died, it was incredible. One of the things that moved me the most was the cases of hair. It showed the lack of humanity shown by the Nazis, and emphasised the sheer number of people affected and imprisoned.
I think that the thing which I will take from the trip is a much better understanding of what these people endured. There are things that you can’t learn from a textbook. If there is evil in the world then it is there, but we also learned how they tried to fight back. When you learn about the Holocaust at school, you just look at the events. This trip allowed me to realise the impact that it had afterwards, like the girl who didn’t know how to play.”
Paige also said that standing in the gas chamber had a huge impact on her, more than some of the exhibits which are behind glass as you can’t experience those directly. You get a real sense of what it must have been like, not like being in a classroom.
Sean says that not having eyes doesn’t matter when you get there. He will never forget hearing the wind and feeling it between his shoulder blades. When everyone was quiet he could hear what the inmates heard and when he felt the stones under his feet, he knew what they felt under their feet.
Sean shivered. Not because of the cold but because of the ideas running through his head. He says that the experience spoke to his empathy and stayed with him for a good while afterwards.
Some of the students who have a little sight described how they could not see the end of the railway track, and the massive tracts of land in the camp. This gave them the same feeling that Sean described, especially when we went into the stone buildings.
The word they used to describe their feelings was ‘tainted’. I think by this they meant that the memory of the emotions they felt will never leave them, and their awareness of the darkness and the sadness and the evil that took place. Several of the students have said how important it is now for them to be witnesses, as there are now so few people left alive who experienced the Holocaust first hand.
We have now been back from our trip for two months, but our memories are still strong. We are preparing an assembly so that we can share our story with the rest of the students at our college and bear witness to what we have experienced.
Photo. New College Worcester