EMOTIONAL VISIT TO AUSCHWITZ
On October 6th 2010, Lynsey Brown and Caitlyn Lalley from King’s Park Secondary visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the Lessons from Auschwitz Project. This project is run annually by the Holocaust Educational Trust and takes hundreds of students to the site to teach them about the history of Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
Over 200 pupils, teachers and journalists travelled to Poland that day, and everybody agreed it was a very emotional experience.
To begin with, a pre-war Jewish cemetery was visited to get a feel of what everyday life was like before the Holocaust. Many of the graves we saw were in extremely bad condition as they had been wrecked by Nazi officials, and pieced back together by the few remaining Jewish citizens in Krakow after the Holocaust.
Next was the visit to Auschwitz. What struck the group straight away was how normal it looked, particularly in the sunshine. Inside the museum, you are met with hundreds of photographs lining the walls of all types of people, with the date they were registered at Auschwitz and the day they died. Many of these people lived for only between a week to a month. The “Death Wall” was also visited where prisoners who broke the rules were shot. On display were thousands upon thousands of tonnes of human hair, toddlers’ shoes, and pairs of glasses taken from the many victims
Next came the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the extermination camp itself. Today it is right beside a motorway and a city. The size of the place strikes you. It runs on for miles. Stables built for fifty horses, during the Holocaust, held around 700 prisoners. The latrines were just concrete blocks with hundreds of holes in them just inches apart. A survivor, described herself as “privileged,” because she had the job of cleaning the toilets.
Finally, a small ceremony in memory of the prisoners was held. Poems and testimonies from survivors were read as well as a speech from Rabbi Marcus Barry, who accompanied the students on the trip. Hundreds of candles were lit and left on the railway tracks which led from all over Europe, straight into Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The whole experience was very emotional for us and everybody else involved. We feel very privileged to have been involved in this trip and we will never forget it.