Four first-year A level history students have just toured Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi concentration camp. They also watched a survivor talk about their experience online.
Here, Kennedy Andrews, Ollie Humphries, Sophie Evans and Rylie King reflect on their experience.
Why did you decide to go on the trip?
Ollie: It was going to be a very enlightening and interesting opportunity as other family members of mine have been before. I thought it was going to be a brilliant opportunity to fully understand it as it’s not something you can really grasp out of a text book.
Sophie: I think that Auschwitz is a place you really need to experience to understand.
Rylie: You hear everyone talk about it a lot, but to actually walk where those victims walked was quite an enlightening experience, to say the least.
How were you feeling travelling to Auschwitz?
Kennedy: I didn’t know what to expect.
Rylie: It was sort of like a weird feeling of what am I about to walk into? so I was really emotional. What I found really bizarre, and what sort of disconnected me from the moment, I didn’t find it funny, about a mile away there was fast food chains. I was trying to grasp the idea that right near this atrocity there was McDonalds, there was like a Burger King right next to the train station all the victims had to walk off, so it really disconnected me from that moment, But overall, it was quite a surreal feeling. It was almost like ‘How could you?’ put those things there.
Sophie: It was very hard to find emotion in the place even though it is such an emotionally charged place, so many bad things have happened there. I felt quite disconnected. I don’t know why that is but the emotion of the place, obviously it is very underlying, and you have to be very respectful. Everyone is silent, it is kind of like walking into a church, a graveyard – as it is one. You have to understand the place to experience it. It looks like a farm; it looks like they put people into a farm.
What was your knowledge of where you were going like before you went?
Kennedy: I knew what happened, but I didn’t know how bad it was. I just knew it was a concentration camp.
Rylie: I come from a massive family of history buffs, so I have had knowledge of this for most of my growing life. It was almost like going there, all my knowledge didn’t matter anymore, because it is a completely different experience.
Ollie: I had very preconceived notions on what it was going to be like. I saw it as more of a prison type thing. However, when I actually got there, I could see it was a lot more open, just a lot different to what I was expecting. There wasn’t anything really stopping them apart from a massive fence.
Sophie: I knew quite a lot. I’m from north west London, the Jewish population there is very large, it is kind of ingrained in the community. I have been to Dachau before – that was kind of good preparation.
What did you feel like when you arrived there?
Kennedy: It wasn’t like how I imagined it was going to be. It just felt, I know this sounds stupid to say this, it just felt really sad. It was cold. It just felt like you knew something bad had happened. You can’t really put into perspective that 6 million Jewish people died at these camps, but seeing it there helps a bit more.
Rylie: There were certain bits that made me understand the gravitas of what happened there. We had gone to this one room and there was this entire build-up of children’s shoes and that’s what really triggered me into feeling emotional. You saw these glasses, these baby shoes which made me tear up a bit. The thing that got me the most was this room where there’s this room, an exhibition called ‘The Book of Names’, which has the names of 4 million people who died.
Ollie: Looking at it first you see the famous sign where they go under. There was a lot more freedom of movement than I thought. You can see more of the things you didn’t expect to see, so it shocked me in that sense.
Sophie: It kind of looks like a village where people were forced to live but could never leave. Dystopian really.
What was the survivor testimony like, that you watched?
Kennedy: I remember messaging these guys (Ollie, Rylie and Sophie) saying how sad it was. She was just saying it as if it was a normal thing. She was saying like it’s nothing. She was saying like a story about what she got up to at the weekend. But it is good as it is bringing attention to things that happened outside the camps.
Rylie: It was horrendous, a very tragic story. And I think that’s what got me most over this whole experience. To say I was able to speak to a holocaust survivor, people in twenty years’ time won’t be able to say that, so that really made the situation grander.
Ollie: It was very heartfelt. She spoke in a lot of pauses, thinking about what she was saying. Every time she paused, I thought it would end, but then after she said more and more and more.
Sophie: She had pictures. She spoke really eloquently, about her grandma being thrown down the stairs by the SS, about her father being shot. She was an amazing woman. You just have to feel nothing but empathy for her. I can’t imagine the emotions she felt in that situation.
What was the most interesting thing you learned?
Kennedy: In one of the rooms there were videos of Jewish families before (the Holocaust), it made it feel more real, it humanised it all.
Rylie: Right next to the gallows I was told there used to be a Christmas tree and that put things into perspective. These people, the Nazi guards, they weren’t monsters, they were humans who loved and laughed and who had so much joy in their own lives, but they still made these choices that were absolutely despicable. We rightfully demonise them, but I don’t think that conveys the message enough.
Sophie: I think the way they have preserved it is a very meaningful and important. I don’t think numbers do it justice. You have to understand that everyone there was a human. If you make it a good versus evil story you won’t be able to prevent it in the future.
Any final reflections?
Rylie: The Holocaust Trust do a ceremony at the end of each trip, right at the end of the train tracks at Birkenau, which is just opposite the crematoriums, and the monument that was put up in light of the Holocaust. And I got the opportunity to light a candle and put it on the end of the train tracks which was really emotional, really surreal. It was almost a full moon. It was a swell of emotions. It was almost like the dead was with us. That’s an experience that will follow me throughout life.
The following pictures are courtesy of Ollie and Rylie.
