PUPILS at John Masefield High School are to receive a living history lesson from two people who experienced first-hand the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.

On Tuesday (May 16), for the second year running, the school will hold a Holocaust Day for 13 and 14-year-old.

History teacher Martin Smith said: "We will be joined on the day by two Holocaust survivors, Wanda Barford and Rudi Oppenheimer.

"Wanda will start the day with a recital of her poetry to the students.

"In the afternoon, Rudi will talk through his experiences of being a young boy growing up in the same district of Amsterdam as Anne Frank, of how his family were sent to the ghetto and, finally, how he survived at Belsen concentration camp, where both his mother and father died."

Mr Smith said the aim of the day would be to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, to develop the student's awareness of moral issues surrounding the Holocaust and to reinforce the school's anti-bullying policy, by stressing the consequences of being "a bystander".

Last autumn John Masefield's headteacher, Chris Tweedale, visited the Commonwealth and Foreign Office for an open day, where Jeremy Cresswell, head of the European Union Department, asked him about his school's first Holocaust Day.

On Mr Cresswell's request, the school sent an information pack on the event to the Foreign Office, with the view that similar projects might be encouraged in other schools.

The Home Secretary Jack Straw has recommended that there should be a National Holocaust Day every year, perhaps on January 27, the date when Auschwitz was liberated by the Allies.