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Are school visits to Auschwitz worthwhile?



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Published Date: 14 October 2008
Last year, I was one of many Scottish students to visit Auschwitz as part of the Lessons From Auschwitz Project, and I, too, find it concerning to hear that funding for such a worthwhile project is to be cut (your report, 4 October).
The suggestion that simply supplying books to schools and libraries (Letters, 11 October) will have the same impact as the project is extremely naive. The library in my old school has many books about the Holocaust, yet a surprising number of pupi
ls still had little or no knowledge of what Auschwitz even was.

In conveying the experiences that I, my classmate and our headteacher had on our visit to Auschwitz in school assemblies as part of the follow-up work required by the project, we taught more than 800 young people about the atrocities that occurred there, and made them think about why they had occurred.

There are many examples of man's inhumanity to man other than Auschwitz. The fact remains, however, that people still deny this place was ever a death camp. It seems that across the world people have failed to learn any lessons from the horrific events that took place there.

Removing funding from this project is removing the valuable opportunity to educate young people across Scotland about Auschwitz and prevent similar events happening again.

GEUM CHRYSTAL
Duror
Appin, Argyll

As citizens of the world, we have a duty to teach our children to remember all the major events of history and politics as they have affected countries around the globe. Fortunately, modern communications mean we have many ways of presenting information in a graphic and memorable way: the internet, television, DVDs, eye-witness accounts by survivors and books and films.

The genocide of the Jewish people and other groups by Germany from 1938-45 represented a dreadful episode of world history, of a kind and on a scale which will, hopefully, never be repeated.

However, history is unfortunately packed with dreadful episodes. In the case of the Holocaust, Scotland has no record of state persecution of Jews. There is no reason for the Scottish Government to pick on Auschwitz as a destination for sending a few pupils studying Advanced Higher history. There are alternative ways for them to learn the facts and imagine the atmosphere of that and other horrific periods.

MARY McCABE
Circus Drive
Glasgow



The full article contains 399 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 13 October 2008 8:41 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

StuartAD,

West Lothian 14/10/2008 08:27:26
Show them the newsreel clips from the era of Belson etc being liberated. There is a wealth of evidence if students wish to find it. Why should the tax-payer pay for a trip to Germany, when there is much more to be done to ensure that students can read & write!
2

Dave,

Western Isles 14/10/2008 11:53:22
So, according to Ms/Mr Chrystal, the suggestion still is that every Scottish school child is a potential Neo Nazi Jew murdering anti-semite and needs to be taken to Auschwitz in order to be brain washed so they don't become that Jew murdering Nazi anti-semite.

Yes?

This is rediculous and I'm glad we no longer expose our kids to such rubbish.
3

MWP,

Edinburgh 14/10/2008 13:50:25
Geum Chrystal writes a well-thought and considered letter

#1 You are a twit who needs a geography lesson. Auschwitz is in Poland, not far from Krakow.

I have no idea what #2 is on about. No one is suggesting what you have outlined. There is value in educating everyone about this dark episode in our history, and indeed subsequent episodes. And many Poles, and others, died there too.
4

MWP,

Edinburgh 14/10/2008 13:50:41
First they came for the Socialists, 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 for me.

One version of a poem attributed to Martin Niemöller
5

MadJockMacMad,

Edinburgh 14/10/2008 16:26:41
I didn't have to go on a subsidised trip to Auschwitz to learn about the horrors of the holocaust and I don't understand the requirement to do so.
Are we going to start sending school children to the Bight of Benin to learn about the Slave Trade and how it was run, Are we going to start sending them to the American West to learn about the genocide of the native Americans, or will we send them to Palestine to see about the injustices taking place there today.
6

Lobeydoser,

14/10/2008 23:32:50
"We taught more than 800 young people about the atrocities that occurred there, and made them think about why they had occurred". GEUM CHRYSTAL.

Much of the comments here, and in the last week, concerning School Visits to Auschwitz simply confirms the necessity of the need for them to continue.
7

Mark Boyle,

Johnstone 15/10/2008 00:31:48
"Much of the comments here, and in the last week, concerning School Visits to Auschwitz simply confirms the necessity of the need for them to continue."

And may we all ask how does sending one or two children - Advanced Higher History students at that (ie. those who already know!) somehow confirm the necessity of a junket at hideous expense to the taxpayer at the expense of educating hundreds.

Anyone that believes that Geum Chrystal managed to "teach" 800 Lochaber High students better than her teachers & the ample media coverage there's always been to the Holocaust is living in CloudCuckooland. And her premise that they would somehow believe her because she'd been there more than the plethora of material already available is frankly insulting to those 800 students' intelligences.

Finally, her claim that a surprising number of students didn't even know about the Holocaust is risible considering that the play based on the Diary Of Anne Frank has been a standard English coursework text for nigh on two decades!

Just because it is to do with the Holocaust does NOT make it sacred & beyond basic financial pragmatics. That money can & should be better spent, and deep down these people know it.

And as I said before, one start would be a proper commemoration of our own Holocaust site. Concentration Camp Sylt on Alderney has only two gateposts & a tunnel to show where at least 700 were worked & beaten to death (or chucked over the cliffs by the Nazis 'for a laugh'). Even more insulting is Concentration Camp Nordorney...used today as a CAMPING site for holidaymakers. It makes the McDonalds Drive-In at the Matthausen site look positively tasteful by comparison.

 

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