A HOLOCAUST survivor shared his story with pupils at St Birinus School for Holocaust Remembrance Week.

John Fieldsend, of the Holocaust Education Trust, spoke to Year Nine pupils at the school on Mereland Road, Didcot, about his experiences of genocide and discrimination.

Mr Fieldsend, pictured, was born in 1931 in Czechoslovakia into a liberal Jewish family and lived both in Czechoslovakia and Germany. All was well until the mid-30s when Nazi antisemitism worsened.

He came to England in 1939 with the Kindertransport, in which Jewish children were rescued through the work of Sir Nicholas Winton, and was fostered into an English family.

He said: “Holocaust Remembrance Week is important not just as history, but because genocide continues in parts of the world today. My story is not one I enjoy telling and I don’t think it is one students enjoy listening to, but it is important that these things are not forgotten. It is often said that history repeats itself because no-one listens.

“Hopefully I can do a little to reverse this trend because I think this new generation of students are listening.”

Holocaust Remembrance Day was on January 27.