On Monday, we were incredibly fortunate to welcome Dr Agnes Kaposi to our School.

Dr Kaposi is an engineer and a Holocaust survivor who shared her deeply moving and inspiring story with us. Her talk not only shed light on the atrocities of the Holocaust but also highlighted the resilience of human spirit and the importance of compassion in overcoming adversity.

As we listened to her story, we reflected on the values of kindness, empathy, and understanding that bind us as a community. Dr Kaposi very kindly welcomed questions from our pupils after giving her talk, such as, “what inspired you to pursue a career in engineering when faced with such adversity?”

Orielle (Lower Sixth) sat on the panel for Dr Kaposi’s talk and had this to say:

“This week, we had the honour of welcoming Dr Agnes Kaposi, a holocaust survivor from Hungary who shared her engaging and inspirational story with us. She taught us all about how she felt being cast as ‘the other’, persecuted under the Hungarian regime and her journey fighting for the opportunity to succeed. Forced to forgo her love of maths in order to be able to access the limited options for higher education, a rarity for women at that time, she not only graduated from the technical University of Budapest with a degree of electrical engineering but, armed with her PhD, eventually became elected as a fellow to the Royal College of Engineering. Her story not only reminded us to be grateful for the tremendous educational opportunities available to us today, but also that no matter the adversity, anything is possible.”

We are hugely grateful to Dr Kaposi for sharing such extraordinary and thought-provoking insights, and offering us a chance to engage with history and humanity in a profoundly meaningful way.