Aushwitz...Year 11...help to prepare?

[GypsyMoth]

hi all

dd age 15 is going to Berlin with the school in a few weeks. as part of the trip a visit to Poland is planned,and a day will be spent visiting Auschwitz.

we have been told to prepare our dc for a visit.

wondering which is the best way? anyone been or know anyone who has?

she visited flanders and the somme back in june with the school,and was very moved. she has a massive interest in this area of history so she knows what its all about,but its going to be a hard day for her.

any ideas how to prepare? feel tearful just thinking about this.

will have a look for the book. thanks Katz.

she came back from the somme with loads of photos. but don't want to encourage her to take them here,specially if its not allowed. it does seem very wrong. but i guess if others are doing it,then she will do.

she wants to be a teacher too one day!

May I suggest these links?

www.het.org.uk
and

education.hmd.org.uk

I used them when teaching the Holocaust for RE and History

Also, if you cab get hold of it, the BBC I think did a documentary called Grandchild of the Holocaust, which follows a Holocaust survivor and her 13 yo grandson as she goes back to Poland and Germany.

It kept my year 9s enthralled and quiet for an hour, no mean achievement.

oh,so much advice here. will add those links to my list scary,many thanks.

when i posted a small part of me thought i might get flamed for letting her go to such a sad,thought provoking place.

I haven't visited

But I would definitely recommend encouraging her to read Schindler's list. (Book is hundreds of times better than the film).

And maybe Primo Levi If This Is A Man. It is very simply written, almost dispassionately, as an observer, but somehow through its clarity, its honesty, manages to offer some sense of hope/redemption.

Why? If we don't learn about it and teach about it, it will happen again and again.

scary,the reaction so far from family and friends hasn't been too good. they were bad enough when told she was off to the Somme!

i just think its a great oppurtunity to learn more. and see for herself. peoples reactions elsewhere haven't been too positive

scary, I couldn't agree more. I am horrified that children have to choose at GCSE level between Geography and History - two subjects that are so, so important to understanding how the world works. DH did geography and knows next to nothing about modern history. He didn't even know Anne Frank was real, when we watched the dramatisation of her diary.

I think you're doing the right thing letting her go - in fact I'd encourage mine to go, and DH and I have already decided that we will be taking our DDs to Flanders and to Auschwitz when they're older. They'll be reading books about it too.

it is bad that they can't do both. it wwas a clear decision for my history mad eldest dd,but her sister has no idea,and does her options next year.

ours is a performing arts college also,and they have to choose a gcse in either drama or dance,which i think for my girls,is a bit of a waste

Why can't they do both History & Geography?

Both my DC's (at different schools) did both! (although DS's school is a Humanities specialist school - along with Science, which helps!)

I like what Katz's dh said, he is tip top.

I think that's the right way to talk about it.

If people are asked not to take photographs - but people still do - then you can should definitely discuss what the visit is for and whether it's respectful to do so. I think that's such a good question - it asks why she's going, how to respond, what to think about the trip, how to behave.

I'd like him to teach my dc's history please

it was good advice. we are gathering some of the books recommended and have looked at the links. she's really very excited about going.

school are having a short meeting for parents so will address the photo issue with them as well. see what they say. she came back with loads of Flanders and the trenches etc,which were interesting. she took about 300! but can talk about every one of them,knows what they are etc

Hmm. Personally I think Auschwitz is different to the Somme re being a photo opportunity, but that's only my opinion.

I hope she finds it interesting and challenging. I remember going round Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, it's a very demanding experience really, in an important way. I wouldn't have taken photos there either!

yes. be better. website says no photos inside museum. just looked.

Hi

One thing that might be worth suggesting to your dd's school is to get a survivor to give a talk either before or after the visit.

My father, a survivor of Auschwitz, Dora and Belsen, used to give talks to students - which I think were organised by the Holocaust Education Trust. I think students found it made it more 'real' somehow when they could identify a particular person rather than hearing huge figures bandied about.

Personally I'm not sure anything can really prepare anyone for such an experience but hope your daughter finds it interesting and relevant.

wow,a talk from a survivor. how amazing that would be.

well she's adamant that she will be absolutely fine,and admittedly,she seems to know more than i do about that time.

she got chatting to an elderly man when she was visiting the somme. it was highlight of her trip as she managed a whole conversation with an old soldier in french!

if it were my dd , the most important lesson I think I would try to draw out of it is the need for civil courage. I have always thoughlt, right at the very beginning, when the Jews in Germany were obliged to wear yellow stars of David, could not at least all the churches have distributed yellow stars for all their congregation to wear? Were the streets fullo f people in yellow stars of David, I think the Nazis would have had a major rethink. I personally as a dc always thought this alone was bad enough to have got people on their feet, never mind all the escalation of horrors that followed.

How about reading some examples of civil courage, people who did stand up for and did in some way try to help or resist. They were not a huge number of people. It's important to know what ordinary people , not personally touched by persecution, could have done.

As Zzzengagain says maybe get her to look at the following

"First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me"
which is a quote by Pastor Martin Niemoller - also there's quite a lot of material available on people like Nicholas Winton and the Kindertransport as well as material on people who stood up to the Nazis and saved Jews, Poles, gays etc from persecution.

yes I also would probably let my dd know about the example of Bulgaria. I am not a big expert on Bulgaria during WW II but I do know that local resistance to deportation of the Jewish population was enormously strong - and they were not deported.

Bulgaria for instance on that.

I realise it is not cut and dried and that there was most certainly a risk to anyone life who was found to shelter/protect the Jewish population in all of Nazi dominated Europe. Bulgaria as a collaborator of the Nazis was in a differetn position to say Poland. A Polish friend of mine told me about her grandmother who gave bread to a Jewish man who came to her farmhouse door. Not long afterwards, Nazis came and arrested her for it. She died in a camp in Germany north of Berlin (not a "death camp" as such, but not great either obviously). It was not always easy to resist Nazi murder plans but some people did

or this group

In Germany young people are often taught about a group of young students known as the "weisse Rose" (white rose) who after some of them had spent time in the army and heard about the atrocities happening in the east of Europe at that time, printed bulletins and distributed them around their university. They were eventually caught and some ofthem executed. Perhaps because these are young people, your dd might be able to identify with them.

The sad thing is that amongst populations were so many people were well educated, humanistically educated even, the number of people actually opposing the Nazis actively was so small.

sorry in English:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

Maus

For anyone struggling with the sheer masses of people persecuted, like Anne Frank's sad story these books show you the indifidual suffering. Spiegelman's books also show the world Nazism broke inot in Poland and that it was not just in the camps that life was dreadful, but horror was everywhere. I find these books very sad, even with the bits of humour parent-dc relationship he includes from the present. Also shows that the misery didn't end for the Jews if they were able to survive Auschwitz, many didn't ever "get over it", if indeed such a thing is ever possible.