An educational website telling the story of holocaust survivors now living in Yorkshire is being launched today.

The website is the brainchild of West Yorkshire charity Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association (HSFA) and is being created with the help of £50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to record memories of the desperate events before and during the Second World War.

The association, which promotes the message of celebrating diversity and difference, says the website will be used for a range of educational initiatives and will be aimed at schools, colleges, universities, community groups and the Government.

Lillian Black, chair of HSFA, said: “The survivors provide us with details of their lives before and during the war, and what happened to them after liberation.

“We hope that their visual testimony now available online will be well used so that together we can work towards a more civil society. We hope their testimony gives others courage to speak out and act when injustice occurs.

“We hope too that it inspires new refugees to see that it is possible to make a new life.

“Never have the lessons of the Holocaust been more important than for the world today. The visual testimony and the remarkable reflections of the survivors who settled in Yorkshire after their terrible experiences illustrate very clearly how the stages of persecution led to the genocide of a whole people.

“The hope that they inspire through their indomitable spirit is the legacy for the future.”

The website – holocaustlearning.org – will be launched at Guiseley School, with survivor Iby Knill, now in her eighties, explaining why Holocaust education is so important in 2010.

The school’s head of history, Paul Clayton, said: “This will be an excellent addition to the resources available to teachers.

“It is incredibly important for young people to see that the holocaust affected people who live in their own community and it not some distant, far away event.”