WE WILL BE BUILDING
OUR FUTURE
Jack Downes
To date, 37,000 pupils and teachers have taken part in the Lessons from Auschwitz project organized by the Holocaust Educational Trust. HET was established in the UK in 1988 to educate young people from all backgrounds about the Holocaust and to explore the lessons of this tragic history for today's world. Jack Downes, HET Regional Ambassador, wrote the following letter about his experiences participating in the project.
I am writing this letter on the Holocaust Educational Trust's 200th visit to Auschwitz as part of the Lessons from Auschwitz programme. By today, over 37,000 young people from all over the UK have taken part in this project.
When I came to write this note, I didn’t know how to demonstrate how crucial it is that young people play a role in remembrance of the Holocaust. When I went on my own visit to Auschwitz a couple of years ago, I felt truly and deeply moved, as it gave immeasurable depth to any prior knowledge I had of the Holocaust.
As part of the programme, I was fortunate enough to hear the testimony of Holocaust survivor Rudi Oppenheimer. Rudi was held at Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps. When Rudi arrived at Bergen-Belsen, he was still with his older brother Paul, younger sister Eve, and their mother and father. Conditions in Belsen deteriorated rapidly in 1944 as increasing numbers of Jewish prisoners were brought to the camp from Auschwitz-Birkenau and elsewhere. As a result, Rudi and his family suffered increasingly dire living conditions during the winter of 1944-45.
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