School trip to Auschwitz - opimnions

[forsale]

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?

i think it's a great oppurtunity for your daughter to be able to go on the trip,these places have such horiffic history and it's only right that the youth today are taught first hand what evil happened in the world because of these horrible tyrants.

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forsale, I took a bunch of senior pupils(16-18) to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. They were deeply affected by it. It was a profoundly moving experience. In the light of how they found it, I personally would have big reservations about taking a 14 year old to Auschwitz.

history 101 cod, i think you're pretty patient to come back and post....

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I would not send a 14year old on a class trip to Auschwitz. I don't feel able to go there myself at my age.

I went to Sachsenhausen which was a concentration camp, it's near Berlin. It was not a death camp in the sense Auschwitz was. There is not much left standing but I had the weight of my reading and imagination behind me and I could not cope with it at all. Others may be more resilient.

I think dc can learn about the holocaust at 14 but they don't need to visit a camp at that age. Sometimes it's the less harrowing details which stick with you and make a more lasting impression that the truly horrific details which your mind tries to slide away from.

I can barely watch documentaries on the television about Auschwitz now at the grand old age of 34.
I'm not sure if I would have had the emotional capacity to have dealt with it at 14.
I do take the point someone made about the way in which we 'baby' our young adults, but I'm not sure that seeing the reality of such evil is a wise thing.
There are loads of other mediums/media in which to learn about these things.
I would also like to add that is important for people to to have different opinions on things like the holocaust without being told off for being 'offensive ' or 'inappropriate'
there seems to have been a lot of jumping in and being abusive to posters recently

ive asked dd to take a look at this thread before making her final decision - she was nearly sick when I told her about the wall of hair - im thinking she may decline

I think 14 is too young. We watched a documentary about Belsen at school at that age and that was bad enough.

Visiting Auschwitz is an amazingly profound experience, but I think at 14 it could just been too much. Looking at the rows of photos (from the early days, when they photographed each inmate) is harrowing in its own right, looking at all of them and thinking "you were sent here to die here, and you had no idea when they took this picture". Wall after all after wall after wall.

As others have mentioned, the shoes (I actually don't remember the hair), the luggage. And Mengele's block. We went in to the ground floor and there was a sign "this way for the cellar" - we couldn't do it. Couldn't go down there.

Looking at the end of the railway track, where the memorial is, and knowing this was the truest end of the line you might ever see.

Incredible. And powerful. And people should go. But not at 14 if it's not right for them.

From reading this thread and the thoughts of people who have actually been to Auschwitz, I do think that 14 is a bit young to go there.

I was in Berlin / Sachsenhausen when I was 17 and it was thought provoking and harrowing. It was not nearly as detailed as Auschwitz seems to be. It had a lasting impression on me.

Last year we visited the Holocaust Museum in Berlin, I believe this would be a better option for 14 year olds. It did not hide the terrible truth of the holocaust but was not so explicit.

It is important that our children know the truth about the horrors of the holocaust, only then will they have the courage to stand up and say no to any future dictator-in-the-making.

I agree with cod, btw, the concentration camps were not directly to do with the war, they would have existed without the war. I do think that the knowledge of the camps was more widespread both here in Germany and in the allied countries, than we are led to believe.

Strange I don't remember it being harrowing but I do remember feeling very emotional. I think if I went today I would find it more harrowing. I probably have a greater understanding now than I did as a teenager.

I can alsi remember it being very quiet and almost peaceful.