6th November 2023
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The 27th of January 2025 marked 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Since 2001, this date has been commemorated in the UK as Holocaust Memorial Day to ensure the Holocaust and other Genocides are never forgotten.
I am a Region Ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust. I started my position after completing their Lessons From Auschwitz (LFA) program in 2023. To mark 80 years since the Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I want to share my experience of visiting the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, and what learned during the LFA program.
Before we can understand what happened in Auschwitz, it is important to gain an impression of the rich and diverse Jewish life which existed throughout Europe before the Holocaust. In 1933, there was an estimated 9 million Jewish people living in Europe.
There were Jewish communities in towns and cities across the continent, which were products of their Jewish faith, or lack there of, and the culture of their locality. This also contributed to the great linguistic diversity within Europe’s Jewish population. Some Jewish people practised Orthodox Judaism, a strict form of the religion. Others practised Reform or Liberal Judaism, which meant they only practised some specific aspects of Judaism. There were also those who held no faith at all, some of whom had even converted to Christianity. However, Jewish people were not targeted by the Nazis because of their faith. Hitler stressed in Mein Kampf that the Jews were a race, not a religion. So while the majority of Jewish victims did practice Judaism, this was not the reason for their persecution.
After the Nazi party gained power in 1933, they started to pass laws which discriminated against the Jewish population of Germany. This included preventing marriage and relationships between those deemed Jewish and Germans, barring Jewish people from holding professional occupations, limiting access to education, and adopting the name Isreal, for men, or Sara, for women, so they could be identified as Jewish, and restricting movement.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, Jewish people started to be deported to Ghettos. For some, Ghettoisation only lasted a few days before being moved to camps, and for others, this lasted many months. The conditions of the Ghettos were inhumane and resulted in the deaths of many inhabitants.
The last stage of the Holocaust was ‘The Final Solution’. This is the name given to the period between 1941 and ’45 and is characterised by the systematic mass murder of Europe’s Jewish Population.
After 1941, ‘killing centres’ or ‘death camps’, like Auschwitz-Birkenau started to be built. They had the sole purpose of murdering Jews efficiently on a mass scale. This differs from Concentration Camps which were designed for forced labour.
Auschwitz-Birkenau is situated extremely close to the town of Oświęcim which was renamed Auschwitz when Poland came under Nazi control. This town was also known as Oshpitzin by the Jewish inhabitants of the town, who had lived there since the 16th Century.
What we commonly call ‘Auschwitz’ refers to three camps, Auschwitz I Auschwitz II Birkenau, and Auschwitz III (also known as Monowitz). Auschwitz I was selected to become a concentration camp, due to the pre-existing Polish Army barracks based there. It began operating in 1940. This camp was on the outskirts of Oświęcim. In the present day is situated next to a busy road which surprised me when visiting. Auschwitz Birkenau was designed to be a killing centre and began construction in 1942. It was situated 2 miles from the main camp. Monowitz was developed around the Buna Chemical Factory, one of many factories founded around Auschwitz. It was situated roughly 4 miles from Auschwitz I, and was primarily a forced labour camp. Many of its inmates were Jews.
The conditions in all Concentration and Death camps were so appalling they can never truly be put into words.
What is often underrepresented when learning about the Holocaust is the extreme brutality shown by SS Guards who staffed camps like Auschwitz. The story of Czesława Kwoka rehumanises the often faceless perpetration of the Holocaust. Kwoka, a 14-year-old girl from Poland, can be seen with marks on her face in her identifying photos. Camp photographer Wilhelm Brasse (who was also a victim of Nazi persecution) described how Kwoka was unable to understand what was being said to her by guards, so was brutally beaten by a Prison Overseer.
It is impossible for us to ever completely understand the experience of living in Auschwitz, but by learning about individual lives and listening to the testimonies of Survivors, we can further our understanding.
The experience of visiting the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum is something which made a profound influence on me. Gaining a full sensory impression of the camp was something I couldn’t achieve through reading books or watching documentaries. The smells and feelings of the camp are some of my most vivid memories.
My visit also helped me to see the differences between Auschwitz I and II, which I had never really understood previously. Auschwitz I was cramped, while Auschwitz II was vast and felt as if it went on forever.
Visiting Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust has been a formative experience for over 20,000 young people who completed the Lessons From Auschwitz project while at 6th Form, of a Higher Education College.
RA Naomi Wormald, University of Glasgow, completed her LFA in 2023. She says that “Visiting Auschwitz is one of the hardest but most important things I’ve ever done. It is so important that we remember the horrors of the past in order to prevent them ever happening again.”
I felt a visit to Auschwitz in person was extremely beneficial to me, but this is not always an option and may not be the long-term solution to Holocaust Education. I had to take two flights, and HET run this trip multiple times a year. This results in a lot of carbon dioxide being omitted.
RA Eve Robertson, University of Edinburgh, completed her LFA in 2021 which meant it had to be completed virtually. She said that “During the COVID-19 lockdown it was not plausible to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau site but completing LFA online was nonetheless an impactful experience for me educationally. Completing the LFA online allowed me to create a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust. It has since provided me with excellent opportunities to educate myself further about the Holocaust and antisemitism through HET.”
I think that visiting Auschwitz or other camps in person is our most effective way of learning about the Holocaust, but I hope emerging technologies can help us provide an eco-friendly solution.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘For A Better Future’, and I hope on the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz I hope we can learn from the past. We live in a time of growing disinformation and Holocaust distortion, so it is very important that we continue to learn the truth about what happened in the Holocaust.
Antisemitism and all forms of hatred are on the rise in person and online, so we are at a crucial time in the memorialisation of the Holocaust. Educating yourself and others about the Holocaust is the best thing you can do to keep its memory alive.
The Britstorian Podcast’s Holocaust Memorial Day episode, featuring Region Ambassadors Aine Ray and Matthew Smith
‘What Happened at Auschwitz’ Documentary:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00276pg/what-happened-at-auschwitz
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopaedia:
