Since 1999, over 30,000 students and
teachers have taken part in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s groundbreaking ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ Project. Based on the premise that ‘hearing is not like seeing’, this four-part course explores the universal lessons of the Holocaust and its relevance for today. In 2017, two of Sibford’s Sixth Form students, Leo and Matt, signed up to the project ... below is their report on
Lessons from I
n March, I had the privilege of visiting the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lessons From Auschwitz’ Project, writes Leo. Before heading to Poland, we attended an orientation seminar in Reading, where we were provided with background information about the Holocaust, and told about the widespread persecution of the Jews, and other minority groups, across Europe under Nazi occupation. We heard the testimony of Rudi Oppenheimer, a survivor of the Belsen camp, and were educated about one of the primary goals of the LFA Project ~ re-humanising the Holocaust. LFA places a lot of importance on giving a human face to those who were killed, emphasising that it was not the murder of six million individuals, but rather six million individual murders.
Our visit to Poland began with
a very early start, with us having to get up at 3:00am so that we could check in at Luton Airport by 5:30am. When we arrived in Kraków, we boarded our coach, and headed to Oświęcim, where we briefly stopped at the site of the town’s Great Synagogue which
26 / The Sibfordian
was razed by the Nazis during the occupation of Poland. All that remains is a grassy patch of empty ground and an information plaque. The visit to this site, while short, was sobering, as the empty space (in contrast to the dense, claustrophobic Auschwitz and the sprawling Birkenau) served to hammer home the fact that something had been lost.
such as empty Zyklon B canisters and over 40,000 pairs of shoes taken from victims of the camp. After spending a few hours in Auschwitz I, we boarded the coach again and headed to the Birkenau camp, Auschwitz’s largest facility. Auschwitz Birkenau was built in 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka by a labour force of Russian prisoners of war, 10,000 of whom died in the process. Many of the buildings that comprised the Birkenau camp were demolished following the retreat of the Nazis in early 1945, and as such most of the buildings that do stand there are reconstructions. As we were guided around Birkenau, we were told in great detail about
After another brief coach journey, we finally arrived at Auschwitz 1, the first camp in the Auschwitz network of concentration camps. Initially, the most shocking thing about the camp was its proximity to the town of Oświęcim. The camp was originally converted from a Polish army barracks in 1940 and is vitually in the centre of the town. Today, it houses most of the informative and museum elements of Auschwitz including many of the most iconic ‘exhibits’
the appalling conditions that the camp’s inmates were subjected to by the Nazis. At the end of our tour around Birkenau, we held a candle-lit vigil for the victims of the Holocaust and shortly afterwards headed to the airport. After attending the final seminar, which was centred around the next steps of the LFA programme, all that is left to do now is to devise how we ourselves will help to educate people about the Holocaust, and spread the messages of Lessons From Auschwitz.
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