A sign of hope for Poland?

There may be hope yet for the ravaged country of Poland, as this article demonstrates. A cultural revival of the country's Jewish past is thought to have begun and the national wounds inflicted by the Nazis could be starting to heal: 'A Jewish renaissance in Poland'. Click on the link below to learn more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/07/jewish-renaissance-poland

Podcasts from the Holocaust Educational Trust

This link will send you to the podcast department of the Holocaust Educational Trust website, providing access to numerous podcasts from experts on specific aspects of the Holocaust and some recorded debates.

http://www.het.org.uk/index.php/podcasts-general

The ruins of the Warzsaw ghetto

Click to see this image larger

Notice in particular the park to the bottom left - a place that would have been the site of many happy memories.

Pre-war Polish Culture

This song was written by Wladyslaw Szpilman, a polish Jew living in Warsaw when it became occupied by German armed forces. Renowned for being the inspiration for the film 'The Pianist', he was one of many Jews forced to move into the infamous Warsaw ghetto, which housed approximately 400,000 Jews, 250,000 of whom were later sent to Treblinka death camp where they met their gruesome deaths. Songs like this one, which was written before the German occupation, would have been commonplace in the enormous European classical music scene, though pieces of such somber beauty and relevance were afterward and are now still much more difficult to come by. To an extent, listening to a piece music that comes from somewhere thought of almost entirely in terms of the damage done to it during the holocaust can lead us to see Poland as a country of culture and life, rather than the loss thereof.

Could it happen again?

Despite the horrors of the Holocaust, many of us believe that most people would stand by and do nothing in the event of a new genocide. After a generation of multiculturalism, we have made some progress. We try to ensure that the workplace is fairer, the school curriculum is more inclusive, and we have more prominent individuals - from newsreaders to footballers, politicians to police - who reflect our diverse society. [extract]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jan/26/couldithappenagain

Click on this hyperlink to view the entire article which addresses our own consciences in the face of genocide, and the potential that exists for a repeat of the horrors of the Second World War.

From an educator's perspective...

Before this project I had conciously avoided going to Auschwitz feeling uncomfortable about going somewhere where I might feel as though I was trespassing for no good reason as I had already read very widely. Indeed I personally would still not go unless it was for an educational pupose and I was involved in taking students around who otherwise would not engage with the issues concerned through wider reading. I still have some problems with a visit to Auschwitz as it can tend to dominate a persons perception and understanding of what the Holocaust was. That is why in my work for the Holocaust Educational Trust I try my utmost to point out the wider context of Auschwitz wherever I can. I am still trying to work out for myself why I go in the way that I do and whether it is entirely appropriate. To see the pictures of the Jewish people who died there as they would have wished to be remembered (in pictures that they had taken by their families and friends) after walking around Birkenau is the most powerful part of the trip for me and goes some way to explaining the purpose of my visit.

Peter Morgan, Secondary School Teacher and LFA educator

Evaluating Media - Exercise 1

Look at this advertisement for the 'Say No to AV' campaign.

What effect does the advertisement have, especially the London Eye?
- a huge 'NO' creates a sense of overwhelming opposition
- London Eye is a commonly used symbol for London, as well as Britain on a whole
- Stormy skies creates an atmosphere of approaching danger

Overall, this advertisement successfully paints voting for 'No' to be doing something that is overwhelmingly supported, and something that is done to prevent some form of 'imminent danger'. These visual techniques are what are and have been used for the last century as a method of portraying a certain (often political) perspective and trying to instil this into the public.

Next time you see an advert (of any kind), consider what visual techniques are being used to sway your opinion and consider whether that is what you really want - these abilities to evaluate modern media are critical in preventing catastrophes similar to those in the past.
(This post bears no political affiliation and does not intend to portray any political party in any negative or positive light)

Discussion point 2: Teaching the holocaust

The subject is often a delicate one and contains very serious themes, with the potential to cause serious emotional damage to students, so what age should we begin to teach the Holocaust at schools?


"The holocaust should not be taught in schools altogether - if anyone is truly interested in this dark period of human history, they should take the initiative themeselves"
Do you agree or disagree? Share your thoughts and feelings in the comment box below.

Discussion point 1: Photography at Auschwitz

With more than half a million people visiting the site annually, Auschwitz I is beginning to become more of a tourist location than a historical site.


"We should never be allowed to take photographs at Auschwitz or any other camp where people suffered"
Do you agree or disagree? Share your responses in the comments below.

The Holocaust and Human Rights

For those interested in any further learning, this podcast gives great insight into some ideas surrounding the connection between the holocaust and human rights shared by an expert on the subject, Professor Yerhuda Bauer.

http://www.het.org.uk/media/downloads/HET-ep1.mp3

Eugene Black - Survivor of the Holocaust

Eugene at Auschwitz camp

Eugene Black
During the Orientation Seminar of the LFA project, we received a talk from Eugene Black, a holocaust survivor who was born Jeno Schwartz in Munkacs, Czechoslovakia in 1928. He chose to change his name simply from fear of being bullied when living in England because of his foreign name. He had a happy family life before then with 3 sisters, a brother, an orthodox Jewish mother and non-Jewish father. He lived in Hungary for the most part of his childhood until 1944 when he was taken along with his family to Auschwitz Extermination camp, but was separated from his family at the famous 'unloading platform' where the process of selection began. During his time in Poland, he was moved from camp to camp, ending in Bergen-Belsen where he was liberated. Since then, he moved to England (1949) and has tried to live an ordinary life, and has recently shared his experiences with the public in seminars and talks.

Thinking points:
Eugene led a normal, ordinary and secluded life before the Second World War that was cruelly disrupted by the onslaught of the Nazis' regime in Hungary. It is interesting how many people might assume there was a large build-up of persecution until the beginning of the war, but from Eugene we learnt that this was a significant shock and there was a real sense of confusion and incomprehension when he came to be imprisoned in camps in 1944. Indeed, this confusion is yet to end as he is still discovering his past - in 2009 he discovered that his 2 sisters that had been taken to camps had not died in gas chambers, as he had believed for 60 years - and dealing with it. However, his experience can allow us some comprehension and perspective on the Holocaust: having begun to comprehend the damage that was done to him we can put this into a more educated context. Imagine the damage done to Eugene, one person - and multiply this by 6 million. Without looking at it as a statistic, try to envisage the consequential, emotional and physical damage in real terms.

During our discussion, when asked about how he felt when he saw the empty camps where he and many others had suffered, he replied, "but they are not empty - there's thousands of people still there..."

For further information on Eugene's life and videos of his accounts, go to
http://holocaustlearning.org/survivors/eugene-black

Coming soon...

Keep updated on the blog for a report from Peter Morgan, a teacher from the North of England who teaches the subject to A level students and also works for the 'Lessons from Auschwitz' team, accompanying them to Poland several times a year. Having been taught by him, we have had experience in his unique and emotive teaching method that has given us a wonderful insight into the topic.

Safe Haven for Holocaust Survivors

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/14/holocaust-survivors-centre-freedland This Article in the Guardian newspaper looks at the lives of victims of the Holocaust who attend regular meetings at the Holocaust Survivors' Centre. It is a very interesting article that sheds light on the emotional effects of persecution and imprisonment in concentration and extermination camps, as well as how long it took for survivors to share experiences and how they feel about doing it now. Well worth a read.

Introduction to Auschwitz: On Reflection.

Auschwitz: On Reflection is run by Harrison Dent, Joe Coroneo-Seaman, Helen Jeffrey and Emily Sharman, students of Beverley Joint Sixth Form and forms part of our Next Steps Project, in continuation from our trip. Through this blog, we hope to raise awareness of the issues we feel are most relevant to contemporary Holocaust education and to encourage you, as members of the public, to consider these issues and take your education to another level...

Some of the key ideas that we will be exploring and sharing are:

• Do statistics effectively represent the lives of over 6 million Jews that died in the Holocaust?
• The bloodshed and brutality of the Holocaust is not limited to human life: the loss of life also means the loss of cultures, communities and ideas.
• The Holocaust came about in part from the persistent use of Nazi propanganda - perhaps in seeing this, we should increase awareness of the world we inhabit by challenging and critically evalutating the media.
• Societies are made of individuals; if we are to prevent the widespread murder or persecution of individuals in the future then we must start with our own everyday actions to prevent injustice.

We highly recommend that if the opportunity arises, everyone should visit this moving historical site.