Pictured above: Author Adrian Weale, Eleanor Lowe, Sam Pivnik and Ed Miller 

Sixth Formers attended a Sir Antony Browne Society meeting on the 28^th October to listen to Auschwitz survivor, Sam Pivnik tell his story about being a ‘boy in the striped pyjamas' in the Second World War.

Headmaster Ian Davies thanked Sam for sharing his story with the pupils and commented, "Mr Pivnik has a very important story which all pupils need to hear.  Our pupils felt it was a privilege to learn first-hand about atrocities committed by human beings against other people during a particularly dark episode in history.  They were challenged to consider the way in which they, as human beings, differ from the people who were responsible for the terrible events before and during the Second World War."

Sam talked pupils through his story from start to finish; he was born in a town called Bedzin on the border of Auschwitz, September 1^st 1926.  He had 5 brothers and 2 sisters, all of his family were killed in the war except for him and his brother Nathan (who he met by ‘pure luck' when the war had ended).   He explained about how his family made a hide out in the loft of their house to hide from the German soldiers and had no food or water.

In 1943 Sam and all the Jewish people in his town were marched 25 miles to Auschwitz where he became prisoner in a concentration camp. Over the course of the war, Sam was incarcerated in a number of concentration and extermination camps in Poland and Germany.  Consequently, he had a unique view of the Holocaust, and he is believed to be the last remaining Jewish survivor to have worked on the ramp at Auschwitz. At the end of the war, Sam was one of the detainees on the prison ship Cap Arcona, which was bombed and sunk by the RAF, in an incident which remains a source of controversy.  He also caught Typhus during the war from the dirt he had to clean and live in at the camp. 

He explained to the pupils how he was stripped of his belongings and made to wear ‘striped pyjamas' and showed students the tattoo that was forced onto his arm and reads ‘135913'. 

Sam is involved with a number of Holocaust organisations, and feels strongly that he has a duty to tell the story of Auschwitz and the Holocaust, as a warning of what human beings are capable of doing to each other, and in order to prevent such a thing ever happening again.