I participated in the ‘Lessons From Auschwitz’ project with Holocaust Educational Trust and it changed my perspective on life.
Tyler Saunders - Teacher of Philosophy and Religion at Pencoedtre High School
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I was extremely privileged to be able to obtain a teacher’s space on the project and to accompany two of my sixth form pupils from Pencoedtre High School on a trip to Auschwitz. The project aims to ‘increase knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust for young people and to clearly highlight what can happen if prejudice and racism become acceptable.’ The project included an online platform with modules which helped us to prepare for our trip, zoom calls before and after the trip, and a trip to Auschwitz. The preparation modules focused on defining the ‘Holocaust’ and pre-war Jewish life where we considered the life of Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. We were shown a range of different stories about Jewish people who lived across Europe and how they conveyed their identities through their appearance, interests and relationships.
The week before the trip we had a zoom call with everyone participating in the project. The call focused on preparation for the trip and reflecting upon the online learning. We also split into break out rooms and met with our incredible Holocaust Educator, Graham Cole and the rest of our group. He was extremely engaging as he imparted his knowledge with us and questioned different members of the group about the online learning. Graham made a real effort to get to know us all and also gave us some practical tips for the trip to ensure we all prepared properly for the day. These included – bringing lots of food as we wouldn’t have time to stop for lunch, wearing warm clothes and packing plenty of empty bottles to top up with water in the airport after security.
On the day of the trip (Tuesday 28th February) we had to be in Cardiff Airport at 4.30 AM. We boarded the plane at 6.30 AM for a 2-and-a-half-hour flight. Pictured on the left are the two students I went with - Amina and Mia. On the flight Graham came around to introduce himself in person and to talk to us a little bit about the day. He asked me if any of my pupils would like to read a poem at the memorial service at Auschwitz-Birkenau and I nominated Amina, the more confident of the two pupils on the trip with me. She agreed to do the reading and spent the flight learning the poem. When we arrived we were directed to the buses where we embarked on a 50 minute bus journey to Oświęcim (the Polish name for ‘Auschwitz’ as the Nazis changed the language and all of the town names to German when they took over).
On the way to the town we were introduced to Rabbi Hackenbroch who was accompanying us on the trip today. The trip always has a Rabbi so that they can explain the impact of the Holocaust on Jews today. Both Graham and the Rabbi told stories as we drove along about the surrounding areas. One that shocked me was about how many companies had used Jewish slave labour during the war and profited from it without any punishment and those companies are still going today. We drove past a petrol station which was one of these companies.
The Rabbi told us a story about a Jew known as ‘Yossele the Holy Miser’ – a Jewish Rabbi who lived in Krakow in the 17th century who was known for being stingy and not contributing to charity despite his great wealth. When he died the village people were reluctant to bury him and buried him right at the back of the cemetery where nobody else would want to be buried. Soon after he died the townspeople were going to the Rabbi as they had stopped receiving the anonymous donations they had been regularly receiving and the Rabbi realised they must have come from Yoselle. He told the townspeople and they went to his grave to ask for forgiveness. The word ‘Tzadik’ meaning ‘righteous man’ was inscribed on his grave. The Rabbi asked to be buried next to him at the back of the cemetery because he was inspired by the fact that he gave money in private and didn’t seek any recognition for it. You can read the full story in detail here.
Oświęcim
When we arrived at Oświęcim we went to the site of a former Synagogue called Oshpitzin. All that remains there now is a sign which detailed what happened to the synagogue and a small replica of the Synagogue. As we stood in that spot, we discussed what it would have been like there before the Holocaust. Jews would have made up 58% of the population of the town and would have been a big part of society. The Synagogue would have been an important building for religious and non-religious events and the rabbis that worked there would have worked closely with the priests in the churches nearby. We talked about how the loss of the Jews in that town was not just a physical loss of people – it was a loss of culture, artists, sportspeople, businesses and community. In November 1939, special German forces lit the synagogue ablaze. The Germans surrounded the area and with guns drawn threatened to shoot anyone daring to leave the house. The Jews could only weep from afar at this blaze which consumed the House of the Lord.
Auschwitz 1
We took a 5-minute bus drive from here to Auschwitz 1 – a Holocaust site which has been turned into a museum so that the atrocities that took place are never forgotten. Upon arrival we had to show our tickets, go through security, get a headset and meet our tour guide – Berta. Our Holocaust educator Graham asked us to reflect upon our first impressions as we entered and the irony of needing a ticket when the victims of the Holocaust did not. The camp was not designed specifically for mass murder – it was originally a camp for prisoners of war. However, it expanded as the Nazis developed the ‘Final Solution’ and the goal to obliterate Jews altogether. In the end, Auschwitz was a huge complex that was made up of 49 subcamps where people were either forced to work or killed. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1.1 million were murdered there. I have taught about the Holocaust and done a lot of reading about it over the years but nothing can prepare you for seeing the place it happened in person.
There were many different victims of the Holocaust and each of them had their own story. They all had a unique experience which we cannot compare with the experiences of others in the camp. Throughout the day we talked about many of the stories of the victims. The majority of the victims were Jewish and the Nazis tried to strip the rights of Jewish citizens and made their lives hell – even before they arrived at the camps. The Nuremberg laws (1935) stripped away the rights of the Jews as they didn’t believe they were part of the superior Aryan race. Some Jews were taken to ghettos before they arrived at the camps – another horrific experience for them. Polish people were also victims of the Holocaust as the Nazis considered them to be racially inferior– many of the people living around the site of Auschwitz had their homes destroyed and were sent to the camps to die so they would not witness what was going on. Other victims included Roma/Sinti people, LGBTQ+ people, soviet prisoners of wars and prisoners from other ethnic groups.
We started the tour at the ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign. The tour guide explained the irony of the sign which means ‘work makes you free’ as no matter how hard they worked – freedom was not the reality for the vast majority of people who would enter that camp. We walked through building after building with different items preserved from when they liberated the camps. Of the most shocking was a long glass cabinet full of hair which would have been shaved off the prisoners and sold on to make fabric. Jews would have been tattooed with a number which would have been used to identify them. The tattoos were usually on the arm, however, some children had to be tattooed on the leg as their arms weren’t long enough. It would be used to track them to ensure they did not escape. This removal of their names and their hair was also a part of dehumanising the prisoners and taking away their identity. For many survivors, the tattoo was a constant reminder of their experiences during the Holocaust.
When the Jews arrived they would be given a uniform – the infamous striped pyjamas. They would wear these 24/7. We saw examples of these and they would not have been enough to keep them warm in the harsh winters of Poland. We saw children’s clothes that were left behind and thousands of pairs of glasses – only the cheap ones as the most expensive ones would have been taken by the Nazis. We also saw thousands of shoes that were left behind – two long cabinets running down a long corridor. It was impossible to find a pair amongst these shoes. Graham asked us to reflect upon our own shoes – the different brands we were all wearing – how we had all become accustomed to our own shoes and how wearing another person’s pair of shoes never felt the same. The shoes that we saw belonged to real people – they would have been designer shoes of the time and would have been moulded to the feet of someone who is now dead.
When Jews were deported to the camps, they would have been told they were going somewhere and to pack up all of their belonging. They would have packed their valuables which would have been taken away from them as soon as they arrived at Auschwitz. The Nazis would have taken these to a place called ‘Kanada’ where they would have been sorted through and any valuables would have been taken by the Nazis. We saw some of the suitcases left behind. Suitcases with names and addresses written on in large letters. Suitcases of people with a hope for survival. Suitcases that spoke a thousand words.
One of the powerful displays was of the Jewish prayer shawls that were left behind. These would have been smuggled in by Jews at great risk. Many Jews would have still continued to try and practice their religion in the camps. This is called spiritual resistance as no matter how hard the Nazis tried the Jews could still resist in small ways and continue to practice religion. Some Jews risked their lives to trade items in order to be able to practice some of the festivals. For example, they would have created make shift candles to celebrate Hannukah. This spiritual resistance would have given them hope and the desire to keep fighting and survive. Some people would even go into the gas chambers knowing they faced certain death singing prayers.
As we walked in and out of the buildings, we heard many different stories. We stood where people would have been lined up and executed, we walked past places where people would have been experimented on and where people were starved to death as a punishment for others trying to escape. We walked into a building that was full of photographs of the victims which the Nazis took as they were processed upon entry into the camp. The photos lined the walls and had the dates of deportation and the dates of death… many of which were only months apart. Our guide told us a story of a time where she was giving a tour and a man asked where he could get copies of the pictures on the walls. She asked him why and he replied, ‘because this was my mother’. That man had no pictures of his mother but remembers her being deported to Auschwitz. Our guide directed him to the archives where he got a copy of the picture for himself.
One of the most powerful ways to convey the vastness of the number of victims was the ‘Book of Names’. A huge book which took up a huge portion of the room which contained 4 million names of the 6 million victims of the Holocaust. The reason there is only 4 million is because 2 million of the names are still unknown. As we stood in that room looking at the names of the victims, the Rabbi talked about the impact of the Holocaust on many survivors of the Holocaust. He talked about looking up his own surname in the book and seeing his own relatives that were murdered during the Holocaust.
The final place we went in Auschwitz 1 was the crematorium which was used from August 1940 to July 1943. This would have been used to incinerate the bodies of the deceased prisoners from the camp. At the end of September 1941 the first gas chamber was created in the former morgue room. The SS used it until December 1942. The Nazis used Zyklon B which was a pesticide to murder the Jews in the gas chambers. The Nazis would not have been involved in the burning of the bodies – they would have forced the Jews to do these jobs as they would never get their hands dirty.
Auschwitz-Birkenau
We took a 5 minute bus journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau and we ate our lunch on the bus on the way as we were so tight on time. When we got to the front of the camp we considered the rail network as being pivotal for the Nazis in bringing in Jews from all over Europe. Our Holocaust educator Graham held up a picture of his hand on a train track in Greece which would have linked to Auschwitz – this brought home how far some people travelled. Some people travelled as long as 9 days in cattle cars – many people did not survive the journey. The train drivers would drive the train up to the front of the camp then the SS guards would take over and drive the train through the gates. They did this so that people would not see what was going on inside the camps.
When they arrived at the camp they would have gone through ‘selection’ where it would be decided whether they would live or die. SS doctors such as Josef Mengele would stand there and point left or right – one group would be taken straight to the gas chambers and one group would be taken to their barracks and put to work. On average 1 in 10 Jews were selected for work. Although they may have survived the selection – this did not mean they would survive the harsh living conditions as well as being underfed and overworked in the camp. As we stood in the spot where selection would have taken place, Graham read out a testimony from the Holocaust survivor Elle Wiesel where he was separated from his mother and sisters and this was the last time he ever saw them. This was an extremely powerful moment as we stood in the exact spot that would have happened.
We walked around barracks where we saw replica bunk beds which would have had three layers. Our guide told us the top bunk would have been the best spot as the rats couldn’t get up there. The beds did not have mattresses – they had some straw if they were lucky. There was a heating system which was two fires and a pipe running down the middle of the room – this would not have been very effective in the freezing cold winters. There were often 7 or 8 to a bunk and if you got up in the night you would lose your space.
We also saw the latrines where they would have gone to the toilet. These were simply holes in concrete blocks and there was no plumbing system. The Jews would have had to work in here to clean it out as the Nazis wouldn’t have gone inside there. The Jews would have been given a very limited time in the latrines and it was the most unpleasant place. As we stood outside the barracks, Rabbi Hackenbroch told us what it would have been like in the latrines. He told us an emotional story of Dr Gisella Perl who saved many lives in the camps. She was a gynaecologist who risked her life to save many. You can read her story here.
When the Nazis knew the camps were about to be liberated, they tried to destroy the evidence of what they had been doing by blowing up the gas chambers. The ruins are still there today and have been preserved. Graham spoke to us about the importance of eyewitness accounts and written testimony of what happened. Those that worked in the gas chambers knew they would be killed as they were witnesses to what had happened but some people managed to steal items to write down testimony of what happened and bury them deep in the ground so they would be preserved. Zalman Gradowski is an example of one of the people who buried their written testimonies. This is extremely important as the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence. Even today, people try to deny the Holocaust ever happened.
We ended the trip in the building that the victims would have entered first – where they would have been stripped of their belonging and identity. In this room there were many different images and stories of Jews and what their life was like before the war. We gathered for a ceremony led by the Rabbi who read out prayers and readings. 6 students read out poems including Amina. This was a poignant moment and I was proud of Amina for standing up in front of more than 200 people in Auschwitz and reading out a poem – an unforgettable experience. We went outside and lit candles which we laid down in memorial. We left the camp feeling a mixture of emotions. We got the bus back to the airport and flew home – landing in Cardiff at about 10 PM. The day was tiring and emotional and a lot of the stories, facts and figures would take a while to sink in.
Amina reading the poem
The poem Amina read
The memorial candles we lit
On Sunday the 5th of March we had a follow up seminar to reflect upon the experience. We spoke with Graham about the experience and he helped us to plan our next steps. We were also extremely fortunate to hear the testimony of a Holocaust survivor – Manfred Goldberg, now aged 93. He had a childhood in the camps and told us his story. There were so many moments throughout his testimony where he could have so easily been killed but by chance he managed to survive. He did, however, have to deal with the loss of his brother – although he never had it confirmed how he died. He has been back to the camps and has shown Prince William and Kate around with another survivor. He left us with a powerful message -
“Silence never helps the victim; it only encourages the oppressor”.
Graham – our amazing Holocaust educator – challenged us to tell as many people as possible about what we had seen and experienced that day. Upon telling the stories to my family, friends and peers, I have really felt a sense of responsibility to remember what happened during the Holocaust. What I saw that day really did change my perspective on life. It encouraged me not to take things for granted, to call out prejudice when I see it, and to make sure I continue talking about the Holocaust. I feel extremely lucky to have taken part in this project – not only to go and see the Holocaust sites but to have completed the project as a whole. I will never forget my trip to Auschwitz – an experience that has shaped me as a person. Although it was a harrowing and treacherous thing that happened - I believe everyone should go and experience it at least once in their lives.
For me the stark contrast of this image is so powerful - the beautiful sunset representing hope in the darkness at a place which saw so many atrocities - we must never forget what happened there.
I will leave you with a quotation I saw in the camp:
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana.
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