Project Holocaust

There was a project week at our school, and two of our history teachers decided to devote their program to the scar of mankind - The Holocaust

On the first day we were introduced to this topic by a short lecture, presentation of project Centropa and a short movie about Hungarian Jews. Our next topic was propaganda in Germany, so we watched some documentaries concerning that and we discussed technics which were used. On the second day, we tried to search information about victims of Holocaust. We were given a name, and we were supposed to find as much information as possible about certain person. It was an amazing experience, we were able to see a life of one person through his police records, passport applications, marriage certificate and other documents, which were collected from registry office and court. We have experienced hardship decoding historic materials and genealogist research. On the third day, students went to concentration camp Terezin. On the fourth day, we presented short presentations about art in concentration camp and "the final solution". Then we analysed diaries and reports of people in Terezin ghetto. On the fifth day, we focused on life in Warsaw ghetto and we watched a movie The Pianist, which is inspired by diary of Wladyslaw Szpilman. We were impressed by accuracy of the movie, and its documentary value. After the movie, we discussed personality of Wilhelm Hosenfeld, who helped many hiding Jews during the war. Finally we watched a documentary about people, who deny Holocaust. I was very surprised by this, because I think that it's an indisputable truth, and there are many evidences. I think that the project was very successful and everybody involved enjoyed it. Of course it couldn't be realized without our teachers, who had done their best to make this project agreeable. We found out a lot about people who were victims of holocaust and we have learned how to look at history. We should not see just numbers and dates, we should see people as well.