LESSON FROM AUSCHWITZ PROJECT (LFA)

Last month, we, along with 180 others, had the incredible opportunity to participate in the Lessons From Auschwitz Project (LFA) scheme run by the Holocaust educational trust in order to become ambassadors for their cause. The aim of LFA is to re-humanize the lives lost during the Holocaust, achieved by attending a starter seminar where the discussions revolved around the lives of Jewish people before the discrimination took place.

The educational visit to Poland involved visiting the sites of Auschwitz and Birkenau. This experience was unforgettable and indescribable. The personal possessions preserved at Auschwitz were unsettling and the vastness of Birkenau left a lasting impression in our memory.

It is essential to note that the persecution of the Jewish people did not start at the beginning of World War II, but arguably hundreds of years before, and unfortunately, this is still a dire issue to this day. Even before the assumed dates of the Holocaust, the oppression of Jewish communities was developing with the use of isolation within society and countless hate crimes. This issue continued to expand rapidly as they lost their citizenship and were forced to wear the yellow star of David upon their clothes to identify who they were. Due to the lack of protest and opposition from whom we consider bystanders, this led to the most devastating mass genocide in modern history.

In order to contribute to our aim of re-humanising the innocent lives if ordinary people lost in the Holocaust, we plan to raise awareness with the Highcliffe School community. Our first step is to educate the younger students by sharing our knowledge and experience. Then they will be encouraged to research into the lives of an individual to bring back their humanity. Following this, each person researched will have their stories immortalised in our own version of the Book of Names, in the form of a time memorial. Regrettably, not every single person can be remembered by us, but we hope that our contribution will go some way in re-humanising them.

A thousand pictures and a thousand words can be used to show an extent of the Holocaust, but nothing can compare to witnessing it with your own eyes.