Will You Stand Up, Speak Out?

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2012, four sixth formers did just that. Moved by their visit to the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, Helen Harvey and Louise Hufton, Y12 and Emily Quinn and Molly Mittelman, Y13 found a way to bring the overwhelming loss of life into sharp focus for the JAGS community.

Charged with the responsibility to be ambassadors for the Education Trust that sponsored their visit, and in an effort to bring home the catastrophe that was the Holocaust, at senior school assembly the girls told four personal stories of individuals whose lives were deeply affected by it.

We heard how wireless operator and paratrooper Hannah Senesh, a Hungarian Jewish girl courageous in aiding the anti-Nazi troops and selfless in not pleading for her own life, refused a blindfold as she faced the firing squad.  ‘Towards Caesarea’, written in 1942 when she was in Palestine, is now a popular Hebrew song:

‘My God, My God, I pray that these things never end

The sand and the sea,

The rustle of the waters,

Lightning of the heavens,

The prayer of Man.

The voice called, and I went.

I went because the voice called.’

We heard about Primo Levy, Italian chemist and writer, a survivor of the Holocaust whose mission it became through his books to warn against complacency. ‘We must be on our guard; if understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again.’

It seems extraordinary that before the war 12,000 people lived in Auschwitz, of whom 60% were Jewish, and there used to be 13 synagogues. Louise told us that that today not a single Jew lives in this once vibrant community; the last Jew, Shimshon Klueger, lived a reclusive life until 2000, believing the war still to be raging around him. But he went out twice a day, in the morning and the evening, to open and to close the doors of the last remaining synagogue, despite the fact that there were no Jews left to use it, in a very poignant act of defiance.

Helen created a video of potent images of her visit: we walked through rooms piled high with shoes, suitcases, toothbrushes and even baby clothes. She asked how could we let this happen? Jewish prisoners were forced to work in the camp, meeting and dispatching  new arrivals. Reading from the diary of Zalman Gradowski, one such Jewish Sonderkommando, Helen marvelled at how Zalman managed to keep his vision of a free mankind in the future, and how indeed he kept his secret diary at all. Haven’t any of these people ever had children?

Our school numbers 800; we think 1.5 million children died in the Holocaust. Helen, Louise, Molly and Emily arranged for the names of 800 children to be delivered to each member of the senior school to research; a real person, with a unique story.  On Friday 27 January, Holocaust Memorial Day, everyone had someone to think about, and everyone could light a candle in memory of that individual. The Judge Hall became a shrine to so many victims whose bravery has inspired so many today. With Zalman’s words, Helen, Louise, Emily and Molly challenged us:  

‘We will bury our notebooks and diaries deep under the ashes. We have done as much as we could. And you – searching for the truth. You who have lived to see justice and liberty. What will you do?’

Stand Up, Speak Out?

31 January 2012

Hannah, pictured, came to light a candle, “because when I heard the assembly I felt really moved and I wanted to show my respect.” Alice researched the name she was given, Abraham Cin, “because it was important to remember and to think about the more personal story. We weren’t there, so I wanted to connect with the past.