Our Under-15s were invited to take part in the Premier League’s educational visit to the Czech Republic and Poland following their success as winners of the Premier League International Tournament last season.

Alongside their counterparts from Hertha Berlin, Legia Warsaw and Banik Ostrava, the Blues competed in the four-team tournament, as well as contributing to other activities designed to remember the six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered during the Second World War, and the millions of people killed in Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides.

Prior to the trip, the group spent time at Cobham with Ivor Perl BEM, a Holocaust survivor who was taken to Auschwitz as a 12 year-old boy along with his mother, sisters and younger brothers – only he and one of his eight siblings survived.

Ivor shared his experiences during a question and answer session before the players took part in the Foundation Stones project, which invites people to paint a commemorative stone to be placed within the foundations of the new UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.



Read: Holocaust survivor Ivor Perl BEM visits Chelsea Academy