Drama students at Kingsbury Green Academy were given an insight into the Holocaust thanks to a workshop and performance from a leading Holocaust education theatre company, Voices of the Holocaust.

The organisation provides education through drama to ensure that the voices of the victims and survivors of the Second World War genocide are not lost.

Founder, Cate Hollis, spent a day working with 30 students from Years 10 to 13, exploring movement and learning how to use scripts, before joining Year 9 pupils in watching the company’s performance of Kindness: A legacy of the Holocaust.

The play is based on the testimony of Susan Pollack MBE who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau aged just 13.

It tells the story of her life in Hungary before war broke out, through to life under Nazi occupation resulting in her transportation to a concentration camp that killed almost a million men, women and children.

But it contains an uplifting message that kindness, compassion and generosity are the force of life and the legacy that should be taken from the Holocaust.

The school's head of creative arts Alice Mitchell said: “Drama is an excellent tool to convey powerful messages, and by having Voices of the Holocaust come in and work with the pupils it has a much more powerful effect that couldn’t have been achieved by being delivered by one of the teachers.

"We recognise the importance of using theatre and drama to explore real-life events. By using verbatim theatre like ‘Kindness: A legacy of the Holocaust’, the students really feel the impact of the events; today was incredibly important and moving and will stay with our students forever.”

The day built on previous learning the pupils have completed through their time in school on the Holocaust, including history lessons in Year 9 and a focus on Anne Frank in drama in Year 8.