Pictured with the Year 12 and 13 students is Holocaust Survivor Mrs Joanna Millan

On Wednesday 9^th March, Year 12 and Year 13 History students had the opportunity to meet with Mrs Joanna Millan in Bagnel’s Castle. Mrs Millan was giving an account of her life and that of her family, who suffered so terribly during the Holocaust of the Second World War.

At the age of three she found herself in the back of an RAF bomber plane being flown to England. She had only days before being “liberated” from Theresienstadt Concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Here she had spent two years in which time her mother had died from TB. Her father had already been sent to Auschwitz camp where he had died.

Joanna told us about her childhood. The British government had only accepted the children from the camps on the condition that they would leave again as soon as their education was finished. Having spent a number of years in institutions Joanna was adopted by a Jewish couple who changed her birth name Bela Rosenthal to Joanna in an attempt to leave the past behind and give her a new future.

Joanna told us of the painstaking work she had completed over the years to try and piece together her family tree. Her father had fought for the German Army in the First World War and had been captured by the Russians. His family had received notification that he was missing presumed dead. In actual fact he had been sent deep into Russia and was forced to live there until 1938! He arrived home to his sister’s house in Berlin after 23 years of his family thinking he was dead. His time with his family was short as he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to the camps in 1943.

Joanna’s story stretched around the world, with chance meetings turning up distant relations in Australia, Israel and even Buenos Aires. Each of these strands she teased out in the hour or so she spent talking to us.

There was a question and answer session following the talk and our students had the opportunity to probe more into the parts of the story that appealed to them most. Newry and Mourne Council provided us with a delightful lunch and we spend some time chatting with Joanna in an informal setting.