Leicester-based Dr Martin Stern has joined forces with the National Union of Teachers to help produce a booklet on the Holocaust.
The 24-page publication, entitled Martin and Erica’s Journey, is being distributed free to every primary school in the UK.
Published together with the Holocaust Education Trust, it details Dr Stern and his younger sister Erica’s childhood survival from the Nazis.
A member of the Association of Jewish Refugees’ Child Survivors’ Association, Dr Stern, now 70, was asked by a teacher in Leicester to help with the initiative after hearing him speak about his experiences. He was five years old when he was arrested by the Nazis in Amsterdam. Both he and his sister Erica were sent to Therensienstadt concentration camp. In 1945, when the Red Army arrived at the camp gates, the siblings managed to escape.
Dr Stern, a retired consultant immunologist, tells People: “It’s very important for us as Jews to teach human beings about being better human beings. It is not just about the Holocaust. Our activities are very much concerned with genocide and mass killings in general.”
Dr Stern regularly gives talks to schools and other groups about his experiences. “My passion is to encourage people to think and to become better informed, because emotion without learning is so often dangerous. The Holocaust can be used as a very important hook on which to hang lessons about racial hatred and discrimination, which is important not just for the past, but for the present and the future.”
To get more news, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.