The railway line at watchtower at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Pictures by Yakir Zur
Sixth form students from Shropshire have visited the sites of the Nazi death camps in Poland – and say the experience is one they will not forget.
They were among more than 200 students, teachers and MPs from the West Midlands who spent Wednesday at the Auschwitz concentration camp and Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where 1.1million people, the majority Jewish, were murdered during the war.
See our photo gallery below
The visit was organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust through its Lessons from Auschwitz project.
The trust, which is Government funded, aims to send two students from every post-16 college in the country to visit Auschwitz.
When they return they tell other students about what they have seen.
“I didn’t realise how big Auschwitz was,” said Tim Brierly, who attends Shrewsbury Sixth Form College.
“Before you come here it’s just numbers, but being here puts it all into some form of context.”
Wednesday’s visit began in the town of Osweicim, where the Germans created Auschwitz.
Osweicim had a 58 per cent Jewish population before the war. Today it has no Jewish community.
Students were shown the Nazi gas chambers, punishment cells and piles of shoes and clothing stolen from new arrivals before they were gassed.
There was also a pile of human hair which the Nazis used for mattresses and socks, and the remains of the ovens in which the bodies were destroyed.
The visit ended with readings and a Hazkara – a memorial prayer – given by Rabbi Barry Marcus of the Central Synagogue in London.
Students then lit memorial candles and placed them on the camp railway track, where the prisoners arrived and were selected to live or die.
Oswestry School student Alexander Mittag, whose great-grandfather survived the concentration camps and went on to be Austria’s chancellor, said the memorial prayer had been a moving moment that would stay with him.
Ellie Staite, who attends Newport Girls’ High School, said: “I think what got me was the shoes. There was this one little white shoe, a child’s shoe, and I started to cry.
“And when we got to Birkenau it was so quiet and so big. I still find it hard to take in, but I’m glad I went.
“It’s only when people learn about it that you can stop it happening again.”
By Andrew Owen
UK News
Most Commented
- Clampdown on Shrewsbury chuggers
- Bishop's gay marriage views do nothing to support bible teachings
- Planners ordered to stay on Newport visit bus
- Letter: Angered by close encounter of the furred kind
- Letter: Alcohol price plans annoy me
- Shrewsbury’s broadband speed one of slowest in UK
- Letter: No sense in overseas job adverts
Shropshire Star on Twitter
Keep updated with the latest breaking news and content on our Twitter feed.
Lifestyle
Interactive Dining Out map
Hundreds of reviews by the Shropshire Star and Express & Star's teams to help you decide where to eat.
Entertainment
All the film reviews
Before you plan a trip to the pictures, get our critics' verdicts on all the latest movie releases.
OUR NEW APP
Get the new Shropshire Star app
Download the Shropshire Star’s new app to your iPad or iPhone to get one week of access to our digital newspapers absolutely FREE.
shropshirestar.com
Popular sections
Useful links
A very moving story.
Maybe this should be a mandatory visit for all young people – lest it should happen again.
and to see how essy it could be – another place for mandatory visit is in Berlin:
Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas
Place of Remembrance
This place of remembrance is a maze of vertical blocks, starting at a low height, less than a metre or so high. As you walk into the centre of the maze, the blocks become much taller, until you can see nothing, no obvious way out. This signifies how the Jewish population were gradually supressed dutring the late 1930′s and early 40′s.
It could happen again.
Be warned.
Report abuse
And to think that there are still people that deny this happened.
It was only 70 or so years ago. It all happened less than 20 years before I was born.
Whenever you see or hear someone making negative generalisations someone based upon their race or their religious beliefs remember what happened in Germany.
Ordinary Germans were just ordinary people like you and I – but look what the politics and propaganda of hatred turned their nation into.
Report abuse
Remember this when the BNP tell you that the whole Holocaust story has been “exaggerated”! “Those who forget the past will be condemned to re-live it in the future”!
Report abuse
Some years ago my wife and I witnessed the ceremony at Massada in Israel when new conscripts into the Israeli Defence Forces swear those telling words “Never Again” at the site of the massif where, rather than be captured and enslaved by the attacking Romans, Jewish Zealots who had been besieged there for some 3 years killed one another with honour. The Romans found not one alive and the event and the location is now enshrined in Jewish history.
This touching event, with the holocaust and it’s memorial at Yad Vashem and the history of the Jewish diaspora and the terrible atrocities committed against the Jews for the millenia has produced a people which rightly deserve the understanding and sympathy of the world and what has happened in the past will never be allowed to happen again. The Jews themselves will see to that as their recent history shows when they attack other countries who appear to threaten their small country.
Just as the young Jewish conscripts are imbued with the nationalism, religious fervour and fighting spirit that affects their very being and approach to every single aspect of their lives and relations with other peoples and countries, our young people should be taught what mankind is capable of just beneath that thin veneer of humanity and civilised behaviour. We must also take to heart that expression, “never again”.
Extremes must never, ever get a hold on any aspect of our life, be they religious, political, social or whatever but, I view the future in this country with some foreboding. Goverments and politicians seem oblivious to the legitimate wishes of the people, extreme policies are forced upon a generally unwilling and unreceptive populace and when opposite, religious extremes are imposed on one another, there is the breeding ground for never ending intolerance and ultimately, holocausts.
Sadly, Israel has not learned from her own history, rather than adopt the philosophy of “never again” with an iron fist in a velvet glove and extending the arm of tolerance, acceptance and justice to the people that she has committed large scale atrocities against, she has adopted all the extremes of a militant, expansionist and agressive state using a steel fist in a steel glove.
What should have been a proud, young and tolerant state ready to set a good example to the world, Israel, by her own policies has justifiably become a state which is viewed with contempt and anger by many decent people. Rather than accept the norms, values and principles of the liberal democracies which she purports to be, she has adopted the policies of the intolerant far eastern Europeans who view life as cheap and oppression and subjugation of other people as the accepted norm.
One awful consequence of this is that Israel is now running out of the good-will and sympathy that she once had and the world as a whole is the poorer for it. Only when she makes an effort to accommodate her neighbours in their rightful aspirations to their own state will the world be a better place.
Report abuse
Stuart,
Couldn’t agree more about the way the Israeli state behaves – the classic case of the abused becoming the abuser it seems.
As far as the zealous young conscripts go, it’s unfortunately the case that many of them would struggle to show any history in the land they call their own – many are really fundamentalist American-Israelis, having spent their formative years in the US rather than growing up in Israel.
Today’s announcement that Israeli parties of the far right, who are in favour of populating Palestinian lands as settlers and against a ‘two-state’ solution, have agreed to enter into a broader right-wing coalition with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, should concern is all – the prospects for peace in the Middle-East look a little further away today.
Report abuse
Sadly it was prominent members of the Holocaust Educational Trust who appeared in Trafalgar Square in January to express their support for the Israeli assault on Gaza.
I am afraid the Holocaust has become an alibi for the atrocities carried out by a sectarian state where anyone who does not belong to the master religion is systematically discriminated against and persecuted.
Report abuse
Peter, agreed. I gave up trying to understand Israeli politics many years ago. As far as I can see, the parties, and there are very many of them and many which are Zionist, may say that they support a two state settlement to the problem, I doubt very much whether they are being honest and truthful. What sort of political system is it where one party (Netanyahu) gets 27 seats in an election and the main opponent, Zipi Livni gets 28 and the one with 27 seats is told to form a government. Crazy, but that is Israeli politics. The outcome however should, as you say concern us all. Anything which has the touch of Netanyahu about it, spells disaster for peace and as for the Russian Israeli, Avigdor Lieberman, well, his philosophy can best be summed up by his maxim, “all Israeli Arabs will be required to swear an oath of allegiance to the State of Israel, if they don’t, they will be kicked into the sea”.
The most of many evils but hopefully, when this pair get into their stride, the results may well force America to act because their is going to be trouble.
The plain fact is, that if a two state solution is to come about, “land”, and Palestinian land at that would be the critical factor and Israel is not prepared to give up an inch of the left Bank or the occupied territories. Gaza was another matter, Israel did not want that, it does not form the land of Judea and Samaria and Israel does want that and is determined to have it, Palestinian owned or otherwise.
A really tragic situation and what I totally fail to understand is that the Israelis commit the most blatant war crimes and crimes against humanity and the world, with America in the lead – does nothing at all. That is the Zionist lobby in the US of course.
The only bright spot in a seemingly hopeless situation is that dissent is growing in Israel itself, many people are bucking and kicking against the excesses carried out by the Israeli Government and Defence Force against the Palestinians, indeed, there is some small pockets of dissent in the IDF itself.
Certainly Jon, there can be no doubt whatsoever that Israel is a racist state as far as the Palestinians are concerned, it’s outrageous policies should shame the world for allowing them but whether they can be termed racist “across the board” as you suggest is debatable, yes, they regard themselves as the “chosen people”, indeed it is this that is at the heart of their very being but I can only speak as I find, with two exceptions where we experienced shocking treatment at the hands of a Captain and soldiers in the IDF and with a Security Officer (a 17 year old Student doing compulsory baggage checks at Ben Gurion Airport) we found them an incredibly friendly, helpful and wonderful people, I would go so far to say we found them the most wonderful people in the world but then, we are not Arabs, we lived there for a short time and they knew we were transient. It could be a different matter if we were from an Arab country then, I agree things could be pretty unpleasant
Israel cuts off it’s nose to spite it’s face and I would be it’s biggest friend if it turned over a new leaf but as things stand, I am implacably opposed to everything it stands for.
Report abuse