Year 9 students on May 5 heard testimony from Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper, as part of a visit organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET).

Zigi was born on January 18 1930 to a Jewish family in Lodz, Poland.

In 1940 he and his grandparents were forced to move into the Lodz Ghetto. Zigi managed to remain there until its liquidation in 1944, when he and the survivors of the ghetto were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Nearing the end of the war, and with the Russians advancing, Zigi and the rest of his group were sent on a Death March. On arriving in the German naval town of Neustadt, there was a British air attack, and during the chaos that followed Zigi realised that all the Nazis had left. They were liberated on May 3 1945.

Zigi finally arrived in the UK in 1947, where he married and had a family. He now lives in Hertfordshire and regularly shares his testimony in schools across the country.

The testimony was followed by a question and answer session to enable students to better understand the nature of the Holocaust and to explore its lessons in more depth. The visit is part of the Holocaust Educational Trust's extensive all year round Outreach Programme, which is available to schools across the UK.

For the full report, and a round-up of the area news and sport, see this week's edition of the Post.