Holocaust survivor visits pupils

INSPIRATION... Holocaust survivor Chaim Ferster (93) visits Radclyffe School to talk about his memories of Auschwitz concentration camp. Pictured with him are year 10 pupils left to right, Samina Nishat, Michael Cassidy, Izharul Hoque, Chloe Bennett-Benedikti.

A HOLOCAUST survivor who cheated death in eight Nazi concentration camps visited an Oldham school this week.

On Monday, 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, Chaim Ferster, spoke to students and staff at The Radclyffe School of his memories of the notorious Auschwitz camp – one of eight he was forced to endure.

His two-year ordeal, of being passed from camp to camp, saw him endure horrific labour conditions, malnutrition and typhus, before finally being freed at the very moment he and his fellow prisoners had been rounded up to be shot, when Allied forces broke into the camp.

After the camp was liberated, Mr Ferster travelled to Britain and settled in Cheetham Hill, Manchester.

Radclyffe School students also worked with artist Caroline Slifkin to create Terezin artwork. Caroline works for the Holocaust Educational Trust.

Terezin was a Jewish ghetto in former Czechoslovakia. Artists recorded the terrible conditions suffered by the inhabitants of the ghetto, hiding their pictures from the SS.