Auschwitz - Education Scotland
Transcription
Auschwitz - Education Scotland
Auschwitz Between 1940 and 1945, over six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps such as AuschwitzBirkenau (in Poland). They also killed captured soldiers, gypsies and people who were handicapped. At first they were starved to death or shot, but then they developed a quicker way of killing them – the gas chambers. We remember these victims on Holocaust Day. In 2005, five Inverclyde pupils visited Auschwitz-Birkenau Jan Reagan, Chris Shearer, Jaclyn Malloy, Melissa Wilson and Andrew McCullagh This is Auschwitz today. This is where the Nazis tried to exterminate Europe’s Jewish people just over 60 years ago. Millions arrived along this rail line. On arrival they were spilt into two groups – those who would be worked & starved to death and those who would go straight to the gas chambers. The Gates Into Auschwitz: ARBEIT MACHT FREI means ‘Work brings freedom’ Gas Chamber, Auschwitz 800 people a day were gassed. It took too long to burn the bodies so more gas chambers were built at nearby Birkenau The ‘Firing Wall’. Prisoners were lined up and shot. These cans contained Cyclone B – the pellets gave off poison gas when they were tipped into the ‘showers’ (really the gas chambers). A whole room of human hair cut from the dead bodies. Cyclone B traces were found in the hair. The hair has turned grey over 60 years. Hair was made into rugs and to make German soldiers’ coats warmer German soldiers took away the prisoners’ glasses, artificial limbs and other belongings, partly to humiliate them. Ordinary lives: photographs of some of the prisoners before coming to the camps 25 % of the prisoners who died were children Birkenau Over 1.5 million prisoners were killed in nearby Birkenau alone. Prisoners were crammed into beds in unheated sheds - some on the floor. There could be 5 on each shelf. Many had dysentery. Some died when the beds collapsed on them. This was the only ventilation for a tiny punishment cell. Prisoners died of cold or suffocated. The Memorial Tower. Visitors light candles for the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. At the end of the day we lit a candle in memory of all those who died Auschwitz was freed by Russian soldiers in 1945. The Germans had tried to destroy the evidence, but there were piles of bodies and other remains. There were also some survivors, most of whom were close to death. When he was captured, the camp commandant was hanged on these gallows. Could something like the Holocaust ever happen again?