Two Brighton students visit Auschwitz-Birkenau

For a few months, I grappled with myself about whether I should write this article, wondering whether my words could truly do my experience, and the phenomenal work of the charity, justice. This is all thanks to the HET and their Learning From Auschwitz programme.

The HET is a spectacular charity that combats misinformation surrounding the Holocaust. Every year, tens of thousands of secondary school and college students listen to narrative accounts from genuine Holocaust survivors. Some are able to actually visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau site and therefore truly comprehend the enormity and scale of the genocide that occurred upon the grounds. I was chosen to be one of these students.

Facilitated by a tour guide, I was escorted around the location of an unspeakable amount of suffering. My group and I saw the inhumane, concrete blocks that Holocaust victims worked and died within the confines of. The tour was entirely comprehensive, and the guide provided me with information that had never been made accessible to me throughout the entirety of my secondary school education. 

The group that I spent the majority of my trip with was comprised of various pupils from different schools all around the UK. With these students, I did not solely attend the singular visit to Poland, but we also benefited from the input of two seminars held online by various fantastic historians and educators. These focused primarily on Jewish lives pre-war, and we even got the opportunity to listen to Mala Tribich, an incredible woman and genocide survivor who discussed her experiences first-hand. Needless to say, this was an achingly powerful experience that would have been entirely impossible if it were not for this charity. 

The HET (the organisation behind my trip) is a registered charity that has been educating students like me on the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust for nearly 40 years. The charity's mission of compensating for the rife misinformation has proven to be irrefutably beneficial and their consistent ensurance that everybody has access to free, reliable resources to educate themselves on such a sensitive but important topic is so significant in todays world. 

Each year, thousands of students hear live eyewitness testimonies from Holocaust survivors, a powerful experience that combats the barrage of anti-semitic misinformation that secondary and college students may be susceptible to receiving at the hands of their peers or social media. They also provide free resources and experiences for students around the UK and I personally have benefitted from their efforts to ascertain that every student is presented with equal opportunities, no matter their financial background. 

This is made possible by the dedicated team at the heart of this incredible charity, and their ceaseless efforts to make the world a slightly kinder, more tolerant place.