Holocaust Memorial Day 2025: A Visit from the Holocaust Educational Trust

On Monday, the History Department hosted two speakers from the Holocaust Educational Trust as part of a wider programme marking Holocaust Memorial Day 2025. Dr Jaime Ashworth spoke on the historical roots of the Holocaust, and survivor Paula Zeff shared her story with the Sixth Form. The testimony was followed by a question-and-answer session to enable students to better understand the nature of the Holocaust and to explore its lessons in more depth. The visit is part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s extensive year-round Outreach Programme.

Paula was born in September 1939 in Rotterdam, Holland. Her father was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and her mother lived in Holland but was originally from Belgium. They met and married in Amsterdam in 1937. When Paula was two and a half, her parents felt that life in Nazi-occupied Holland had become very dangerous for Jews, and they attempted to escape to Switzerland.

They went on their own at first and then planned to send for Paula and her grandmother. That was the last anyone heard of them. Paula learned, after the war, that they had been captured at the Swiss border and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered. Paula was saved by the kindness of a local church who hid her through the duration of the war.