The Jewish great-grandson of J R R Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has written a play on the Theresianstadt concentration camp.

Terezin “explores the Holocaust through children’s eyes and shows how propaganda can be used to attack people based on their religion,” Nicholas Tolkien, 26, said on Twitter. “It is the story of two Jewish girls who try to survive in Terezin during the making of a Nazi propaganda film”.

According to the Jewish Week in America, he first heard about Holocaust survivors from his grandfather Mark Steinberg, who ran a vintage clothing shop in London.

Nicholas's mother Tracy Steinberg married Simon Tolkein, the grandson of J R R Tolkein.

Terezin, which was inspired by a book about the art produced by children in the camp, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, is due to open at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in New York next Tuesday.

Mr Tolkien said: “There’s a sense of Holocaust amnesia. People don’t want to think about it. Yet, there is genocide and the gassing of children still happening in the Syrian civil war.”