Hundreds of JFS pupils rolled into the hall on a tidal wave of chatter. But within minutes they were sitting in rapt silence, eyes fixed on the woman at the piano before them.
They were attending one of the three back-to-performances at the school last Friday morning of The Pianist of Willesden Lane, Mona Golabek’s dramatisation of her mother Lisa Jura’s flight to London from Nazi-occupied Vienna on the Kindertransport.
The American pianist has performed her one-woman show to 250,000 schoolchildren in the USA. But JFS was the first British school to see it.
Among the audience was a small group of sixth-formers from three local schools, whose presence reflects a more concerted effort at outreach by JFS. The previous week around a hundred year-10 students from nine Brent schools attended an all-day seminar at JFS for Holocaust Memorial Day.
