SCHOOLCHILDREN were given a profound insight into the horrors of the Holocaust.

Year 8 pupils from Allenbourn Middle School in Wimborne received a very personal insight into how it impacted on generations of one family.

Their tutor Amber Nash was joined by her mother Professor Audrey Geffen so both women could share the moving story of their grandmother and mother, Hilma Ludomer, who escaped the Gestapo back in 1942.

And in the same week the students were joined by their peers from fellow Wimborne Academy Trust school, St Michael’s CofE Middle, at a special service held at Corfe Hills.

Professor Geffen travelled from Norway to share her family’s experience with the Allenbourn pupils.

She told them how her grandparents were murdered in 1942 and left in mass graves in the woods of Riga, Lithuania.

Thankfully, her mother managed to hide and lived through the remainder of the war with false ID papers until liberation, when she went to the USA as a refugee at the age of 20.

“My mother grew up in a normal middle-class family, went to school and enjoyed sports and playing piano,” Professor Geffen said.

“She didn’t plan on becoming a target of government repression; she didn’t plan on becoming a refugee.

“How can we expect people to show any humanity at all today, if we don’t remember what has happened? I’m living proof that the Nazi genocide did not succeed.

“I shared my mother’s story with the school children in the hope that they will keep open their hearts and doors to those in need from around the world.”

During her visit to Allenbourn, Professor Geffen spoke to three groups of Year 8 students throughout the school day.