TWO sixth form students at Dallam School are ensuring the horrors of the Holocaust are never forgotten.

Sam Barfoot, from Silverdale, and Hannah Lawson, from Milnthorpe, are completing the Lessons from Auschwitz Project (LFA), exploring the genocide's relevance in today's society. They won a school essay writing competition to take part in the project and visit Auschwitz.

The pair visited a town close to the Nazi concentration camps and attended a talk on Jewish culture in a preserved synagogue.

Sam said: “The experiments that went on for 'medical research' by Joseph Mengele were particularly awful and will stay with me for a long time.”

The sixth formers also attended a seminar in Manchester where they met Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper.

The LFA project increases knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust for young people and highlights what can happen if prejudice and racism become acceptable.

Both students wanted to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nazi atrocities with a lasting memorial at their school.

Teachers at Dallam School agreed to hold a ceremony with the theme 'Keeping the Memory Alive' on Tuesday (Jan 27).

Students will also plant a birch tree, which inspired the name for the Birkenau concentration camp, and unveil a plaque designed in-house at the school.

Richard Doyle, Head of Sixth Form at Dallam School, said: "It is often easy to dismiss an event as simply being part of history, yet here we have two young Dallam students eager to ensure that the memories are kept alive so that the atrocities of the past are never repeated."