Each year, the Holocaust Educational Trust organises a visit to Auschwitz, in Poland, for Welsh sixth form students. Richard Gurner joined students from Cwmcarn High School, Bargoed’s Heolddu Comprehensive School and Coleg Gwent’s Crosskeys campus on the latest trip.
The Holocaust: Six million dead. It’s easy for the scale of such mass murder to be lost in five words.
It is against this challenge that the Holocaust Memorial Trust established its Lessons from Auschwitz project in 1999.
Based on the premise that “hearing is not like seeing”, the project takes students to the death camp in Poland to learn for themselves the extent of what happened, and then to take that knowledge back home.
The visit began at Osweicim, the town where the Auschwitz death and concentration camps were located and where the local Jewish community lived prior to the start of the Second World War.
Almost two-thirds of the town’s population were Jewish before the war, and now there is not a single Jew left.
All that remains is a faithfully-restored Synagogue where the students were given an overview of the religion by Rabbi Barry Marcus, who pioneered the idea of bringing students to Poland to see Auschwitz for themselves.
As we entered under the infamous gates of the camp, which read ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Work Sets You Free), the feeling of what happened there more than 70 years ago began to be palpable.
Despite that initial feeling, the full-knowledge of what went on hit home hard with many students, as they were confronted by displays of shoes, suitcases, baby’s clothes and whole host of other objects stripped from the 1.1m people who were killed at Auschwitz.
The most sobering of these displays – housed in former red-brick barracks where prisoners were once kept like animals – was of 2,000kg of human hair – shaved from corpses, ready to be weaved into fabric.
Students were then taken to the second Auschwitz camp in Birkenau. This is where the vast majority of victims, 90% of them Jewish, were murdered in gas chambers and then incinerated.
The vast camp is split by railway track where thousands of people arrived between 1940 and 1945 in what were effectively ‘cattle wagons’.
Once at Auschwitz-Birkenau they were quickly selected by a Nazi doctor if they were fit to work. The 80% deemed ‘unfit’ were almost immediately sent to their deaths.
As dusk fell, the tour of Birkenau culminated in a short ceremony held by Rabbi Marcus. Students read short passages and then lit memorial candles.
It was a hard day for all – emotionally and physically.
Cwmcarn High School student Hamzar Faqir, 18, said: “Today was quite sad. It was a life-changing experience and one that you can take a lot and learn from.
“Auschwitz is a key part of history and the visit was more surreal and emotional than I expected.”
Karen Pollock MBE, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: “The Lessons from Auschwitz Project is a vital part of our work, allowing young people to learn about the Holocaust in a way they cannot in the classroom.
“The visit enables young people to see for themselves where racism, prejudice and antisemitism can ultimately lead and its importance is demonstrated by the inspiring work students go on to do in their local communities.”