TO tell you the truth at times I really despair of the youth of today when I think of the likes of Prince Harry who has no doubt had the best education and upbringing money can buy and yet he still seems to be ignorant of what happed to the Jews and others during World War II.

It is estimated that German Nazis imprisoned some 7-8 million people, mostly Jews, in various concentration camps throughout Europe. By 1945 they had slaughtered around six million mainly by gassing. When the camps were liberated in 1945 they found thousands of bodies piled high in mounds and those that did survive suffered from disease and starvation.

I really do believe that it would not be a bad thing if what happened during the holocaust were taught in schools. I have written a poem about the suffering.

Why?

Herded like cattle on the death trains, they were Auschwitz bound,

A young mother cradles her dead baby, she makes no sound.

Packed like sardines in a tin, this was the start of the Holocaust to come,

Would they be led to the showers or the gas chambers? The children hardly cried, no dad, no mum.

All wore a star on their clothing to mark that they were of Jewish stock,

Many were experimented on by doctors and scientists with no anaesthetic, this fact the world to shock.

In Auschwitz alone over one million Jews were either gassed or shot, men, women and children too,

We must never forget the Holocaust, unfortunately it's a horror story that's all too true.

We should educate our children so that they know and understand about the death camps, hopefully it will never happen again,

We should remember the liberation of Auschwitz, we should remember each prisoner's despair and pain.

GERALDINE Ellis, Haydock Lane, St Helens.