Post 1 - the start

Lessons from Auschwitz training

Day 1 - Seminar in Manchester 11/06/17


Joe Elliott and I have begun our Holocaust training with the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET).  Briefly, I left home at 10.00 am & scooped Joe up & headed off to Manchester, our hope of getting there for 12.20 was dashed when we hit road works, but got there for 12.45, registered & took our places for a 1.00 start.

The seminar started with the aims for the course which are;

1.   To learn about the history of the Holocaust, including the role played by the camps such as Auschwitz - Birkenau

2.   To remember that All of those involved in the Holocaust were individual human beings

3.   To increase our understanding of the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust and pass this understanding onto others

We have all been put into groups (we're group 9), & we then had an hour in our groups for discussion.

The question we looked at was "What was the Holocaust?"  The HET defines it as "The Holocaust was the attempt by Nazi Germany and it's collaborators to murder all Jews" We looked at some photos taken before the war, all of Jews in different situations i.e. a football team, a family portrait, children having fun etc.  They were from different countries across Europe. We looked at anything from the photos which made them stand out as Jews which in most cases was nothing.  On the back of the photos was information about them, where they were from etc.  We then discussed the following questions.  

1.  When did the Holocaust happen?

2.  Where did the Holocaust happen?

3.  Why did Nazi Germany want to murder all Jews?

4.  How did Nazi Germany try to murder all Jews?

5.  Who were the collaborators?

It brought up quite a lot of discussion.  We looked at a map of 2000 years of Jewish Life in Europe

Taken from The Holocaust - A guide for students and teachers by David Cesarani - Published by the HET 2010.

It shows how spread out across Europe the Jews were and how long they had lived there.  This was in 1939.  It's hard to see on here, but an example is Germany - 1618 years, Czechoslovakia - 1000 years, Greece - 2239 years, Holland - 800 years etc.  So they were quite spread out.

We then had a talk from a Holocaust survivor Rudi Oppenheimer.  He mapped out life in Germany, a short spell in Britain and finally in Holland as war broke out.  I won't say too much about his speech other than is was heart rendering.  Rudi's family were Jews but not practicing Jews & this made no difference at all.  To cut a long story short, their parents died in Bergen-Belsen - the same place as Anne Frank.  The children survived only because their young sister had a British passport.  If you want to know more, here is the book Rudi's brother Paul wrote about their experience.  

I learned so much from this talk.

We then had a very short break, after which there were questions for Rudi.  What an inspiring man.  

We then went back into our groups to resume out discussions.  The photos we had looked at before, we were now given the same photo on a different card, as on the back it told us what had happened to the people in the photos.  That was hard.  I suppose I had guessed in a way, but to know for sure wasn't a nice feeling.  Most of them had been transported from which ever country they had been in at the start of the war to the death camps in Poland.

Hard facts ......

• Persecution of the Jews actually started in Germany about 1933 - hence the Kindertransport eventually started in 1938 to rescue Jewish children (but not their parents).
• The mass killings started in 1941

• There were six death camps in Poland, camps in other countries were mainly concentration camps, which were mainly work camps - in which many people also died.  Also a few holding/transit centres.
• Mass shootings took place in Russia, Lithuania (by collaborators) and Croatia (by right wing groups).
• We always blame Hitler for all this - yes he was at the forefront of  making sure it was carried out, but persecution had started before he came to power.  The Nazi movement started it.

Well the course finally finished about 5.15 & we set off back.  Got stuck in traffic & I didn't make it home until 8.00, by which time I was shattered & a little emotionally drained, but not too bad ..... yet.

So post one is complete.  Post 2 in a couple of days will outline what is to happen on Thursday on the trip to Poland & Auschwitz.  Then Post 3 will be about our trip.  If you want any more information, then just ask Joe or myself.  

Thank you for reading this.