Zigi Shipper at St John’s
Zigi Shipper, the Polish Holocaust survivor who recently met and spoke to the England Euro 2012 football squad ahead of their European Championship campaign, came to St John’s for a second time to meet our students in May 2012.
Students heard Zigi’s first hand experiences during the Second World War of his family's persecution at the hands of the Nazis in Poland. Zigi told students how he was just 9 years old when he saw his father for the last time, “He told me that the Germans were coming and that he had to go away. The reason he was leaving was that he thought he could escape the Germans, believing that they would not hurt women and children.”
Zigi and his grandmother remained in the Lodz Ghetto until July 1944 and its liquidation. They were then sent to Auschwitz in cattle cars. Zigi survived the death camp and the enforced death march as Soviet troops approached.
He was liberated by Allied troops and then came to England after he received a letter from a woman in England who thought she was his mother.
"I have lived in England for 65 years and I have a good life, I have a wonderful family, but what I have witnessed you do not forget quickly”. That's why it is important that young people are reminded not to hate."
After talking to the students and having lunch with some of them, Zigi attended a ceremony arranged by Year 13 students who had recently visited Auschwitz, with the Holocaust Educational Trust, where he planted a tree in the school grounds in memory of all of the survivors of the Holocaust.