Following their participation in a project organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust, which included a visit to Auschwitz, Dorothea Schupelius and Philip Nelson (both 18), gave a moving presentation to the entire School yesterday morning. Director of Studies Richard Tanner gives his reflections here:
What will we remember from Dorothea and Philip’s talk about the Holocaust?
That only seventy years ago in Germany a government set up an industry to murder 6 million Jews, “The Final Solution”.
That Dorothea and Philip visited Auschwitz and saw the gas chambers and the ovens for themselves.
That Dorothea and Philip met Susan Pollock, a survivor who was sent to Auschwitz as a child and told them how only she and her brother survived and all the rest of her family were killed.
That anti-Semitism, stirred up by Hitler and the Nazis, began by looking for someone to blame, led to hatred, violence, separation into ghettos, dehumanisation and finally loss of the right to live.
That millions of others who did not fit in with the Nazi Aryan ideal were also killed: homosexuals, gypsies, criminals.
That millions of people were persuaded by lies, propaganda and intimidation to hate and join in the persecution, or stand by and do nothing to stop it.
We will not forget the railway trucks.
We will not forget the barbed wire.
We will not forget the photographs of starving people.
We will not forget Dr Mengele’s experiments.
We will not forget the death walks.
We will not forget the pointed guns.
We will not forget the bodies.
We will not forget the Holocaust.
We will remember Daniel’s haunting composition as Charlotte, Sam, Lorena and Frankie played over the echoes of the Final Solution.
We will remember the stone we held in our hand and laid on the cairn.
We will remember that the future is in our hands.