What’s happening in Year 6 – Week 4

In light of Holocaust Memorial Day, Year 6 took part in a live interview with Peter Lantos, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary. Peter was born in 1939 and explained what he remembered of the few years that led up to his family’s deportation to Bergen-Belsen in 1944. The camp was liberated by the US armed forces in April 1945, as World War II was coming to an end. At this point, Peter’s very determined mother had started to teach him to read and write. Peter spoke to the children about the importance of education and the vital role that it played in his life, especially in supporting him to recover and offering him opportunities as he grew older. Peter Lantos went on to study science and medicine and spent the best part of 34 years devoting his time to understanding diseases of the nervous system. Even after all these years of hard work and dedication, he was not ready to give up. Peter went on to write and publish his first novel, Parallel Lines, and has since published 3 other books.

It was a truly inspiring opportunity for the children of Year 6: despite his horrendous memories of his early childhood, Peter showed a lot of love and appreciation for the world around him, and shared his gratitude for the World that lives around him. Year 6 were able to draw on a lot of their prior knowledge from studying World War II in the Autumn term, and they also took an abundance of new knowledge away from the interview.

Peter ended the session by taking some questions from primary-aged children and he gave them some wonderful words of wisdom. A few things that stood out to us were to: “always hold hope close to your heart”, “work hard and overcome those doubts” and “count your lucky stars and show thanks”.