Educational Services

A Day at The Holocaust Centre

The introduction begins with a friendly welcome and a brief history of the Centre at Beth Shalom, given by Mrs. Smith. The setting is an octagonal synagogue-like room, including many effects, such as stained-glass windows. There are also pictures hanging on the walls related to the Holocaust.

Mrs. Smith speaks of education, of genocide and her personal views towards the Holocaust, and how it shook human society and civilisation. The audience listen with fascination. Injustice. Prejudice. Xenophobia. Discrimination. These are only a few of the words Mrs. Smith brings to our attention. She believes in how it should all be condemned, and how justified her opinions really are.

She talks of Nazi fascism and oppression. She mentions the statistics: 6,000,000 Jews executed and eliminated needlessly. And also, to provoke a reaction of emotion, she mentions how 1,500,000 of that number were all children.

There are no people to remember them. They are merely forgotten statistics; nobody knows them as anything apart from a name or number typed on a piece of paper.

Mrs. Smith stops talking. The movie begins and silence also begins. All eyes are fixated on the screen. Not a single eye strays from the disturbing images of death and destruction for a second. The narrator's voice booms out the facts of the Holocaust, while there are pictures displayed to backup all of the disturbing details.

After the film, I make my way out into the garden. I gaze in awe at the surrounding beauty. All of the features of the garden create a fairy tale-like setting in which you could lose yourself. It was as if I had escaped grim reality and made my way into the picture from a fairy tale book, the surrounding trees clouding out the civilisation that might destroy the perfection of the setting. If you were here, you'd never want to leave it, I assure you. It's an image that cannot be spoilt. It's as if you could keep on wandering and not leave this permanent fairy tale. As I wander through, I can't help but admire the 'perfect' setting, gazing upwards at the pure white bird nestled in the dovecote. I then made my way out into the Rose Garden, and a sort of morbid reality struck me - that of death amidst the beauty. First of all, I see the beautiful, pure white roses that surround me. But then I look further and deeper towards the memorial plates, and in a sort of representation, each pure white rose represents an equally pure human whose life was tragically cut short of its full blossom.

Wasted Lives. This is a short film related to genocide. Genocides – not just that of the Jews, but of the Armenians, Rwandans and Bosnians. The images of death flicker onto the screen immediately. The images, tattooed onto my retina, I find it unforgettable. I cannot help but realise there were, in fact, people who experienced such pain, torture and death, who witnessed it firsthand. What I see is merely a projection, what they saw was experienced firsthand, and not just via media such as television.

I then made my way down the stairs to the exhibition. All the images and all the horrors of genocide are given a name, making the mere statistic of 1,500,000 a mass of individual humans that I can now sympathise with. No longer are they a statistic, but names and faces. People who had dreams for the future, ambitions, likes, dislikes. Humans just like anyone else. The significance of the large chimney sculpture with the names attached to it, representing the people's souls that left the peak of its monstrous structure as black smoke. I then saw the Star of David created by the innocent visages of many people who were needlessly killed. Each statistic is given a face and name. 6,000,000 now seems significantly more than just a statistic or number. Jews are also emphasised by fame. I see Einstein on the wall, a genius. An easily recognisable face. I then realise that they weren't just statistics or a number in one mass, but individuals, unique within their own rights. We then make our way to another room, dedicated to antisemitism. We see the defamation of Jews throughout history, within stories, quotes and caricatures that really open your eyes to the fact that the world is not always a safe place to live in.

The final picture I saw was that of a bunch of Dr. Mengele's 'experiments'. Experimentation on humans. Pictures of malnourished young boys with their genitalia removed . “What in human nature could make anyone do that?” It is a question I will never answer. After leaving the Exhibition, I find a book placed upon a black piano. It is entitled Is it easy to imagine 6,000,000 now? I open the book to find each and every page covered in dots. Dots, each representing one human. Covering hundreds of pages. I find it unbelievable. 6,000,000 dots. Each and every one accounted for.

I then hear the story of Gina Gerson, a survivor of the Holocaust. Her story grips me, and I am fascinated that this seemingly ordinary person has been through so much in her life, has lost her parents, had her uncle commit suicide. It makes me think that what I have been through in my life is nothing compared with what she went through in such a short space of time. Her tale of fear grips all of the audience before her, everyone is mesmerised by the story and no one's eyes leave her throughout the entire story. It is as if I were living through the ordeal myself.

Antony Whitton

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