TEENAGERS from schools across York are going on an historic journey to a former Nazi concentration camp.

Three York schools are taking part in the Holocaust Educational Trust's first regional visit from Yorkshire to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on February 21 as part of their Lessons from Auschwitz Project.

Two hundred students from nearly 100 schools across the county will be on the visit, including about 20 pupils from Bootham School, Huntington School and The Mount School, in York.

At Bootham School, sixth formers Jessica Joynson and Katie Cross, along with joint head of art Les Jackson, will be taking part in the trip.

Mr Jackson said: "This is a flying visit, there and back in just one day. But, nonetheless, an intense feeling of pilgrimage has surrounded the planning of the experience.

"For all of us, it is going to be dauntingly intense and, without doubt, profoundly moving."

The Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) recently received Treasury funding of £1.5 million to support its Lessons from Auschwitz Project for teachers and sixth form students.

The funding will enable HET to facilitate regional visits to Auschwitz for two students from every school in the UK. This will be the first visit for York students.

There are seminars before and after the visit designed to allow participants to prepare for, and to reflect on, the visit. There will be an orientation seminar on Tuesday, February 12, and the follow-up seminar will take place on Sunday, March 2.

The pupils and teachers will fly from Leeds/Bradford Airport at 7am on the day, landing at Krakow Airport, in Poland. They will then travel by coach to Auschwitz.

Local guides and trust staff will then take the visitors around the camps before flying back to Leeds/Bradford that evening at approximately 10pm.

The Holocaust Educational Trust was established in 1988 and its aim is to educate young people from every background about the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned for today.

The trust works in schools, universities and in the community to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust.

Students are given the opportunity to hear a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau give testimony at the orientation seminar.

During the visit itself, students are first taken to Osweicim, the small town next to Auschwitz death and concentration camp where the local Jewish community lived prior to the start of the Second World War. The groups are then shown several barracks at Auschwitz I - registration documents of inmates, piles of hair, shoes, clothes and other items seized from the prisoners as they entered the camps.

Participants are then taken the short distance to Birkenau. This is the site that most people associate with the word Auschwitz and where the vast majority of victims were murdered.