MCLAREN HIGH
AUSCHWITZ TRIP 2019
This month pupils Eloise Murray and Archie Farquharson travelled to Poland as part of an excursion to visit Auschwitz in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust who work alongside schools and colleges in order to educate about the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance.
Every experience of Auschwitz is not the same”. This is a statement that was true during the time of the Holocaust and to this day, with our own interpretations. We experienced it through the Lessons From Auschwitz organisation as education, we were taught how many others viewed it, from Soviet prisoners, Jews, Romani travellers and the SS members themselves.
Our personal journey was an early morning plane, comfortable bus journey and a late return home. This felt so removed from what happened within Auschwitz One and Auschwitz Two, Birkenau. For those who haven’t been what needs to be understood is that the millions who died went there with the expectation they were going to live their lives there – it was to be a home.
There isn’t anything that can prepare you for the amount of belongings you walk past that was removed from them. However, it was not just material belongings, we are shown the hair that was removed from women and used to aid the Germans during the war. They lost parts of themselves, for many this is the only part that remains.
The striking matter of Birkenau is what cannot be grasped until it is seen; the sheer size of the camp, the size of the uncompleted camp that was expected to be expanded further.
The trip supplies an experience that is so different from any other, we were shown the exact location of genocide and it was walking through the makeshift “blocks” of pre-fab stables for holding Jews and the original crematorium that we were reminded that injustice cannot be allowed to survive ever again, that as humankind we failed once, it’s unbelievable that we allow anything similar to continue.
EloiseeMurr