Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection, and our time for reflection leaders are Mirrin Kirkpatrick and Sarah-Jane McKeown, who are Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors.
My name is Mirrin Kirkpatrick, and this is Sarah-Jane McKeown, and we are ambassadors for the Holocaust Educational Trust. We took part in the trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project as students from Dumfries high school. As part of the project, we heard from a Holocaust survivor and took part in a one-day visit to former Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. On our return, we are sharing what we have learned with our school.
Visiting Auschwitz was an experience that I will never forget. Seeing the site truly put into perspective the stories of victims and the scale of the Holocaust. One moment that has stayed with me was walking into the room with piles of human hair and other belongings from victims of the camp. Shaving the heads of victims was one of the first ways that they were stripped of their humanity. That brought home to me the importance of rehumanising victims of the Holocaust and remembering individual stories.
We were privileged to hear from survivor Eva Clarke BEM. Eva was born in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1945, weighing only three pounds. Her mother acted as an incubator, using her body warmth to keep Eva alive. Hearing Eva’s testimony made me grateful for the life that I live. As we mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I know that survivors will not be able to share their stories forever. As the younger generation, we are committed to the responsibility of ensuring that those stories live on by sharing testimonies such as Eva’s.
Our next steps project is an assembly that we will share with our whole school. We want to emphasise the importance of commemorating this day every year, especially since it is the 80th anniversary. To this day, people deny the Holocaust, and we want our fellow students to know that it really happened and that there is much evidence to prove that. Through the trust, we have heard from survivors and have seen the sites, so we are committed to safeguarding the future of Holocaust education.
As an ambassador for the trust, I pledge to help to ensure that my generation remembers the 6 million men, women and children who were killed in the Holocaust, and, as survivors grow fewer and frailer, to keep their memories alive.
Thank you so much for inviting us to be here today to share our experience and reflections on why Holocaust education is so important for young people. [Applause.]
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