PUPILS at Isambard Community School yesterday came face to face with history as a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust told her remarkable story.

The Year 9s who had packed into the school hall sat in a respectful silence as Susan Pollack described the unparalleled evils that had been visited upon her small Jewish community in middle of the previous century.

Susan, who was born in Hungary in 1930, spoke with passion, daring and, despite the gulf of time since the events took place, more than a speck of rage.

She has been travelling the length and breadth of the country speaking to audiences about her experiences for the past 25 years, and she considers the lessons more important now than they ever were.

She said: “I am here today to talk about my personal experience, a little bit of history and what my family went through during that awful period.”

“I am reminding them of the violent and barbaric treatment inflicted on us Jews and teaching them how to behave and to stand up against any form of propaganda and hatred.”

Susan was last year awarded an MBE for her work in educating people about the horrors of the Nazi genocide and Tuesday’s talk at Isambard was her first visit to Swindon.

Speaking to the Year 9s ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, the day on which the largest Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by the allies, Susan said: “This is an honour and a privilege to stand before you today. It is very rewarding.”

She explained to the children that she was roughly their age when the German jackboots marched into her little village just outside of Budapest. She got the pupils to image what it must have been like for such a young girl and how she was “transported to the worst place imaginable in the entire history of the world”.

“Try to place yourself in my situation,” she urged the students. “How would you feel? How would you live a normal life afterwards? How is that even possible?”

She briefly touched on the history of anti-Semitism and how it had lingered in the air as she grew up, asking what images came to mind when they hear the word ‘Jew’.

“We were known as ‘The Others’,” she said. “We were not pure Hungarians according some. Anti-Semitism is like a worm. You stand on it and try to kill it but it just grows back again. It is important that each of us remembers the lessons of history.”

Holocaust Memorial Day provides an opportunity for everyone to learn lessons from the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. The theme for 2017’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘How can life go on?’, which provided the basis for Susan’s talk.

Conservative MP Chris Green earlier this week met Susan along with two other survivors John Hajdu and Lily Ebert. Mr Green said: “John, Lily and Susan’s stories are a reminder of the importance of marking Holocaust Memorial Day – a day where we remember the millions who were affected by the Holocaust and subsequent genocides. It’s important that we continue to remember all those affected by genocide and I want to encourage people in Bolton West to mark Holocaust Memorial Day this month.”