School remembers the Holocaust

Pictured above: Head of history, Cassie Evans with Zigi Shipper, Head Teacher Anne Pontifex and pupils from both King David and St John Bosco

A Liverpool secondary school hosted a special event to commemorate the Holocaust.

This year marked 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz from the Nazis, and St John Bosco Arts College, in Croxteth explored the Holocaust in more depth.

A Holocaust survivor, Zigi Shipper, visited the Liverpool school and give a moving testimony of his own experiences. Zigi talked about the importance of teaching future generations about what happened at concentration camps across Europe.

The daylong event also saw 15 year 8 students become art curators of an Anne Frank exhibition, which will be on display at the school until Friday 27^th February.

The Anne Frank exhibition was organised with The Anne Frank Trust UK, an organisation which aims to challenge prejudices and reduce hatred by drawing on the power of Anne Frank’s life and diary.

Marian McQueen, North West regional manager at The Anne Frank Trust UK, said: “We work directly in schools and we spend two weeks at a time in any one school. Our programme has three elements to it: we bring our exhibition, we hold workshops on themes from out of the Anne Frank story and we train between 12 and 20 students to become guides.

These students then guide their peers around the exhibition. It doesn’t only work on their knowledge but also on their attitudes towards issues like prejudice but it also works on their personal, social and performance skills.

“It’s been fabulous to work with students from St John Bosco Arts College. The classes who visit are encouraged to ask the girls questions so now they have the confidence to be able to deal with questions and respond without a set script. I’ve now been able to take a step back and let the students get on with it.”

Year 8 student, Cara Vadgama, one of the students trained as an exhibition guide, said: “We only started training for the exhibition this week and it’s been really good. We were given guide books so we could write down notes of everything Marion told us.

We watched a video to get us used to the subject and we went over each section and learnt some more information. It’s helped me understand more. I was interested in the Holocaust already but I feel like I know a lot more now.”