection platform, the spot where she watched her father Alexander, mother Jaffa, sisters Edit and Aliz being dragged away by SS guards to the gas chamber. That was the last time she saw them alive.

“It was important to have some Auschwitz on the track … some real ambience from that terrible place,” she says.

Eva, then aged 10, escaped a similar fate when the Nazis discovered she had an identical twin, sister Miriam.

The terrified girls were led away to the medical wing at Auschwitz to be experimented on by Dr Joseph Mengele, the monster known as The Angel Of Death.

Arriving at the barracks where she’d been imprisoned she told Meade: “At Auschwitz, dying was so easy. Surviving was a full time job. If every brick here could speak – what they witnessed – what a story they could tell.”

It was the fact he’d woven How Can It Be? into a rock song which most appealed to her.

Eva says: “It’s a very well written poem. It comes from his heart. What Raymond is trying to do is educate young people about the truth of what happened in Auschwitz – a group who otherwise would not learn about the Holocaust.”

She is adamant the music should carry a positive message. “Art should be for beauty … for telling a story but not evoking anger,” she insists. “Anything about the Holocaust that depicts being a victim I am 100% against. It makes me upset. I don’t think it accomplishes anything positive.”

The Railway People is markedly different from the music which has established Meade on the rock scene.

In 2007, he kicked off his career fronting guitar band The Ronelles whose debut album, Motel, was critically well received. The group opened for Kings Of Leon, The Proclaimers and The Zutons and also toured America and Japan.

But their volatile, booze-fuelled stage shows – inspired by musical heroes Oasis – closed more doors than they opened. Within a year, The Ronelles had fallen apart after too many self-inflicted wounds.

Meade re-evaluated his life, and three years later released solo album, Fables And Follies, collaborating with members of The Pogues, The Fratellis and writer Iain Banks, author of the Wasp Factory, who died from cancer in 2013, aged 59.

The singer’s 2015 follow-up, Whydolise? saw him work with Steve Cradock of Ocean Colour Scene, Justin Currie of Del Amitri and the late Bobby Keys, the US musician who played saxophone on virtually every Rolling Stones album since Let It Bleed in 1969.

Meade’s connection with Cradock proved even more fruitful when he was invited to join Ocean Colour Scene – playing bass – as the band prepared to mark the 20th anniversary of their most successful album, Moseley Shoals.

He’s spent the last few months on the road with them touring Australia and the European festival circuit and the band’s forthcoming tour includes a gig at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow on December 10.

But The Railway People provides a different kind of artistic fulfilment. “When I visited Auschwitz I had no intention of doing anything with it musically. None whatsoever. It was just my way of dealing emotionally with what I’d seen. On the flight home, I jotted down a few lines of lyrics. By the time the plane landed at Edinburgh I’d written How Can It Be?

“Later, I wrote At The Top Of The Stairs, inspired by climbing to the top of the watchtower which overlooks the camp. As I stood there, I’d never felt such an evil vibe anywhere in my life.

“The camp was so big and vast with the rail tracks running directly into the place which brought those poor souls to their deaths. I looked out and tried to imagine the decisions between life or death which had been taken as SS officers watched trainloads of people arriving knowing exactly what was going to happen to them, often within half an hour of the trucks grinding to a halt.”

Meade is more than aware the subject matter could limit his audience. He is undaunted. His view is if just one young record buyer hears the songs and is inspired to learn more about the Holocaust, it’s been worth it.

Meade will donate proceeds from sales of The Railway People to Candles – Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors – a charity founded by Eva in 1984. She has located 122 other Mengele twins in 10 different countries.

She also founded a Holocaust Museum in Indiana in 1995, which has been visited by 50,000 people.

She tells her remarkable story in the book Surviving The Angel Of Death: The True Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz (Tanglewood Publishing). It is a compelling read.

In May 1944, Eva’s family were seized by German soldiers in the village of Portz, Transylvania and informed they were being relocated to a labour camp in Hungary for their safety.

“Even though I was just a little girl I could sense something awful was about to happen,” she recalls.

After a gruelling four-day rail journey – with more than 100 people crammed into each cattle truck with no food or water – the train arrived in Auschwitz.

“I saw tall barbed-wire fences around cement guard towers and soldiers were hanging out of them with the barrels of their guns pointed at us,” she says.

“Miriam and I were standing on the selection platform in utter terror. Two 10-year-old little girls in matching burgundy dresses.

“There were thousands of people all around us pushing and shouting. I looked around trying to figure out ‘what is this place?’ and realised my father and two elder sisters had disappeared. Never did I see them again.

“My mother grabbed Miriam and I by the hand. I think she thought as long as she could hold on to us somehow she could protect us.”

A Nazi guard walked down the selection platform shouting “Zwillinge … zwillinge” – “Twins … twins” – and spotted the girls in their matching frocks.

Eva recalls: “He asked Mama: ‘Are they twins?’ She hesitated: ‘Is that good?’ ‘Yes’ said the guard.

“We were crying as we were dragged away to join another group – 30 sets of twins – and were taken to a processing centre. I remember looking back and seeing my mother’s arms stretched out in despair as we were led away. That was the last time I saw her.

“We were stripped naked and they cut our hair short. They lined us up for registration and tattooing.

“They pinned me to a bench – two Nazis and two women prisoners – and heated a needle over a flame.

“When the needle got hot they dipped it into ink and burned into my left arm – dot by dot – the number: A-7063. My twin sister was A-7064.”

The story of how the twins survived the next nine months almost defies description.

When they came face to face with Mengele he had a profound effect on Eva. “He was handsome, wore a smart Nazi uniform and looked like a movie star,” she remembers.

Mengele wasted no time. He injected the twins with highly toxic serums, scarlet fever, strains of bacteria and even shots of blue dye in an attempt to alter the colour of their eyes. They were forced to undergo a series of painful medical tests to discover if both siblings would suffer the same side effects.

Mengele had a particular fascination for identical twins. His cruel experiments included inducing disease in one twin, then killing the other when the first died so he could perform comparative autopsies on the bodies.

After one test, Eva suffered such a fever that Mengele diagnosed she had only two weeks to live. She fought to survive knowing death meant he would also kill her sister.

“This is not something which happened 200 years ago … it took place within the lifetime of my parents,” says Meade.

“To be just 10 years old and to have that awareness – that powerful need to survive and what Eva did to facilitate that – is incredible. Eva still doesn’t know what Mengele did to her. The full list of horrors has never been discovered.”

Miriam was injected with so many drugs that it stunted the growth of her kidneys, keeping them the size of a 10-year-old’s. In 1987, when her kidneys failed, Eva donated one which helped her sister live for six more years until her death in 1993.

Meade has visited the Auschwitz camps, which were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, on five occasions and has researched heavily.

He says: “The first time I visited Auschwitz I couldn’t get it out of my head for months. So it was important to return to get more of a perspective. The sheer scale of the camp was more than I was prepared for. It was terrifying. The place was a killing machine. Unbelievable.

“It was terrible to see piles of children’s clothes – little dresses and shoes. It made you realise it wasn’t exclusive to Jewish adults. It was very moving to see pictures of the children who’d arrived by train thinking they were being taken to a place of safety from the war, only to be exterminated in the gas chamber.”

He adds: “My wife was with me on the first visit. It was pouring with rain. We saw a lot of other visitors walking around the camp in tears. The tour guides often have to wait for people to compose themselves before continuing. But I think it’s something everybody should experience. If they did they would definitely see the world very differently … see what can happen if you are intolerant of other people or other beliefs or ways of life.”

When Auschwitz was liberated, Eva returned to Romania before relocating to Haifa, Israel, where she served in the military for 10 years.

In 1960, she met tourist Michael, himself a Holocaust survivor who was living in the US. They married and had two children, son Alex and daughter Rina.

But Meade’s choice of Eva as collaborator has proven controversial. Twenty years ago, she shocked fellow Holocaust survivors when she publicly signed documents saying she forgave Dr Mengele and the Nazis for the crimes they perpetrated against her and her family.

She stated she felt no guilt or shame and wanted the German people to know of her forgiveness.

“Getting even has never healed a single person,” she says.

Eva’s decision provoked anger and led to her being shunned by some survivors.

There was an arson attack on her museum in Indiana – blamed on local white supremacist groups – and she’s been denounced on internet forums for peddling her “sad Holohoax story”.

“Eva has been ostracised by some Holocaust groups who can’t come to terms with the fact she has forgiven,” says Meade.

“Many have signed documents excluding her from official business saying: ‘Eva doesn’t speak for us’. She is not liked by many Holocaust survivors – but that only drew me to her a little more.

“When Eva explains her actions it all makes sense. She told me: ‘I didn’t ask anybody else to forgive. I did it because it felt right and enabled me to move on with my life. After I did it, it was a real weight off my shoulders’.

“Who is anyone to tell Eva she can’t do that? You surely can’t get a more positive message than that.”

Meade is resigned to the fact he has no real answers to what drove the evil of the Nazis but the one thing he does have is a new friend. “When I sent her the finished track she became a bit like a record producer sending me recommendations for the final mix saying: ‘This should be louder and that should be louder’.

“I had to remind her that she is hard of hearing. I ended up doing a special version just for her which was so loud it would blow your head off. Eva got back in touch and said: ‘That’s perfect’.”

A documentary on the making of The Railway People will be broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland Music Extra on Sunday November 27 at 6.30am and is available on BBC iPlayer.