Lessons From Auschwitz – Nancy Duckett, The Langley Academy

The Lessons from Auschwitz project allows post-16 students to be taught about the Holocaust in a new and insightful way. I was fortunate enough to be chosen to participate in this project and was given the opportunity to travel to Auschwitz earlier this year to gain a better understanding of the importance of learning about the Holocaust.

The project begins with an online orientation seminar in which educators discuss pre-war Jewish life with students, and its relevance in understanding the Holocaust. As well as this they discuss antisemitism throughout history, and its evolution from a religious matter to one of, primarily, race.

Shortly after the seminar students are flown to Poland for one day, where they get to see the impact of the Holocaust on Oswiecim, a town that went from having a 58% Jewish population of to 0%, revealing the huge impact it had on a local level. After this they travel to Auschwitz I, a site of 28 barracks which has been turned into a museum, where they are shown around by a tour guide and a member of the trust. Seeing the enormous quantities of personal belongings taken from Holocaust victims truly puts the scale of the human rights violation into perspective. From Auschwitz I they travel to Auschwitz II, the bigger of the two camps. Here the sheer size of this site of mass genocide is revealed. To finish the day, a Jewish ceremony is held, and memorial candles are lit in a moment of reflection of the tragedies that occurred.

After the trip, over a zoom call, participants reflect on the experience with the rest of the group and get to hear a holocaust survivor tell their story. This reminds them that each of the six million Jews were an individual, and that no two stories are the same. Next, in order to further educate others on the Holocaust, students are expected to make a project that can be shared with their community to help ensure that the horrors of the Holocaust aren’t forgotten and that as many people as possible understand the importance of learning from the Holocaust.

The Lessons from Auschwitz project taught me so much about the Holocaust that I never could have learnt in a traditional classroom setting. It is an amazing opportunity provided by an amazing charity that not enough people know about. Charities such as this are vital in our society to safeguard our future and to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive, so that we all understand how dangerous it can be when hatred, racism and antisemitism go unchecked.