These assemblies were aimed to help us remember those who were persecuted during World War 2 and to prevent a horrific act such as the Holocaust from happening again. However despite our attempts, such acts of genocide still do occur today.
As part of our assemblies we shared a poem read to us at Auschwitz, which brought home the horrors of the camp and the atrocities of the war in which the Nazis carried out several terrible acts of war crimes.
Extermination by Charlotte Delbo
Five by five they walk down the street of Arrivals.
It is the street of Departures but they don’t know. It is a one-way street.
They proceed in orderly fashion -
so as not to be faulted for anything.
They reach a building and heave a sigh.
They have reached their destination at last.
And when the soldiers bark their orders,
shouting for the women to strip,
they undress the children first,
cautiously not to wake them all at once.
After days and nights of travel the little
ones are edgy and cranky
And then the women undress in front
Of the children, nothing to be done
And when each is handed a towel they worry whether the shower will be warm because the children could catch cold.
And when the men enter the shower room through another door, naked too,
the women hide the children against their bodies.
And perhaps at that moment they all understand.
Over the course of the war the Nazis actions grew in severity, they started by making people wear badges to show their religion and destroying their businesses and finished by cremating these same people. These actions can be summarised by a quote taken long before the war in 1823 from Henrich Heine:
“Them that begin by burning books end by burning men.”
By Scott Martin and Georgina Milnes