A school trip with a difference
When Molly Fletcher and her classmate Alexandra Andow, both 16, took part in a 'Lessons from Auschwitz' trip to learn more about the Holocaust, it was life-changing...
The Holocaust Education Trust, established in 1988, is a government-funded organisation that aims to educate people all over the country about the events of the Holocaust and the lessons which can be learned from them. ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ is just one of the many schemes that they have set up, however it is unusual in that it grants students the opportunity to visit Auschwitz for themselves.
Several of us were picked from our school, St Mary's Shaftesbury, Dorset, to go on one of their trips. We met over 200 other students, from across southwest England, at the introductory seminar in April, a week before the scheduled date for the visit.
The whole course was a highly daunting experience as the main aim was not only to learn more about the Holocaust but also to view it in a much more individual and personal way; to remember that each and every innocent person who was killed had their own life, a unique life, that could never be replaced. This, as well as the sheer horror of the place, made the visit extremely harrowing, but also enormously worthwhile.
We began the day by visiting the town, Oswiecim, a name not known by many as it was replaced with ‘Auschwitz’ by the Nazi’s. The teachers spoke about the lives of the Jews before the war and how, ironically, Oswiecim had probably been the most integrated city in Poland for Jews and Christians, with the great Jewish Temple being opposite a Catholic Church.
Auschwitz 1 was our first main stop. The daunting main gates, (topped with the famous iron sign, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei,’ which means ‘work brings freedom’), and rows of square buildings, along with the eerie silence, created an atmosphere that is almost indescribable. The site was truly shocking. The numerous photos and artefacts made the gross crime against humanity a reality and put the scale of the act into perspective. However, as Rabbi Marcus, who accompanied us, said: “Auschwitz 1 is about what you see, whereas Auschwitz-Birkenau is about what you don’t see.”
When we arrived at Birkenau, the Rabbi said: “You can look to your left and to your right, but you will never be able to see the boundaries of the camp.” The size of it was phenomenal; the hundreds of remains from the shacks filled your view in every direction; except, of course, for the long railway line that cuts through the scene; the railway line that carried the hundreds and thousands of innocent people to their death.
The rumour that there are no birds at Auschwitz is false; however, theirs was the only sound that could be heard as we staggered around in disbelief, walking along the railway lines and peering into the reconstructed barracks – little more than cattle sheds. There were 220 of us on the trip, but we wouldn’t have filled even a quarter of one of the shacks, of which there must have been hundreds. What made this even more overwhelming was the knowledge that only a small proportion of those who entered Auschwitz-Birkenau had the “privilege” of being housed in one of these sheds and put out to work – the majority were sent straight to the gas chambers without even being registered.
The follow-up seminar to our visit was deliberately placed two weeks after the journey, as this gave us time to re-adjust to normal life and reflect upon our experiences. We were given the opportunity to share our individual thoughts and feelings, as well as discussing what lessons we, as a group, had learnt.
The final stage of our course is the ‘Next Steps’ Project, in which we are asked to pass on our experiences and what we have learnt to the wider community. We cannot express in words how life changing the experience was; it truly put our ridiculously privileged lives into perspective and made us think about the others in the world less fortunate than ourselves. However the real shock and horror of the experience was how, despite the grand scale of what happened, similar things have happened since; Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur. Germany and Poland still bear the signs of war happened 70 years ago. We hope to spread the word about the Holocaust Educational Trust’s valuable work and encourage others to take part in one of their life-changing courses or to simply acknowledge the lessons that emerge.
