4. Lessons from Auschwitz

Lessons from Auschwitz is a programme run by the Holocaust Educational Trust in order to establish a deeper understanding of the effects and consequences of the Holocaust. We took part in an online Orientation Seminar as an introduction and as a preliminary education, a one-day visit to AuschwitzBirkenau, and finally a follow-up Online Seminar to consolidate and reflect on what we had learned.

This year’s focus was on the personal human lives affected and more about each person’s experience of the holocaust. We saw more about everyday lives and the very human stories of those persecuted and even those who did the persecuting. It was to help humanise the innumerable number of people affected, whom we often see as a statistic.

The one-day visit to Auschwitz Birkenau started with us landing in Krakow, Poland and being driven by coach to the town of Oswiecim, and then into the first camp Auschwitz-A. This was the smaller camp and was mainly used as a concentration camp, with deaths still occurring at high rates. One of the exhibitions shown were those of the victim’s personal belongings, with the most harrowing being a room filled with women’s hair, entirely shaved, that was being used as a textile material. We were also shown a room containing a book with every name of those missing or deceased people who had someone to remember them.

Continuing we were shown around the rest of the camp and even shown where the officer who commanded the camp lived with his family, adjacent to the camp.

We then went to the better-known death camp, Auschwitz-B or Auschwitz-Birkenau. This much larger camp was used for mass extermination as well as mass labour with a horrifying number of barracks that were used for housing the imprisoned. We were taken into some of the reconstructed barracks and showed the appalling living conditions as well as where daily activities happened. As the sun lowered, we went into the forest where the gas chambers and incinerators were and had a very sombre walk. The heavy sense of death hung in the air, and all was silent until everyone met in the registration building where the rabbi told us about his grandparent’s story during the holocaust. We then laid remembrance candles before we returned home.

During the follow-up Seminar we were given a time to reflect and to realise what we had learned. A Holocaust survivor shared his story and his experiences which once again consolidated the aim of humanising the people involved and gave us a very personal and first-hand recollection of the events that occurred in what seems to be another time. The full scope of the damage caused that is still felt today resonated with my peers and really brought those experiences closer to home.

I truly believe that this experience was essential to everyone present’s understanding of just how much the Holocaust affected people’s lives and not to dehumanise anyone from either side. It was heavily emphasised during the entire trip just how human every experience was and how every person in the millions of those who perished had a unique and individual story, some that will never be heard. It is important to humanise those who committed atrocious acts as they too are people who made horrible decisions and to try to understand it, not from a bird’s eye view but from a perspective where you can understand and empathise with people.