A WOMAN who survived a Nazi death camp will help Glasgow pupils mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

 

Ela Weissberger, who was a child of 11 when she was sent to Terezin, will visit Shawlands Academy to tell pupils her story.

Mrs Weissberger will be joined by Bosnian War survivor Hasan Hasanović, who will speak to youngsters of his desperate bid to escape Serbian soldiers during the 1995 conflict.

The Shawlands event will happen the day before a special candle is lit in Glasgow City Chambers to mark Holocaust Memorial Day and 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust this year commissioned the sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor to design and create 70 candles to be distributed to 70 events across the UK.

Glasgow Schools Holocaust Memorial Event is being held in the City Chambers on Wednesday morning, where the candle will be lit.

Schools across the city are marking the poignant event in various ways.

Primary and secondary pupil will visit Glasgow Film Theatre to see The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and The Book Thief.

Mrs Weissberger will attend events at different school throughout the week and give a workshop at St Mungo's Museum on Using the Arts to Survive the Holocaust.

She and Mr Hasanovich, who survived of Srebrenica massacre, will talk on Wednesday at the City Chambers about their experiences.

Mrs Weissberger spent years in the Terezin concentration camp where she was one of the children who performed in the Brundibar opera for Nazi soldiers.

They were forced to put on the show for a visit from the Red Cross in 1944 to pretend that everything was well in the camp.

To ease overcrowding ahead of the inspection, dozens of people had been killed by being gassed.

Following one performance for important Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann, mastermind of the Holocaust, Henrik Himmler, and the commander of Terezin, most of the children were sent to the gas chambers.

Wednesday's memorial event will also see youngsters from Govan High, Whitehill Secondary, Holyrood Secondary, St Thomas' Primary and Bankhead Primary will perform, as will choir East 40 and a string ensemble.

At Carmyle Primary School, P7 pupils have created a mural to mark the event.

Headteacher Linda Baird said: "The pupils studied Anne Frank in term one and saw a video of a school in Tennessee where the pupils had collected six million paperclips to remember every Jew who had died in the Holocaust.

"The children were quite inspired by that and decided they wanted to do something similar."

Pupils saved up 6000 bottle tops and teacher Anne Hutchison engaged local artist Claudia Nova to help turn the idea into an artwork.

The mural incorporates all 6000 bottle tops and the words Let Their Souls Fly Free.

Linda added: "This morning for the first time the pupils saw the mural hanging on the wall and some of them couldn't even speak.

"They were quite emotional and proud of themselves. This project has had a real impact on them and they will use it to explain to other children about the Holocaust and the Jewish people who died.

"It's also helped give them an understanding not only of Holocaust Memorial Day but of the parts of the world where people are not allowed to have their own beliefs."

Inverclyde will mark Holocaust Memorial Day today at Notre Dame High School with an afternoon of presentations, music performances and readings commemorating those who lost their lives during the atrocities as well as those who survived but lived with the memory.

Towns and cities around the world, will be keeping the memory of the six million Jewish men, women and children who perished in ghettos, mass-shootings, concentration camps and extermination camps alive in order that lessons are continually learnt from the past.