A 77 year old who experienced some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War has been speaking to History students at the School about his experiences. Rudi Oppenheimer, who was sent to Belsen concentration camp as a young boy, visited St John's on Tuesday 19 May 2009. Mr Oppenheimer estimated that he had related his experiences to over 90,000 young people, and this was his 1000th session at a school. Mr Oppenheimer was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1931 but spent time in England and the Netherlands before being taken to the concentration camp with thousands of other families. Rudi and his brother largely survived Belsen due to Rudi’s job, which was giving out food. He kept the best for them. At the end of the Second World War Rudi

Oppenheimer was fourteen years old. He ended the war being nursed out of a typhus-induced coma in a Soviet hospital in Germany. His parents had died in Belsen from malnutrition and typhus; his grandparents had been gassed in Sobibor. Rudi, his older brother Paul, and younger sister Eve, survived. After the war ended, he came to Britain to finish his education.

During the day at St John’s he gave a number of classroom talks to pupils as well as a presentation on his life in the evening.

Head of History at St John’s School, Neil Whitmore, said: “It is always a privilege to welcome back Mr Oppenheimer to St John’s each year. It is a wonderful opportunity for our pupils to have direct contact with someone who was personally involved in perhaps the greatest calamity in history. We are particularly appreciative of his visits and hope he will be able to visit us in the years ahead.”