AN emotional visit to the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp during has left a lasting impact on Widnes pupils.
Students from Wade Deacon High School toured the barracks and gas chambers on a half term trip to Krakow.
Guides gave first-hand accounts of the horrors which had been recorded by victims.
Pupils also had the chance to meet with a Holocaust survivor and take part in a candle memorial service at Birkenau.
The teenagers toured the former Second World War Jewish Ghetto and many of the sites featured in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.
A woman who survived the Holocaust as a child but whose poet father had died at the camp spoke to the children.
During their meeting Wade Deacon teacher Geraldine Rouski read one of the poems written by the woman’s father, which moved the children to tears.
Year 11 pupil Joshua Rogers said: “It is crucial that young people learn about the Holocaust as these catastrophic events let them know how privileged they are and how thankful they should be for everything they have.”
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