In early June, all Year 9 students participated in a very special event where they heard Maralyn Turgel, a Second Generation speaker, give testimony about her father’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor. Maralyn shared what it was like to grow up as the child of a refugee and the many questions she had about why he was the way he was that didn’t get answered until she was in her forties. Maralyn told us about her father, Sam’s life in Poland before the war and how the family were affected after the Nazis invaded in 1939. In addition to the many members of her family who were murdered during the Holocaust, Maralyn told the fascinating story of her father including his experience of slave labour in a factory and a number of concentration camps, escaping death more than once before American troops liberated Mauthausen Camp. Her father ended up as one of ‘The Boys’, a group of child survivors from Europe, who came to Windemere for rehabilitation, before setting in Manchester where he later married and had two daughters. Sam passed away on 8th May 2013 but his daughter, Maralyn still tells his story to schools across the UK. Thank you to the Holocaust Educational Trust for their support in this event.
The remainder of the drop-down day gave students the opportunity to learn more about the Holocaust through the study of literature and film as well as the many other victims of Nazi persecution and was an invaluable chance to enrich and extend our students knowledge and understanding of this topic.
