Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

School trip to Auschwitz - opimnions

161 replies

forsale · 19/09/2007 15:19

dd has brought a letter home from school re: a visit to Krakow with a view to visiting Auschwitz - Does anyone have experience of this?

OP posts:
BecauseImWorthIt · 19/09/2007 22:29

And while we're on the subject - on a roll here - why not take our children to an abbatoir. Shouldn't they know where their meat comes from?

I'm sorry, but sometimes I really do think we are trying to protect our children too much for too long.

I am a very kind mummy, even if it doesn't sound like it!

berolina · 19/09/2007 22:30

It is a crime in Germany and Austria, lisalisa (I think Irving was prosecuted in Austria).

gibberish · 19/09/2007 22:30

She didnt say that maisym. Read the posts again

FluffyMummy123 · 19/09/2007 22:30

Message withdrawn

tiredemma · 19/09/2007 22:30

I think its too young- looking back to myself at 14, I thought I was a fairly mature girl- even then, no way would I have been able to cope emotionally with something like Auschwitz. Not at all- not without a parent there.

southeatsastras · 19/09/2007 22:30

how did they? (interested)

my dad was only 10 in 1940

FluffyMummy123 · 19/09/2007 22:31

Message withdrawn

fortyplus · 19/09/2007 22:31

From the website... Judge for yourself whether your own child would appreciate it.

What There Is to See

The grounds and buildings of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps are open to visitors in their entirety, with the exception of several blocks in Auschwitz I that house the administration, Museum departments, and storage. There is generally access to all barracks at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. The duration of a visit is determined solely by the individual interests and needs of the visitors. As a minimum, however, at least one-and-a-half hours each should be reserved for the grounds and exhibitions of Auschwitz I and for the Birkenau site. It is necessary to visit both parts of the camp, Birkenau and Auschwitz, in order to acquire a proper sense of the place that has become the symbol of the Holocaust.

Auschwitz I is where the Nazis opened the first Auschwitz camps for men and women, where they carried out the first experiments at using Zyklon B to put people to death, where they murdered the first mass transports of Jews, where they conducted the first criminal experiments on prisoners, where they carried out most of the executions by shooting, where the central jail for prisoners from all over the camp complex was located in Block No. 11, and where the camp commandant's office and most of the SS offices were located. From here, the camp administration directed the further expansion of the camp complex.

In the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp, everything happened on a magnified scale. This is where the Nazis erected most of the machinery of mass extermination in which they murdered approximately one million European Jews. At the same time, Birkenau was the largest concentration camp (with nearly 300 primitive barracks, most of them wooden). Over a hundred thousand prisoners at a time were here: Jews, Poles, Roma, and others. The site of this camp contains places that are still full of human ashes; the greatest portion of what remains of the Auschwitz complex is here. The vastness of the space, the primitive barracks for the prisoners, the ruins or remains of other structures, and the miles of camp fence and roads give a full sense of what cannot be conveyed in words: infinite baseness, cruelty, and human criminality, and the specific camp architecture that served one purpose alone: the destruction of human beings.

From January 2005, the so-called Judenrampe has been commemorated. This is the siding located between Auschwitz and Birkenau and it was here that in 1942-1944 deported Jews, Poles, Roma, and others arrived. Up until May 1944 newly arrived Jews were selected by SS doctors there.

The first gas chamber, located beyond the borders of the Museum and started by the Germans in spring 1942, is also commemorated. It is located not far from Birkenau and is known as the Little Red House.
Tickets for screenings of the fifteen-minute documentary film about the first moments after the liberation of the camp may be purchased at the information point in the visitor reception building, at the site of Auschwitz I.

TiramisuTartsandPiesInOrbit · 19/09/2007 22:31

Lets not get off track, here now, shall we?
Why must it get personal? I never read into cods remarks that she is denying holocaust. People read the most unnerving things into posts.

berolina · 19/09/2007 22:31

cod, whaaaaat? I said you weren't!

lisalisa · 19/09/2007 22:32

Message withdrawn

FluffyMummy123 · 19/09/2007 22:32

Message withdrawn

CaptainFlameSparrowWifeOfJack · 19/09/2007 22:32

pmsl

Abattoir: I see nothing wrong with children knowing that they are eating cows and pigs etc, but seeing them being slaughtered - no I am happy for them not to see that until/unless they want to. I tend not to want anyone seeing death unless they feel they are ready for it.

berolina · 19/09/2007 22:32

oh sorry cod, got you now (I think)

BecauseImWorthIt · 19/09/2007 22:34

But how can we teach them about WW2 (which is a key GCSE subject) if we don't also educate them about what went on in places like Auschwitz?

I really, really don't understand why you think 14 or 15 year olds should be protected from this.

southeatsastras · 19/09/2007 22:34

sorry lisalisa, but i do think that it's a terrible place, why preserve it.

it should be left alone

gibberish · 19/09/2007 22:34

There are glass cabinets, from one side of a room to the other side - very long, containing thousands and thousands of shoes. Men's shoes, women's shoes, hundreds of children's and babies' shoes. There is another HUGE cabinet crammed from bottom to top with human hair... is that really something our children have to actually see to understand what happened in the holocaust? I am actually crying typing that because it was so horrific.

TotalChaos · 19/09/2007 22:35

I was a bit taken aback by the razed to the ground comment as well LisaLisa. One of the most thoughtprovoking things on the subject of the Holocaust I have seen on video wasn't in the least bit explicit - it was video footage from the spielberg archive of the Warsaw Jewish community in 1939 - and then thinking of just what would most likely have happened to the children on the film

TiramisuTartsandPiesInOrbit · 19/09/2007 22:36

Maybe especially because it is so harrowing?

BecauseImWorthIt · 19/09/2007 22:37

Yes - harrowing. But why shouldn't our children see that? Why shouldn't they feel that?

If they don't, there is a real danger that they won't see just how unjust, how cruel, how dangerous the whole Nazi regime was.

VeniVidiVickiQV · 19/09/2007 22:37

It's a sad state of affairs if folk dont read properly on an internet forum.

Makes it farking difficult to have a sensible conversation.

As demonstrated by folk accusing cod of being a holocaust denier

gibberish · 19/09/2007 22:38

Because they are not able to deal with it. They are still children.

southeatsastras · 19/09/2007 22:38

the grass should be allowed to grow back to that horrible place.

BecauseImWorthIt · 19/09/2007 22:38

Sorry - I should put some perspective on my views. I'm not talking about children. But by 14 or 15, when they're studying the subject, I think they are old enough to be exposed to the less savoury (and more human) aspects of the war.

Marina · 19/09/2007 22:39

But in a hundred years' time, when no-one who survived the Holocaust, or who fought to liberate Europe, is alive, or their children, the impact of this horrific event will be inevitably diminished. I think a permanent memorial of the magnitude of the Auschwitz site has to be kept, so that future, disconnected generations can have an inkling of what went on.
I am not sure I'd want a child of mine going on a teen school trip to Auschwitz though. For the same sorts of reasons alluded to by dino and others - not that they might not be too traumatised by it, but that they might not take it seriously enough.

Swipe left for the next trending thread