A SIXTH form common room was stunned into hushed silence as they heard the heartbreaking story of a Holocaust survivor. 

Susie Barnett BEM was at Mayflower School, in Billericay, on to talk about her family's miraculous escape from being murdered by Nazis.

The school has been a supporter of Holocaust Educational Trust for many years and their current student ambassador, Emma Williams, was pivotal in orchestrating the event so her peers could hear for themselves the testimony of a Holocaust survivor.

Susie spoke of her parents Minna and Arthur Frankenberg and her siblings and of her experience as the unplanned baby and youngest of four, born in 1938 in Hamburg, Germany, a world that was a hostile place for a Jewish baby.

At the time of her birth her father was imprisoned at Sachsenhausen concentration camp and later managed to reach Shanghai, China.

At that time there was hatred towards Jews and her siblings experienced being jeered at and sometimes attacked while at school.

Her mum scraped by with help from non-Jewish friends to feed her children. Her siblings reached England on the Kindertransport.

This was a series of rescue efforts bringing nearly 10,000 Jewish children from Germany and Austria to safety in the UK from 1938 to the outbreak of war.

Susie’s siblings travelled separately, and it was a frightening experience for all the refugee children.

Eventually Susie and her mother came to the UK thanks to the persistence of a cousin in London, who helped her mother to obtain a domestic service visa from the Home Office which enabled them to escape from Nazi Germany

“We all miraculously survived,” said Susie. “But it came at a great cost.”

The cost for Susie as a young infant was that she saw little of any of her family throughout her childhood which was spent in foster homes and children's homes where she was all too often unhappy.

She only met her father when she was nine and a difficult and bittersweet relationship developed.

However, her story got brighter and in 1958 Susie became a secondary school teacher and taught French until 1996.

In 1963 she married and later had a son and daughter and now has four grandchildren.

“I never spoke about my experiences until my retirement," she said. 

"I had to face a lot of reality but I decided to tell my story. It is important for the next generation to hear it.

"Antisemitism is on the rise, and it is important to realise the Nazis did not start off by killing people, it all started with words and actions.”

Emma Williams was moved by the talk, she said: “Every time I hear a survivor’s story I am affected. You can read testimonies but hearing survivors stories in their own words is so important.

"It means we feel what they are saying and see them as people. It’s why I thought it was important my sixth-form could hear Susie’s story.”