The Holocaust Education Trust is a fantastic organisation. When I was training to be a teacher, they came into our University and offered bespoke training on how to teach students about the Holocaust. It’s so important that our Holocaust education is as good as it can be, since it’s the only mandatory piece of education in the whole of the National Curriculum. And that’s because it’s our duty to ensure that an event so devastating never happens again.
So when I saw that the Holocaust Educational Trust was offering a 1-day trip to Poland for Sixth Formers, I felt that it was my duty to secure a place. I was lucky enough to be able to go with the students for what was an exhausting, informative, day.
Keep reading to get an insight into what it was like and why you should arrange to visit too, whether you’re a student, a teacher, or absolutely anyone.
The morning
The clock struck 04:34am when my taxi pulled into the airport. I was greeted by my dissertation supervisor from last year, who directed us towards check-in. I collected my boarding passes, saw that my students had arrived, and made my way to the gates for boarding.
It was a chartered plane. Jet2 provided us with breakfast and dinner on board, so all we had to worry about was taking enough food to keep us going throughout the day. Once the plane touched down, it was straight onto the coaches and off to our first destination.
Auschwitz I Memorial Site
Our first destination was the original site for Auschwitz. The camp was not originally designed as a mass extermination camp, but many people were unfortunately killed there. We had a tour guide for the duration of the visit, and he spoke us through the whole process, from selection and deception, to when prisoners were killed. When we first entered the site, the sombre atmosphere hit us immediately, and it worsened when we passed by an urn containing the bones and ashes of some of the people who were imprisoned there.
As we moved around the site, we were taken through exhibits showing how the Nazis exploited their victims, by stealing their clothes, their possessions, their glasses and their luggage, reusing items like gold teeth and rings. The most shocking part of this visit was when we walked through a corridor, only to be greeted by 40,000 pairs of shoes.
Forty thousand.
It took my breath away. As part of our lessons on the Holocaust for Year 9 students, we show them images of shoes and rings to get across the human side of the experience. Seeing these things in person is so, so different to seeing them in photos. I had no words.
Then came the next room. Hundreds, if not thousands, of locks of hair, stolen from the victims of the Holocaust when they were dehumanised and the Nazis stripped away their entire personalities. On the way into this room and into the next were several hundred images of prisoners, which were taken in the earlier days of the site. The most striking was of one man, who looked deathly sick, likely due to the conditions he would have suffered through living in a ghetto before arriving at Auschwitz. The image stated when the man had been brought into the camp and when he died; the time difference was just 3 days.
Three days.
Afterwards, we walked through the gas chamber and passed a hangman’s pedestal. Walking through the chamber, knowing what had happened there, was one of the hardest parts of the trip. I don’t feel comfortable sharing many of the limited photos that I took on that day, as it’s so important for you to see these sights with your own eyes.
Equally, as an act of remembrance, I think that it’s more important, and more powerful, focusing on the people who were imprisoned and murdered there, rather than the cruel acts that they were subjected to.
In fact, the visit ended in a room dedicated to a huge book. The pages were the size of floor-length mirrors and it extended the length of a house. Within were the names of 3 million Jewish people who had died, when and where, during the Holocaust. It is an act of remembrance, of defiance against the Nazis, who had stripped their prisoners of their identifies completely, to rehumanise them. Around 6 million Jewish people died during the Holocaust, so the book remains incomplete.
One day, it is hoped that the book will be completed.
Birkenau
The final part of the trip was the hardest. Walking towards Birkenau, which was designed for mass extermination from the very beginning, left many of us stunned into silence. Seeing the fake train station, created to deceive prisoners into believing that they had reached a safer place than where they had been before, sent chills down my spine.
Our tour guide stayed with us for this part of the trip. He explained that the camp was so large that it was the size of 200 football stadiums. I could barely see the edge of the camp from where I stood. The conditions in the barracks were absolutely horrific.
I had visited concentration camps before – Saschenhausen about ten years ago, and Dachau at the start of this year – but nothing compared to this.
We moved towards where the gas chamber once stood – demolished by Nazis in haste before the camp could be liberated – where a rabbi gave a very powerful speech. He sang a psalm in Hebrew, spoke on the dangers of Holocaust Denial, and the responsibility that we all have to remember those who were killed.
In fact, he stated that if we were to hold a minute’s silence for every single one of the million Jewish people who were murdered there, we would be sat in silence for two years. And still, even that would not be enough.
His words echoed around the camp.
A few students from the trip were chosen to read excerpts from poems, and the Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, who’d joined us on the trip, read the final one.
We lit candles and placed them by the memorial site, before making the sombre journey back to the airport.
The evening
Our plane touched down at around 10pm, and I collapsed into bed. The next day at work was tough, spent regaling stories of what I had seen to my colleagues and students, through a veil of exhaustion. But I cannot recommend the experience enough; everybody should see what I saw.
If you teach, get in touch with the Holocaust Educational Trust to secure spots for your students. If you’re a student, appeal to your school to sign up. The whole trip is heavily subsidised by the Trust to £59 each – and we personally subsidised it further to £25 per student.
This was one of the most valuable experiences of my teaching career. I implore you to go one day too.
Hardly Hamilton 