Moulsham High School pupils have written about their experiences following a visit to Auschwitz.

Year 13 students Jack Welch and Hannah Shawe recently took part in the Lessons from Auschwitz Project and not only visited Auschwitz-Birkaneu but also met with a holocaust survivor.

This involved travelling to a pre and post trip seminar in London as well as a day trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Poland.

Jack said: "We knew that the Lessons from Auschwitz course would be challenging and ask a number of thought-provoking questions. "We heard Stephen Frank, a child survivor of the Holocaust, speak at our opening seminar.

"This immediately helped to add a human perspective to events, the thought that every victim would have had their own story to tell.

"The course aims to re-humanise individuals and move away from describing victims in terms of numbers.

"We could see this in the camps themselves, seeing some of the features that Stephen described made everything feel real.

"Being within the barbed wire fences of Aushwitz I and II (Birkenau) gave a different perspective to anything you could read in a textbook.

"We climbed the guard tower at Birkenau (the main death camp) to see the expanse of the camp that covers a huge area and we were then told that the Nazis hoped that it would be twice the size had they been able to finish it; the scale was hard to contemplate.

"It has been important for me to try and impart the lessons I have learnt to people when I return as there are many lessons that we can take from Auschwitz and apply to life in the modern day."

Hannah Shawe said: "When signing up to the Lessons from Auschwitz course we did expect the experience to be eye opening, if not upsetting.

"This course has raised a number of questions that demand you to look at the events of the Holocaust in a new perspective; instead, to try and rehumanise both victims and perpetrators.

"This was helped by hearing from survivors themselves such as Stephen Frank, a child who suffered in camps, hearing his account in our opening seminar to aim at preparing us for the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"This was really useful for hitting home the true horrors that millions faced, and how not every account isn’t the same, so that they are not simply remembered as mere statistics but people with personal lives too.

"This clearly demonstrates the main aim of the course – to rehumanise those involved as well as educate generations to come.

"The actual trip to both Auschwitz and Birkenau was a real shock. "Everything (almost) had been left the way the Germans left it when fleeing the camps, knowing the Allies were coming.

"This really gave you a small piece of insight as to what the camp would have been like all those years ago, which no historical writing can truly emphasise enough.

"The sheer size of the camp was enough to make you wonder how it could seem so big there and then, but also so small as it housed nearly 90,000 people at the time it was in use.

"The lessons learnt from the Holocaust Education Trust have been highly valuable for us.

"The harrowing experiences so many suffered should not be enabled to occur again, which is why it is crucial that even modern society today remember the events, and still explore the many lessons to be learnt, and to impart upon future generations."