A Day to Reflect
Earlier this month, I was given the incredible opportunity to take part in a conference in Poland to teach young people about the legacy of the Holocaust to ensure it doesn’t happen again. It is impossible to describe what it’s like to visit the Auschwitz network of concentration camps. The whole experience was harrowing and overwhelming, and really made me reflect on life and society both in that period and today.
Today marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and so during our visit, we saw the preparation for the memorial.
On our first day we walked to the second Auschwitz camp which was built by prisoners. This camp - Auschwitz-Birkenau - was where the majority of prisoners were murdered by the Nazi regime in gas chambers. The route we walked was the so called ‘Walk of the Dead’; named because many of the starved and tortured prisoners forced to walk between camps every day that did not survive. Now survivors of the camp take this route every year on Holocaust Memorial Day and have reclaimed it as the ‘Walk of the Living’.
We spent four days at the various Auschwitz concentration camps learning in depth about the atrocities that happened there. I heard stories of tragedy and bravery, hope and helplessness. In between visiting the sites, I participated in workshops where we discussed what we had seen, and the way discrimination and xenophobia still exists and divides people in modern society today. We also created a piece of theatre that expressed our trip that we will share in our hometown of Oldham as part of their Holocaust Education and Memorial Week.
A highlight of the trip was meeting with a lady who had been declared ‘Righteous Among Nations’ by Israeli’s Yad Vashem. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, the lady was living in Kraków and made the brave and dangerous decision, alongside her mother and sister, to hide a Jewish girl in their house. Despite living close to the castle where a high-ranking Nazi (Hans Frank) lived, the girl was never found. It was such a privilege to meet this amazing woman and learn about her experience, and also her life after the war and continued friendship with the girl that her family saved.
Author: Emily Moore
Emily inspired young people in her gap year. In January 2020, she spoke at an international conference in Poland on the legacy of the Holocaust.
It is important that among the many stories of cruelty and horror, that the acts of heroism and humanity are shared. It is impossible to find the words to summarise the experience. I would urge everyone to, if they can, visit the camp and bear witness to the wickedness that occurred there. It is also important that we challenge xenophobia and prejudice in all its forms because, as one speaker at the conference told us, “the Holocaust did not start with the gas chambers”.
Around the various exhibitions there were words which prompted you to reflect. One in particular that stayed with me was printed next to the gas chamber:
‘Mummy, will it hurt when they kill us?’
‘No, my dearest, it will not hurt - it will only take a minute.’
It may have only taken a minute, but it is enough to keep us awake till the end of time.