We were immensely privileged to welcome and host Holocaust survivor Joanna Millan to our academy to share her testament two years ago. Over 140 Historians, governors and teachers listened to Joanna’s heart breaking yet inspiring story on her experience as a Jewish child growing up under the brutal violence of the Nazi regime. Unfortunately she was booked to join us in November to talk with our students, but this will be postponed until next year.
Joanna was born in 1942. In February of the following year her father was taken from Berlin, and sent to Auschwitz – Birkenau where he was later gassed. She and her mother were then sent to the ghetto. She was then sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where she existed on less than 300 calories a day. After her mother was murdered, she became one of six orphans who looked out for each other. She was three years old. She said that at night “we would all pat each other to check that each of us was still alive, and had not died.” Her experience would become of psychological interest to research scholar Anna Freud .Ethan (yr 8) said that he found the testament “really important, so very moving.” Stewart was surprised at how “brave Joanna was, talking about her fear of dogs over guns, of adults over children.” Rhianna (Yr 9) mentioned that “just talking about the horrors that we can only read about was a challenge.”
Most of her family had been murdered by the Nazi regime over a period of 10 years, and yet Joanna remains an optimist. “I am lucky,” she says, “to have a family that I can really treat with love. What has happened is bad, but on the other side of that coin, is good. I appreciate my life, and I have a lot to give!” A real inspiration to us all.