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A tough lesson in history
The horrors of Auschwitz are being used to take lessons about tolerance and understanding into Yorkshire schools. Andrew Vine reports.
The tears started to fall at the sight of the hair shorn from the heads of innocents whose only crime was to be Jewish. In the dimly-lit room where yards upon yards of human hair is displayed behind glass as silent testimony to the horror of what happened at Auschwitz, young people from Yorkshire bowed their heads. Some held each other's hands for comfort. Some had to look away.
They were not alone. The hair, banked up in tiers, is a devastating and intensely touching sight. Hundreds of thousands of people a year file past that display and react just like these students. The room was quiet except for the shocked gasps of those entering for the first time, and the sound of those who could not help but weep. There was no talk, because nobody could find words that seemed adequate.
The shock turned to disgust at the other display case in the room. This is the cloth that the Nazis wove from human hair. A little farther on are the other remnants of those gassed and burned – spectacles, artificial limbs, shoes, toothbrushes and the suitcases bearing the names of families who went willingly to the trains that brought them here, believing they were being re-settled to start new lives.
These pathetic remains of lives obliterated in the cause of a perverted ideology make Auschwitz a terrible, heartbreaking place. Nothing but death and enslavement came from it during its existence. Now, as the world prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, the young are being encouraged to find something positive from the horror – and the shock of 200 Yorkshire students on a harrowing day trip will drive a powerful plea for tolerance back home.
This is not just about learning what happened during the Nazis' Final Solution. It is about learning where bigotry and prejudice can lead if it is left unchecked.
The students who wept will become ambassadors in their schools and communities, passing on what they have seen to deliver a warning from history.
It is also about humanising the Holocaust because the sheer numbers of those who died can obscure that each one of the six million was an individual tragedy. So, as the students toured the camp, they stopped to hear readings of the testimony of those who survived to bear witness, as well as visiting the Jewish cemetery in the nearby town of Oswiecim. Everybody learns when they come to Auschwitz. No amount of reading prepares for the impact of this most potent symbol of the evil of Hitler's regime. And that is why sixth-formers from across Yorkshire went – to learn and take back the lessons of the greatest crime of the 20th century to shape the lives of their communities in the 21st.
The motto of the project that brought them to Poland for an emotionally draining day trip is "hearing is not like seeing". The truth of that was written in their faces. As they stood on the ramp where the trains were unloaded and the selection for death or slave labour was made with casual callousness, or witness the ruin of the gas chambers, the horror of the Holocaust seems especially close and vivid.
And it is close. This summer will mark 65 years since Auschwitz reached the peak of its brutal efficiency as a factory of mass murder in 1944. Nobody can be sure how many died here. The best estimate is 1.2 million, but it could be many more out of the total of six million-plus killed during the Holocaust.
The years since it happened fall away for the students who visited as part of the Lessons from Auschwitz project run by the Holocaust Educational Trust with the help of Government funding.
One of the trust's educators is Martyn Beer, head of Sixth Form at Settle College. He's been coming to Auschwitz with the trust for 10 years, and bringing young people here gives an immediacy that it is simply not possible to get in the classroom.
As they toured the site and Mr Beer gave readings, the questions came thick and fast from the students, and many are about the context in which mass murder took place. Who were the people who did it? How did they live with it? This is history lifted off the page and given its human dimension.
Mr Beer said: "The reason it's called Lessons from Auschwitz is that young people bring back some of that to their own communities, and there is a keenness to communicate the message, whether it is in relation to bullying, talking about racism, or homophobia. We'll look at what they have seen and heard today and where they can go
with that.
"They do become ambassadors who take the message out to other young people. We work very hard at the initial seminar to get them understanding something of the potential of their responses, because they do react very naturally with horror and upset."
The Holocaust Education Trust was established in 1988 to raise awareness not only of what happened, but also to encourage the young to learn lessons for today. Government funding means that two students from every school in the country will eventually have the chance to visit the camp.
There were 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. In Oswiecim – the name that was Germanised into Auschwitz – they accounted for 58 per cent of the population. Not a single Jewish person remains there, the last one, Shimshon Klueger, dying in 2000 after surviving the Holocaust. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery, which is locked behind high walls because its gravestones have in the past been daubed with swastikas.
The impact of all this is devastating. Among the students was Gabby Peeters, 18, of Scarborough VI Form College, who said: "It's the reality of it. You learn things in the classroom, but seeing it is totally different.
"To me, the hair was sickening. I just think this is such an important thing to do. We were having a debate when we were walking round on how extremists could end up trying to do this again and how everyone can try to stop it." Olivia Lambert, 17, from South Craven School, Keighley, said: "I've got a five-year-old sister and she was all I could think about when I saw the shoes. This is something that shouldn't be forgotten about. It's only 65 years ago when it happened."
The trust's programme grew out of pilgrimages organised by Rabbi Barry Marcus, of London's Central Synagogue, who accompanies the students and leads an act of remembrance at the end of the visit during which the 23rd Psalm and a prayer for the Holocaust's victims are said. Rabbi Marcus said: "As we stand here, there are printing presses all over the world – some of them government presses – churning out another Holocaust denial publication. We need to see for ourselves, however painful, if only to strengthen our resolve not to forget the memory of the millions who were so mercilessly butchered. I believe we cannot face the challenges of the future without identifying with our past."
The students take that message to heart, and it is reinforced by the atmosphere of the camp, which is split over two sites. Auschwitz I is the original concentration camp, with its gate bearing the cynical slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" – Work Brings Freedom. Auschwitz II – or Birkenau – is the purpose-built death camp a little over a mile away. Birkenau stands on a vast, open site entered via the SS guard tower, under which the railway lines run up to the ramp where the trains were unloaded, and then on to the memorial to the dead, close to the remains of the gas chambers and crematoria, which were blown up by the Nazis in an effort to hide their crimes as the liberating Russian army closed in on the camp in January 1945.
Marcus Lyon, 17, from Hymers College, Hull, said: "It's not at all how I expected it, it's a lot more eerie and a lot quieter. It's the emptiness of it that gets to you.
"I think it's really important to have people coming round. It stands as an example of what happens when an idea gets out of control. It's a warning to everybody and it's a message that needs to be known."
Getting the message out is what drives the students. Peter Bradley, 17, from Settle College, said: "It's hard to explain, but when I get back what will be most beneficial is speaking about it. Presenting it to other people is really important, because it carries the message to them."
The lessons from Auschwitz profoundly influence young people's lives, according to Mr Beer. "Seeing this is a life-changing experience. Very often, it's something they will mark out as a fundamental experience in their schooling.
"For the vast majority, it's a reference point in their thinking about life and what they want to do."
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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