Wednesday 19 March 2014

Do we need to actually see it?

Do we need to actually see it?

I am writing this post in 2 parts and will post it on line some time in the next couple of days. Right now it is 10:56 local time on Tuesday 18 March and I am sitting on a coach outside Krakow Airport. In a little while we will be at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. I am on a 1-day trip with 2 yr12 students as part of the a Lessons From Auschwitz project. At 47 years old I have just had my first plane flight and, apart from 6 hours in France 20 years ago, this is my first trip abroad.
As a History teacher I have taught about the Holocaust for many years and found it to be one of the most intersting topics of the year. Unlike many history teachers I have not done many trips - a few local castles or 1-day trips to the Black Country Museum, but I have never done the Battlefields or Auschwitz before. I have always had mixed feelings about them. I have always felt that I can understand the horrors of the Somme or Auschwitz without actually being there - or was that my excuse for not going through the laborious, time consuming and stressful experience of organising the trip?
Today will give me the answer. I am excited, curious and apprehensive all at the same time. Later on during the day I will record my feelings - now it is time to catch up with a bit of sleep. 2:45 am is a very early start.

So now it is 7:52pm GMT and I am on the plane back home. How do you describe today? I know it will be the first thing colleagues and students will ask tomorrow - how was it? Right now I'm not sure what to say. I know Auschwitz will play with my emotions for the next few days. Auschwitz is a full- on assault on the senses. Every time you see, hear or feel something awful you turn a corner and get ht by something else.
Auschwitz was nothing like I imagined. In my head I had always pictured it as somewhere remote and isolated but it us in the middle of a town surrounded by roads, shops and residential areas. How could such unbelievable inhumanity go on so close to where people were eating, shopping and living relatively normal lives? At times Auschwitz felt a bit too much of a tourist attraction. The guides are good but moved us around at such a pace it was overwhelming. Often I wanted to stop and look longer at particular exhibits or reflect on what was there but the next group was always hot on your heels. There were points though that will stay with me and haunt me: the heartbreaking piles of hair and shoes, the luggage so carefully, lovingly, proudly labelled but with no hope of ever being returned, one long corridor with cells leading off but hundreds of photographs of victims silently watching us and we walked the corridors where they died and of course the gas chamber itself. It is so hard right now to describe how it felt to walk in and, more poignantly walk out of there.
But for me Auschitz II - Birkenau was more horrific, heartbreaking and impactful. The sheer size of the site, the mind-boggling absurdity of there being a football pitch there and walking along the 'Road to Heaven' - the route that thousands took to the gas chamber. I will never forget the powerful, heart-rending service we all took part in near the memorial in the shadow of the ruins of the gas chamber. We all lit candles and placed them on the memorial or on the train track - a symbol of hope, memory and defiance.
So - do we all need to go to places like Auschwitz? No - it is perfectly possible to have a strong, powerful response to and understanding of the Holocaust without ever leaving the classroom. But - if you do go, it will change your life. Auschwitz will now always be a part of me now. Every time I teach it I will think of today and how it affected me.
The Holocaust Educational Trust do a staggering job. They are making sure that young people not only know about Auschwitz but will tell others about it. I am 47 years old. I have another 21 years ahead of me in teaching. I have to keep teaching now. I have to tell more children about this. If I don't then I am letting down the ghosts I saw and felt today.



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