DLS Basildon welcome new chaplain

DLS Basildon Chaplaincy welcomed new chaplain Marie-France Bogul from St. Joseph’s for a CPD Session on Chaplaincy and to look around the school. Marie-France began in September and this was a good opportunity to network and get some ideas around chaplaincy.

Doug Mongan-Chaplain and Marie-France Chaplain in the chaplaincy hut in Basildon

Holocaust Survivor Talk

Just before our Half Term Break, in conjunction with the Holocaust Educational Trust, our Chaplain Doug Mongan arranged for a Holocaust Survivor to come and speak to our Year 9 students about their experience.

Elizabeth Saunders a Year 9 student reflects on this experience;

“The talk about the Holocaust, with the lovely Susie Barnett speaking from her experience, was very informative. She suffered so much in her life. When she was born her father was in a concentration camp and refused to give up on his Jewish faith to get out. Her mother struggled to look after 3 kids and a baby. A Jewish family offered to adopt Susie to make it possible for her mother to escape to England where her other three children were living in foster homes. However, her mother refused, fearing she would never have peace of mind again if she agreed. The mother and Susie owe their life 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.

Susie considers it to be a miracle that they all survived. Although both her parents and their four children did survive, they never lived together again as a family, which damaged them all, especially Susie.

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; a difficult and bittersweet relationship developed.

The three children were part of the kindergarten transport. The father managed to escape the concentration camp at Sechsenhausen and got a boat to Shanghai.

Later in life he was to be reunited with his family in Great Britain.

Susie always felt her brother resented her. When she found and met her husband and created her family she became truly happy for the first time in her life.

She still sees other survivors and is truly wonderful and lovely lady with a very broken past. 

Susie Barnett a Holocaust survivor speaking top our Year 9s