Holocaust Memorial Day falls on 27 January – the day on which Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. This year, the theme was the ‘fragility of freedom’, and the History Department prepared and delivered a series of age-appropriate talks designed to encourage pupils to reflect both on how freedoms can be eroded and the importance of standing firm against such efforts.
The Sixth Form learnt about the Rwandan Genocide, exploring how Tutsi people were ‘othered’ and harassed by Hutu extremists in a programme of persecution that led, ultimately, to their massacre in 1994. First and Second Form learnt that the Jewish population of Europe led very similar lives to theirs today up until the 1930s. Pupils in the Third, Fourth and Fifth Forms focused on the measures introduced by the Nazi regime to gradually erode the freedoms afforded to the Jewish population in Germany.
In each instance, pupils were encouraged to consider how we might learn lessons from the past, recognising that genocide does not begin with horrific stories of systematic killing, but rather with the creation of ‘otherness’ and the erosion of basic freedoms that culminate in the removal of the ultimate freedom; the freedom of life itself.
