Monday 27 January 2025 marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp. To honour this important memorial, the Senior School hosted a special assembly to remember all those who lost their lives and survivors of the Holocaust, and to reflect on the impact of the Holocaust and consider how history helps us recognise and counteract polarisation and discrimination. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres reminds us: Remembrance is not only a moral act, it’s a call to action. 

At the assembly, Deputy Head and historian Ms Lewis shared the story of Freddie Knoller, who fled Austria alone as a young teenager to escape the Nazis. He went on to join the French Resistance, where he was betrayed and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After enduring a death march and the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp he was evacuated to Bergen-Belsen where he was liberated by British troops on 15th April 1945.  

Ms Lewis also focused on the inspiring work of American historian, diplomat and Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, who has taken on the battle against Holocaust denial, particularly against David Irving; a battle which culminated in Irving’s prosecution in Austria in 2006. 

To learn more about this compelling story: 

• Read Deborah Lipstadt's 2005 book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier 

• Watch the 2016 film Denial (rating PG-13), a dramatisation of the Irving v Penguin Books Ltd case, in which Lipstadt was sued by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, for libel