STUDENTS are planning to visit Auschwitz to speak to survivors of the Nazi death camps in the Second World War.

Year 12 students James Kent and Molly Brown, of Greensward Academy, in Greensward Lane, Hockley, are taking part in the trip, organised every year by the Holocaust Education Trust.

The sixth formers and Jamie Benson, director of learning for Key Stage 5 at Greensward, will join pupils from 100 schools from the eastern region on the one-day visit to Poland on March 2.

They will visit a Jewish village and two death camps before attending a memorial service conducted by a Rabbi alongside the train tracks on which more than a million arrived, but few left.

Mr Benson, who has taken students on this trip for the past three years, said: “The idea behind this trip is that if Auschwitz is forgotten, it will be repeated.”

Students James and Molly will visit local schools on their return to tell other children about what they learnt.

Mr Benson added: “It is a really challenging experience with regards to what you see and hear.”

The students attended a service in Rayleigh on Holocaust Memorial Day.