Holocaust survivor Eve Kugler tells her story to pupils at Bethnal Green’s Morpeth School

Youngsters have been learning about intolerance and anti-Semitism in a week of commemorations in east London following last month’s Holocaust Memorial Day to remember the six million murdered Jews.

Pupils at Bethnal Green’s Morpeth Secondary held their annual Holocaust service at Alderny Road cemetery at Mile End, the oldest Jewish burial grounds in Britain first opened in 1650.

Holocaust survivor Eva Kugler, now 85, was special guest at the service, who was born in pre-war Germany whose family managed to escape to France.

Eva was separated from her family when Hitler’s forces invaded France. She was looked after in hiding by the Red Cross throughout the war and was finally reunited with her parents in London in 1947. She read a ‘Declaration of Remembrance’ to the Year 7 and Year 8 pupils at the cemetery.

“We remember the millions of men, women and children who had their lives taken from them by a brutal system of murder,” she told them.

“We remember today what happens when persecution goes unchecked and power becomes corrupt and absolute.

“We remember the Holocaust because we want to equip future generations with the knowledge necessary to prevent it ever happening again.”

There were also readings from Morpeth pupils who in September went to the site of Auschwitz death camp in what was Occupied Poland on a school trip arranged through the Holocaust Education Trust.

Year 12 pupil Summer Lewis recalled how she was shocked at what she learned on the trip and said it was “important that younger generations learn about the worst Holocaust in history”.

The pupils stood in silence with Eve Kugler as candles were lit to remember six million Jews and a million others murdered in the death camps.