On Wednesday 23rd January we experienced the brutal truth about the Holocaust and the mass murder of six millions Jews. As Amy wrote on her poster: It is not 6 million lives, it is 6 million stories, which is why Ms. Fenwick introduced us to Leon Greenman. He survived several concentration camps; out of 750 men he was one of 50 to be selected to work in hard labour. However, his wife Else and son Barney were sent immediately to a gas chamber. Leon Greenman spent the rest of his life teaching students and telling them his story.
During the second period, we were transferred into our separate form groups and created a timeline to represent the millions of deaths that happened from 1933 to 1945. We were shocked by the way the Nazis had murdered a whole range of people for different reasons and how horrifying some of the details were. One particularly interesting person was St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a Christian nun who was murdered for being Jewish. This was confusing because she was a Christian and Hitler was targeting Jewish people. It became clear to us that Hitler really did not see Judaism as a religion but as a ‘race’. We then listened to Richard Dimbleby’s harrowing report on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. All of which led to us gaining valuable information about Holocaust Day.