A HOLOCAUST survivor has been speaking to pupils about his experience.

Zigy Shipper, pictured, visited Sibford School, near Banbury, on Friday and spoke to pupils across Years 6 to 13.

The 84-year-old told students: “We want young people to know what happened because of racism, prejudice and of course hatred. People say to me ‘how do I remember?’ But the question should be, ‘how can I forget?’ I can’t forget when most members of my family and some many millions of other people were slaughtered, all for no reason at all.”

Mr Shipper, who was held in a number of camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau, described how starvation de-humanised the inhabitants.

He said: “If you’re starving you do things you cannot imagine. I was getting up in the morning and stepping over dead bodies and it didn’t mean a thing. I was completely de-humanised.

“I’m always asked about those who were gassed. But many more people were dying every day, killed by rifles and shooting and starvation and disease.

“Even after the war, people were dying. The British Army brought in tins of meat, fruit, bars of chocolate and biscuits but it was the worse thing they could do. We’d been starving for months. People were dying from over-eating.”