Clifton College Website

Archive...

Auschwitz Chapel Assembly Address, 16 March 2010

Grace: This week is Hallward’s House Chapel week. For the rest of the week we will be talking about stress and how to manage it. However, today Dave and I are going to give you an insight on our trip to Auschwitz as we feel it is necessary to inform you of our experiences and the impact that they had on us. Let me begin with this quote by George Santayana : ‘Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.

Dave: On 24 February 2010, Mr Sibley, Grace and I stood on the selection point of the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. The selection point was where the guards decided who would live and who would die. Throughout the day, we visited a Jewish cemetery and the concentration camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The British Government funds two students from every school to go on a day trip to Auschwitz through the organisation called the ‘Learning from Auschwitz project’.

Grace: During the first part of the project we were lucky enough to hear Holocaust survivor Zige Shipper talk about his experience in the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Zige was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau at the age of 15 and through sheer luck managed to escape and survive. When listening to Zige speak, his optimism became immediately apparent which was, of course, surprising because of the tremendous ordeal he had been through. He emphasised the fact that he did not hate anybody, and that he felt he did not have the right to forgive the perpetrators; only those who died had that right.

Dave: As some of you know, I am Jewish and so, while I hesitate to say this, I do believe the journey had a uniquely personal significance for me. When I called my parents and told them I was accepted for this program, there were no cries of excitement, expressions of congratulation, or pats on the back. The question was simple and straightforward. “Do you think you are ready?” I wasn’t quite sure what they meant at the time. I knew it would be an emotionally difficult day, but I had visited major battlefields before and I had some idea what it would be like to stand on the ground where so many people have died. But I couldn’t have predicted the penetrating cold of the souls who are still held in the confines of Birkenau by the impenetrable barbed wire. They told us the weather would be cold, because Poland is in Eastern Europe, but the weather wasn’t cold. And yet, the chill seemed to make my very soul frigid. We walked through the barracks, we walked into a gas chamber and saw a replica of the crematorium. And then we walked through an exhibit where they simply had stores of shoes, brushes, and suitcases that had been left behind. Some of the suitcases had the ages of their owners written on them. Ages like five years old, three years old. There was also a giant room filled solely with hair that had been shaved off the passengers as they arrived. It was about this hair that an anonymous poet wrote about:

Dave:
When all the women in the transport
Had their heads shaved
Four workmen with brooms made of birch twigs
Swept up
And gathered up the hair

Behind clean glass
The stiff hair lies
Of those suffocated in gas chambers
There are pins and slide combs
In this hair

The hair is not shot through with light
Is not parted by the breeze
Is not touched by any hand
Or rain or lips

In huge chests
Clouds of dry hair
Of those suffocated
And a faded plait
A pigtail with a ribbon
Pulled at schools
By naughty boys

Grace: Before the trip, I was unsure as to how I would react to visiting such a place. After the Orientation seminar (the first meeting we attended about the trip) I learned of how important it is to put numbers to faces; we are constantly reminded that 6 million people died, 1.5 million of whom were children, but it is so important to remember that each and every one of these people were individuals with aspirations and dreams, just like us. The Holocaust is something which everyone hears and knows about but most people can never truly understand. The camp itself was vast, bigger than you can even begin to imagine. Seeing photographs and the conditions that the prisoners had to try and survive in made it more personal and hard-hitting, as although we hear statistics and facts of the Holocaust in history lessons, humans find it hard to truly relate to something until they see it themselves. I found it difficult to go back into everyday life after visiting Auschwitz; going back into normal lessons as if nothing had happened. It was as if I wanted to shout out to my teachers and fellow pupils ‘do you not understand what happened’? Nothing seemed important anymore. Not essays, or prep, or revision for end of year exams. And I was supposed to get on with my life and put it to the back of my mind. But I realised that the things I had valued in my life before were still important, but in a different way. I had my own life to live, and I was privileged enough to choose my own path. But I also had the power of expressing an opinion, standing up and speaking out when I thought something was wrong, and most importantly from the trip, to express how prevalent the Holocaust should be in our memories; not just so that we can mourn for the innocent people we lost, but also because it is our duty as a generation to stop a tragedy such as this from ever happening again. Because we have the power to do so.

Grace: Whilst on the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Rabbi Barry Marcus of the Central Synagogue in London held a memorial service on the selection point. He said ‘When I stand upon the selection point of Auschwitz-Birkenau, my feelings are that of desperation and isolation, and of a sense of neglect and unforgettable loneliness’. He also described human history as a race between education and catastrophe.

He then read this poem by Primo Levi who was a Holocaust survivor:

Shema (pronounced Shma)
You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease render you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

Dave: What we have to remember; the real message here is that tragedies like these begin with harmless jokes about race, religion, and ethnicity. You can’t just sit back and think “Well, I’m Jewish, I’m black, I’m Welsh, I am the butt of all these jokes anyway, so surely I can make them.” No, you can’t. Because there are places in the world where black people kill other black people because of the shapes of their noses. There are places where Arab Muslims kill Arab Christians and vice versa. Jokes based on ignorance and prejudice are only funny if you say they are funny. If you don’t believe they are funny, then they aren’t. The obvious lesson from the holocaust is that Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, anyone can become a victim of hate. The less obvious and far more important lesson is that those SS guards at the extermination camps were people with wives, children, in-laws, and dogs. The message you must walk away with is that anybody - any group of people can become the perpetrators of hatred just as easily.

Grace: One of the most difficult things to understand about the Holocaust, is the fact that not only were the victims human, but so were the perpetrators. And whilst the Holocaust is an extreme example of what the human heart is capable of, discrimination starts in small environments; in playgrounds at prep school and in the classrooms and it is our job as a community and as a generation to be intolerant of any form of discrimination.

Dave: In honour of this morning’s presentation, we are reciting a prayer called the Mourner’s Kaddish which is a Jewish prayer for the deceased. We will read it in Hebrew and then English. Let us pray.

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba
b'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei
v'yam'likh mal'khutei b'chayeikhon uv'yomeikhon
uv'chayei d'khol beit yis'ra'eil
ba'agala uviz'man kariv v'im'ru:
Amen

May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified
in the world that He created as He willed.
May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days
and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel,
swiftly and soon
Let us say: Amen

18 March 2010

© 2006-12 Clifton College