To understand History, the phrase ‘seeing is believing’ really is the case: it helps people to set events in their mind and gain some empathy with people from hundreds of years ago. Whilst we were unable to go abroad this year on our usual History trip to the Battlefields, we were able to take the opportunity to do a virtual tour of Auschwitz, the most notorious Nazi concentration camp, using the medium of a video tour from a tour company we worked with when we went to Russia a few years ago, TCBC.
The morning for the UIV (Year 9) girls started with some background information and activities that got the students to consider what pre-war Jewish life was like. Many were surprised to learn that antisemitism existed before the war, and that life varied for Jews in Europe depending on where they were from and what class they were in. This set the scene for the tour of Auschwitz which covered a variety of different points in the Museum. Auschwitz I, the original site, now houses many of the displays of items stolen from prisoners by the Nazis as well as images taken at the time by SS officers. It is also the site of the only gas chamber that is still standing, the others having been blown up by the Nazis in 1945 before they began retreating to Germany. The tour was thoughtfully done, with certain areas (such as the gas chamber, and the display of hair) not being filmed out of respect for those who suffered and lost their lives. The second part of the tour focused on Auschwitz II or Auschwitz Birkenau, 3km from the first site. This is the site of the infamous watchtower, which the tour guides climbed to try and give those watching a sense of the vastness of this second site, and sheer number of prisoners that lived, suffered and died on this site.
The students had lots of questions on the video and more generally. They had the opportunity to do their own research on individuals who suffered at Auschwitz in order to create a display, using luggage labels, honouring and memorialising these individuals whilst remembering that so many stories remain unknown. This visual display will link to the piles of luggage now on display in the museum that people brought with them to Auschwitz, hoping for a new life only for it to be cruelly torn away from them. We finished the day learning about Freddie Knoller, now 100, who managed to survive Auschwitz and shares his testimony; these last two activities were to reinforce the point that remembering the Holocaust is not simply about numbers but about the individual stories that each of them had.
Mrs Samantha Handy, Head of History and Politics