A pair of Forfar Academy pupils are preparing a special presentation that aims to encourage the wider community to consider the modern context that might be applied to lessons learned from the Holocaust.
Last September, Abbie Carnegie and Karlene Douglas were part of a Holocaust Educational Trust field trip to the death camps of Poland, including Auschwitz, where countless thousands of European Jews died at Nazi hands during the second world war.
Theirs was the second involvement by Forfar Academy pupils in the trust programme, and this week the sixth-year girls are involved in a series of assembly presentations to fellow pupils tailored specifically to their year group audiences.
The study visit assisted the Angus pair in their advanced history programme, but the lasting impact of the trip has also seen Abbie and Karlene strengthen the school’s link with a Holocaust survivor who will make a return visit to Angus later this month.
Mrs Eva Clarke will give her presentation at the school on Tuesday, February 22, and with the event open to the public, Abbie and Karlene are hopeful people from across Angus will take the opportunity to attend the event.SurvivorsMrs Clarke and her mother were the only members of a 15-strong family to survive the Nazi concentration camps and her personal recollection of a life which began in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria is a compelling testimony of the extremes to which man’s inhumanity to man can stretch.
“Since the Auschwitz visit, we have been working closely with one of our teachers, Miss Walker, to organise the presentation to bring our knowledge and first-hand experiences to those in the school and the community,” said Abbie.
“A lot of people still don’t know what the Holocaust is, and we would like to open the whole issue of it to as many people as possible.”
Karlene added, “Having been there and seen the camps, it is difficult to describe how bad the conditions were.”
As part of the modern message they have developed from their experience, the girls have been trying to get across to younger pupils the harm caused by intolerance in society at all levels.
“The younger pupils might not know about the Holocaust and what it was all about however, we are trying to tell them about the effects of things like discrimination and bullying and show what it can lead to,” added Abbie.