TWO students who visited the Nazi death and concentration camps at Auschwitz recently delivered a hard-hitting talk to their fellow pupils.

St George’s School head girl and boy Nicola Hammersley and Gameli Ladzekpo (pictured) joined teenagers from across St Albans and Hertfordshire – as well as the Herts Advertiser – on the one day trip to Poland organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) in February.

The trips educate youngsters about the atrocities that happened during the Second World War which included the murders of at least 1,100,000 Jews, 140,000 Poles, 20,000 gypsies and 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war at Auschwitz alone.

The students who go on the trips are then expected to become ambassadors for the HET and help to educate their peers about this brutal period of history.

Nicola and Gameli gave a talk to Year 13 in which they reflected on their own experiences on the trip and conveyed the ways in which lessons could be still learnt from the Holocaust in today’s society.

Nicola said: “When everyone came in they had on their seat a slip of paper which had on it the names and a little information about either a victim or a perpetrator. Gameli spoke about how we can’t tell the difference between the victims and perpetrators. The idea also was that hopefully they would be able to relate the talk back to the one name they were holding.”

She added: “It was just a great opportunity to talk to our peers about the lessons we learnt from Auschwitz, and the response was really good.”