Holocaust Memorial Day

Friday, 23rd January 2009

Holocaust Memorial Day was commemorated at Immanuel College with sessions led by the school?s sixth form.

The lower sixth, who have recently returned from an 8-day visit to Poland, shared their thoughts, feelings and emotions with pupils in the first five years of the school. They used the aims of their trip, to SEE, LEARN, DO and TEACH, as the basis of their talk.

Some groups showed photos or re-told survivors testimonies, whilst others lit memorial candles and recited kaddish. Others taught pupils about the life of the three million Jews in Poland prior to the outbreak of war ? its vibrancy, its culture and its contributions to the wider Polish community. This helped pupils appreciate the enormity of these people?s deaths on the Jewish world, and how many personalities, dreams and achievements were needlessly destroyed.

Students recalled their visits to the death camps; to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Plashow. Nathan Marks, aged 16, reminisced, ?At Majdanek, unlike the other camps we visited, everything was intact. One of the most frightening images I saw was a huge, mushroom-shaped building that contained the ashes of thousands of Jews that had died there. This was not a sight that I was expecting to see and it made me consider that our people were almost wiped off the face of the earth. I cannot help but feel stronger and prouder of my identity to see that we?re here in abundance today.?

Finally, students focussed on the ?doing? aspect of their trip and relayed their contributions and links they made to the community who remain in Poland; how they spent a day teaching at the only Jewish school in Poland, Lauder Morasha; built new shelves to house a Jewish Library at the Chabad House; furnished the only kosher shop in Poland with a new fridge and finally made an engagement party for a Jewish couple hoping to get married later on this year, a rare occurrence in Poland.

Head Master, Philip Skelker said ?the Holocaust is a challenging subject to teach, but we feel that the experiences that our sixth formers have gained through their trip to Poland in December has given them the right tools to impart their knowledge to the younger pupils in a sensitive and meaningful way.?