"They mainly don’t want to do any imagery of the Holocaust, they just want to paint pleasant things – landscapes, flowers, people. It’s very interesting.“

Twenty years ago, the Holocaust Survivors Centre in Golders Green was set up for survivors who were in Europe during World War Two or who came to Britain as refugees after 1938 to get together and take part in activities.

One of the first classes to be started was the art group, which adult education teacher and artist Barbara Jackson was asked to teach.

“My parents were refugees from Germany, in 1935,“ explains Barbara, who has been running the class ever since, “so when they asked me to teach the class I was very interested.“

Now Barbara and the students – whose average age is about 85 and most of whom live in and around Barnet – are putting on an exhibition at the London Jewish Cultural Centre in Golders Green, featuring the students’ artwork alongside a number of large charcoal portraits of the artists themselves by Barbara.

“The works are very beautiful,“ Barbara continues. “Most of them had never painted before and it’s been a surprise and a joy to see the images they have produced over the years.

“One lady was very depressed when she first came, she only did a few tentative pencil marks and now she’s really burst into colour. That’s been very rewarding to see.“

That was one of the reasons the art class was set up.

“It’s not meant to be a therapy group,“ Barbara explains, “it’s just the act of doing art and being together, that’s very therapeutic in itself.

“The students don’t really like to talk too much about the Holocaust. There’s one gentleman who gets very cross if we do, so it’s usually lighter stuff.“

The students – who originally come from Germany, Hungary, what was Czechoslavakia, and France – can be largely divided into groups: survivors from concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; those who were hidden as children during the war; Kindertransport children; and refugees to the UK.

“Most of them made a life after they got to England,“ says Barbara, “but as they got older and retired, all these things came up to the surface so that’s why the centre was formed, to be a haven for them. It’s a wonderful organisation.“

One man who desperately needed the centre was the late Leon Greenman OBE, a British Jew from Leytonstone who was taken to Auschwitz with his wife and young son while the family were in Holland. His wife and son were immediately taken to the gas chambers.

“He never recovered,“ says Barbara. “He was the only one who painted his experiences in Auschwitz. He was deported there in about 1941 or 1942 and was there until the end. He never remarried, he was very solitary – some people can make a life but he didn’t, really.“

Leon painted the things he’d seen in the death camp – people being hung, the barracks, the cruelty of the guards.

“He wasn’t a professional artist but he captured very powerfully what had happened,“ says Barbara. “Now the Jewish Museum holds his work, and they’ve kindly lent me two of them for this exhibition.“

As well as the students’ work, the exhibition also includes a selection of drawings and etchings Barbara has done of the students themselves, both as they are now and as younger men and women, from photographs they have shown her.

“I really love them, very, very much," says Barbara, of the group. "They’re very special people.“

  • Out of Darkness – The Joy of Art is at the London Jewish Cultural Centre, Ivy House, North End Road, Golders Green until Thursday, June 5. Details: 020 8457 5000, ljcc.org.uk