The following article was written by Emily Turner who took part in a project with the Holocaust Educational Trust which involved as day visit to Auschwitz Concentration Camp:
It happened before, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say’- Primo Levi, Holocaust survivor and Italian chemist.
Those words, printed onto the wall of Block 27 in Auschwitz Museum near to the ‘Book of Names’, summarises the importance of my visit to Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
As we toured the concentration camp and Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, the expanse of the genocide became apparent in a way textbooks and documentaries have failed to depict.
Dehumanisation characterised the camps, making the figure of 6 million Jewish deaths even more incomprehensible to me. This was largely because the trip highlighted the fact that the Holocaust wasn’t only the brutal murder of 6 million Jews, as I had understood, but it was a process of systematic removal of dignity, humanity and eventually life. Attempting to comprehend this figure whilst hearing individual stories from Auschwitz proved to be an impossible task.
An initial stop-off in the Polish town of Oswiecim offered us an opportunity to discover pre-war Jewish life, an experience to later draw on when witnessing the horrors in the camps. The town’s geography in relation to the camps created an underpinning sense of disconcertment, and contributed to by the continuation of locals fulfilling the tasks of their Thursday in the depths of cold February.
It was insightful for us to understand the ways in which Jews and Non-Jews lived alongside each other, respectfully, before Nazi occupation. It helped put into perspective the far-reaching, deep-rooted control by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.
There were no birds in the sky above the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. The three blown up gas chambers sit at the end of the infamous visual of the train tracks. Crumbling walls and piles of bricks represent the failure of the Nazis to hide their atrocities. This imagery stuck with me during my visit especially when listening to Rabbi Shaw share the experiences of his grandparents in Nazi controlled Austria, reinforcing to us all the paramount importance of hearing individual stories to rehumanize each victim of the Holocaust.
Back in Block 27, Rabbi Shaw had informed us that the ‘Book of Names’ consisted of 4.8 million names of Jewish victims in the Holocaust. It was curated through relying on someone, somewhere, to remember the name of an individual victim. As he continued, he drew our attention to the fact that this meant over one million Jewish victims have not been remembered to be recorded in the book. This figure of one million seems to be equally as harrowing and incomprehensible to me.
Matt Allman, Headteacher, added: “We are proud to hold Holocaust Beacon School Status and place a great emphasis on our teaching of this critical topic. Th inhumanity of man toward man cannot be left to life and by educating future generations we can do all we can to ensure that the future is better than the past. This visit to Auschwitz is about inspiring the you and with Emily’s word it has clearly hit home.”
To learn more about the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust click here.
