On Thursday afternoon, Year 6 attended a workshop at the Cathedral to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.
First, we were shown the video ‘It Began With Words’, presented by Rob Rinder, explaining the Holocaust and its legacy. After that we had two workshops run by The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, in which we learned more about the experiences of Jewish people across Europe both before and during World War Two.
The final session was a talk by Susie Barnett BEM, a Holocaust survivor. Born in 1938 in Germany, she and her family faced persecution for being Jewish. Her father was interned in a concentration camp before being released and being sent to Shanghai for the rest of the war (she met him for the first time aged 9). Her older siblings (who spoke no English) were sent to Britain on the Kindertransport, where they were fostered by sponsor families. Susie and her mother remained in Germany initially, before being helped to escape just 5 weeks before the outbreak of WW2, when Jews were no longer permitted to leave Germany.
At the end, Robert Voss, Lord-Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, talked about his own family’s experience of the Holocaust (his father and Uncle were the only members of his family to survive). His father was sent to Britain as a refugee on the Kindertransport, while his Uncle was deported to a concentration camp from which he managed to escape before facing further persecution in The Netherlands. He showed us the yellow star badge that his Uncle had to wear under Nazi occupation as well as his false ID papers that led to him escaping to Britain.
The organisers and speakers praised Abbey School’s Year 6 children for their focus, their thoughtful questions and their maturity in handling such a sensitive topic.
