|
|
 |
| |
Kathleen Ann McKeown of Royal School, Hampstead |
Horror of history is brought to life in death camp of Auschwitz
Students from Hampstead and Highgate were among those invited to Poland by the Holocaust Education Trust. Dan Carrier shared the experience
ARBEIT macht frei.” The legend, which translates as Work Brings You Freedom, is cast in a weathered iron sign. As the group walks through the gates with this sinister motto arching above, and signifying the entrance to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, they fall silent. The enormity of the crime is no longer just a topic in history lessons.
Pupils from across the country were selected to travel to Poland this week as part of an educational trip organised by charity the Holocaust Education Trust. It included students from Hampstead’s Royal School, Highgate boys’ school and South Hampstead high school.
The Trust’s aims are simple: to remember the Holocaust and use it to counteract racism today.
Rabbi Barry Marcus, of the West London synagogue accompanied the trip and conducted a service of remembrance at the end of the notorious rail tracks running through the camp which brought millions to their deaths. He warned of the on-going fight against anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia.
He said: “Those who forget history are destined to repeat it.”
The Trust was established in 1988 with the aim of ensuring the Holocaust was part of the national curriculum. But its mission goes further than that. Providing trips like these, it aims “to teach about the Holocaust, to learn the lessons from it and to remember its victims”.
“This is about how we treat refugees, about how we counter racism and prejudice in all its forms,” says Trust education co-ordinator Alex Maws. “We hope this visit will work as a reminder to pupils about the dangers posed by bigotry.”
With the Holocaust denier David Irving planning a new lecture tour to spread his re-reading of history, the pupils were aware the visit to the place where more than 1.5 million people were slain is timely. Here is the physical embodiment of the evil that gripped Europe 60 years ago.
Royal School pupil Emma Jacobs said the experience was both educational and emotional.
She said: “No matter how many books you read or videos you watch about what happened here, nothing can prepare you for seeing Auschwitz in person.”
Her fellow Royal School pupil Kathleen McKeown said she found it hard to express what it meant to stand within the Auschwitz fences.
She said: “It has been emotional, and draining.
“It is hard to express how I feel – it has made the sorts of things I have worried about before feel insignificant. The numbers of people who were murdered here were hard for me to understand – until I got here. This has made the horrific nature of what happened during the war become real.”
We started by visiting the Jewish cemetery in Oswiecim. This is the town’s Polish name – it was changed to Auschwitz by the invading German army.
The cemetery itself tells a story, the first of many moments that day the group stopped to reflect on man’s inhumanity to man. Oswiecim was once a Jewish town – of the 12,000 inhabitants, 75 per cent were Jewish. It had 12 synagogues and was thriving.
No longer. Jewish Oswiecim has essentially ceased to exist.
At first glance it seems like a normal Jewish cemetery – headstones tilted at angles, moss and lichen on the epitaphs for the dead. But the headstones are not indicators of the mortal remains that lie beneath, because when Germany invaded, the cemetery’s headstones were roughly lifted out of the ground and used as cobblestones. After the war, the headstones were put back – but the sad fact is they no longer correlate with the graves beneath.
Except one: the grave of Shimshon Klueger, who died in 2000. Born in 1925, he returned to his home town after the war. He was motivated by the idea he did not want the last remnants of a thriving Jewish community to disappear. His bravery is marked by the numbers of small, round stones placed on his grave by visitors – the Jewish tradition of marking a resting place.
Then we take a short journey to the first camp. It is here the sinister sign greets us. Two-storey barracks – the camp was originally used by the Polish army – lie in regimented rows, their darkened windows hiding the secrets of their past.
Once inside, the faces of the pupils fall dark, too. There is little need for the Polish guide to explain the nature of the exhibition on display inside the buildings that contained the victims, and the violent realisation of the barbaric, evil nature of the Nazi regime bring tears trailing down ashen complexions. One room is simply full of human hair. The Nazis shaved heads, not only as a tactic to demean their victims, but because they saw economic value in locks – it could be used to weave cloth, examples of which are displayed next door.
Other remnants of the crimes committed include shoes – thousands piled on thousands. Looking closely, you can identify the styles of the 1930s. Most are dark leather, but occasionally a faded pair of red heels stands out, and the thought of the person buying them, trying them on, admiring them in a mirror brings home the personal tragedy.
Then there are the suitcases. They have names on them, in careful script: “Klara Sara Fochtmann, Wien, 11, Tandelmarkig, 17/3.” Another reads simply: “M. Frank. Holland. 12/04/15.” They perhaps believed that these earthly possessions would be looked after for them. The next phase of the tour shows how forlorn this hope was.
Empty cans that contained the death gas Zyklon B are piled high. Gallows still stand. We are led quietly into an underground bunker, a gas chamber and crematorium. We are shown the stables built for 50 horses which became huts for 700 prisoners. We are shown the infamous train tracks that brought thousands to their deaths. We are shown the watch towers.
South Hampstead pupil Juliette Smith said she felt the day would take weeks to really sink in. She said: “I feel grief for what happened here, and it has deepened my grief for the victims of contemporary genocide: the people in Kosovo, Darfur, Rwanda.”
As Rabbi Barry Marcus said: “History is a race between education and catastrophe.”
This field trip to a place that has stained the history of humankind has, in the minds of the pupils, helped education in that race.
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
