Helensburgh pupils share Auschwitz experience

Feb 5 2010 by Marc Mclean, Lennox Herald (main ed)

TWO pupils from Hermitage Academy recently delivered a history lesson that should never be forgotten.

Grant Atkinson and Amy Spooner shared their experiences of visiting Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland with other pupils at the Helensburgh high school.

Their special speech marked Holocaust Memorial Day and was witnessed by Holocaust survivor Rudi Oppenheimer, who also told his remarkable life story.

The 17-year-olds, along with 200 other S5/6 pupils from the West of Scotland, travelled to Auschwitz in September with the Holocaust Educational Trust as part of the Lessons from Auschwitz project. And here Amy shares some of her pictures with Lennox Herald readers.

Around 1.1 million Jewish people were killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz before it was liberated by Russian soldiers on January 27, 1945.

Grant said: “We travelled a few miles to Auschwitz 1, the first of the concentration camps. At first, it is everything you imagine it not to be, full of tourists, ice-cream stalls, and not something you would expect when visiting a site of mass extermination.

“Our Polish tour guide took us around the site. We visited rooms full of items the Jews had taken with them – shoes, clothes, suitcases and other items that we would use today.

“The sheer size of these rooms was astonishing, and to know that it was only a small fraction of the extent they found took us aback, and as we walked back through the gate ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Work Set You Free) we felt lucky, since so many did not get the chance to walk back out as we did.”

He went on: “Auschwitz-Birkenau was more like a concentration camp. It was roughly 1km by 2km. The size of it shocked us, to think that this was full of innocent people imprisoned and killed for their ethnic group.

“We stood on the platform where thousands of families were forced to separate, and for many, it was the last time of seeing one another. It was a difficult concept to understand that teenagers of our age and younger had to experience slave manual labour.

“In the time available, it was impossible to walk around the whole camp. We visited the collapsed gas chambers where over a million people were murdered.”

The pupils on the trip lit candles along the train tracks leading directly to the camp and also prayed for those who had lost their lives at a ceremony given by the Rabbi of the Central Synagogue.

The aim of the trip and project was for Grant and Amy to pass on the lessons that can be learned from Auschwitz.

They told fellow pupils: “We have discovered that the individuals who were victims of this terrible crime were similar to ordinary people of today. It raised the question: could this ever happen again?

“We live in a world full of conflict and mistrust, so how long will it take for another event similar to the Holocaust to occur?

“As ambassadors of the Lessons from Auschwitz project, it is our responsibility to present our experiences to an audience and help them understand that racism and sectarianism cannot be tolerated.”