This Wednesday we will be showing every student in the school a video which uses testimony from eye witnesses to give a graphic, compelling and sometimes harrowing depiction of what happened to the Jews in occupied Europe during the Second World War. If you would like register to see the video then please visit https://holocaustlearninguk.org/docufilms
Holocaust Memorial Day falls on 27 January. It marks the date on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp was liberated by Russian soldiers in 1945. Each year the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust produces resources for schools to use to ensure that memories of the Holocaust are kept alive, as fewer and fewer eye witnesses to what happened live on still. The short video forms part of the 2022 resources that the Trust has produced.
There is also an extraordinary piece of drone footage from the Auschwitz camp to be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60092306. One of the shocking things about it is that the buildings don’t look old at all – it brings home the fact that what happened is merely one long generation back in time; the modern traffic streaming past on the main roads does not look as out of place as you might expect. The place gives testimony to events that were all-too recent.
The work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is hugely important. Partly because of the duty of honour to all those who suffered during the Second World War, but also because of the lessons of history. As it says on their website we should all be learning from genocide, for a better future.
SDS
