Welcome to the Faith and Culture pages where we will share the work of the young people and staff who are developing the Equalities – Faith and Culture strategy in our school.
Holocaust Memorial Day
(By clicking the header above, you will be taken to the Holocaust Memorial Day events and acknowledgements for this session.)
Each year the Faith & Culture team work hard to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day.
We acknowledge and memorialise the memories of the six million Jewish people and five million members of marginalised communities that were marginalised, discriminated against, stripped of their human rights and horrifically murdered because of who they were, because they stood outside the ideologies of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (National Sozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei), the creators and supporters of the ideologies of Nazism.
Better known as the Nazi party, this was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945. Pseudoscientific racist theories were central to Nazism and the party aimed to unite racially desirable Germans as national comrades, whilst marginalising those that were deemed either to be political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of foreign race.
The Nazis sought to strengthen the Germanic people as the “Aryan master race”, through racial purity and eugenics, with broad social welfare programmes, and a collective subordination and removal of individual rights, which could be sacrificed for the good of the state on behalf of the people. To protect the supposed purity and strength of the Aryan race, the Nazis planned the extermination of Jewish people; Romany communities; Poles and most other people of Slavic origin; along with the physically and mentally disabled.
They continued the marginalisation and removal of rights by segregating homosexuals; Africans; Jehovah’s Witnesses; and political opponents.
The persecution reached its climax when the Nazi party-controlled German state set in motion the Final Solution – an industrial system of genocide which achieved the murder of around six million Jews and around five million people of other marginalised and targeted communities, in what has become known as the Holocaust.
Annually on 27th January, many organisations around the world come together to commemorate and give testimony to the atrocities of the Holocaust and the genocide events since the end of World War II. This is the anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp where more than one million people were brutally murdered by the Nazis.
The Soviet soldiers who were the first to arrive and liberate the 7,000 prisoners who had been left behind by the Nazis and SS guards, because of serious illness (due to effects of their mistreatment in imprisonment), after the camp guards had forced most of the prisoners onto a death march. The 322nd Rifle Division who were first to arrive, were shocked at the scale of the Nazi crimes. The liberators uncovered 600 corpses; 370,000 men’s suits; 837,000 articles of women’s clothing; and seven tonnes (7.7 tons) of human hair.
This date will be forever recognised as International Holocaust Memorial Day.
#HolocaustMemorialDay
#HMD
#LightTheDarkness
#HMD2021
CELEBRATION OF EID
Our 2nd year pupils Haris Saif and Arbab Kazmi have created a short information film about Ramadhan (the month of fasting) and the celebration of Eid.
The film shares what Ramadhan means for people of Muslim faith; why Muslims fast; and what Muslims do during this month of Ramadhan and during the celebration of Eid.
We hope you are informed and enjoy the short information film.
On behalf of the school, we would like to thank Mr Moghul, Haris and Arbab for the work on this movie.
CHINESE MOON FESTIVAL
Friday 13th September marked the celebrations for the Chinese members of our school community for the Moon Festival.
Chinese moon Festival is the second most important festival after the Chinese New Year. It is held on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese Luna calendar. In 2019 it takes place on Friday September 13th. The time of the Moon Festival is at the middle of the autumn season. So this festival is also called Mid-Autumn Festival. The moon on this day is at its roundest and brightest, symbolizing togetherness and reunion in Chinese culture. Chinese people celebrate this festival mainly by family reunion, eating moon cakes and worshiping the moon ( if it is weather permitted). So Happy Chinese Moon Festival! zhōngqiū jié kuàilè 中秋节快乐!
Mrs Zhang worked with her classes to create a display for the foyer:
ROSH HASHANAH
At sundown on Sunday 29th September 2019 the members of our school community, friends and family who are of Jewish faith celebrated the start of the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah which has the literal translation of ‘beginning the year’.
It commemorates the creation of the world and is also a judgement day, when people of Jewish faith believe that God balances a person’s good deeds over the last year against their bad deeds, and decides what the next year will be like.
We would like to wish all of the Jewish community, Shanah Tovah!
Below are links to the posters that we displayed in the foyer as young people, staff and visitors to the school entered the school last week.
Rosh Hashana 4 Rosh Hashana Shanah Tovah Rosh Hashana 3 Rosh Hashana 2 Rosh Hashana 1
