This Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) on 27th January marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex, and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.
Two students from Sacred Heart visited Auschwitz Birkenau and have presented their experience to all students and staff in assemblies and briefings this week.
Their experiences are summarised below:
Maddison Harris, Y13, Student Reflection:
The people who were killed in the Holocaust were human beings who deserve to be treated with respect and dignity as they have been violently killed in this tragic event the statistics of the Holocaust is a way to explain the tragedy, but they are impersonal, behind the statistic are individuals who lived across Europe.
During our visit, our focus was re-humanising the victims of the holocaust and taking away the idea that the people are a statistic, the victims were not just ‘6 million Jewish people’ they were human beings who had their lives and dignity, and respect stripped from them, we focus on giving them their dignity back.
The book of names in the Auschwitz Museum is the main way people are trying to restore dignity and humanity to the victims of the holocaust people like Bertha who you will learn about in the next slide, it is giving these humans their respect back.
But is not just the victims, we have to learn to humanise the perpetrators, we hear ‘evil’ and ‘monsters’ a lot when talking about the German soldiers or Hitler, and before the "Lessons From Auschwitz" project I would have agreed but after I learned that these words are a way of dismissing the pain and suffering they caused, it reduces the understanding of the holocaust making it seem fictional and we know it is not just as story this was a real tragedy that killed real people, killed my family.
Evie Wilkinson, Y13, Student Reflection:
I was very fortunate in having the experience to develop a greater understanding of what happened during the Holocaust by being able to experience Auschwitz-Birkenau first-hand, to get a small glimpse into what life was like for those in concentration camps.
Having this opportunity, allowed me to be able to understand the importance of learning from the Holocaust and to not forget what occurred in the camps as the years go on and as the number of survivors decrease, in order to prevent this from taking place again.
We do not only talk about this event as a way to remember, but also as a way to recognise what is currently going on in our world today.
For me personally, the area that impacted me the most at Auschwitz was being able to see the train and to where it brought all those innocent victims.
The concept that they didn’t know what awaited for them when they got off and expecting to see their new lives that’s they had been promised, was truly heartbreaking to see.
It was also what made me truly understand the gravity of the Holocaust, showing this misconception of what the victims thought their lives were going to be like, thus demonstrating the horror of what took place.
As we remember the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau, churches and schools across our diocese have embraced this year’s global theme, ‘For a Better Future’.
This concept is extremely prevalent as to what is going on in the world today, and the atrocities that people are facing, similar to the prejudice people experienced last century.
So, this theme reminds us of the importance of remembering the Holocaust, for us to act in a loving way in the present to ensure a better future for all individuals in society.