Over the course of Autumn 2, Lavender Class were learning about World War 2 and the impact it had on people in the local area, particularly during the Blitz. We were also reading ‘Once’ by Morris Gleitzman, which is an incredible book about a Jewish boy and the Holocaust. Friday 27th January was Holocaust Memorial Day and so we finished reading the book. It was very hard to listen to what people had to go through.

We then spent time learning about the Jewish people who lived in Sydenham – including David Ximinies, who was a Jewish merchant and who Jews Walk is named after. The Sydenham Society shared with us a photograph of some pupils who went to Kelvin Grove in 1948, and one of the children is identified as being a Jewish refugee. As the focus for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day was ‘Ordinary People’ and ‘Speaking Out’, we wrote poems and raps that spoke about these two things and what people suffered during this terrible time.