At Vision Schools, we love to hear about what is going on in and out of  the classroom under the ‘Holocaust Education’ banner. If you have a story you’d like to tell, please get in touch and we will share it here across our Vision Schools community. Here, Amanda Stewart, S5 pupil at Bishopbriggs Academy reflects on her varied and memorable experiences of Holocaust Education, in and out of school. Many thanks for sharing this with us, Amanda!

I felt very lucky to be able to go to Poland with my school and get the chance to visit Auschwitz concentration camp. Visiting Auschwitz was a heart-wrenching and eye-opening experience that showed a visceral insight into humanity at its worst. Although the Holocaust is a topic that I have been learning about in school since I was in primary school, seeing the camp in person was truly shocking and hard to process. It’s heart breaking to learn about it in a classroom, but to see a place of so much suffering and death in real life was difficult to both comprehend and describe. I know that it is an experience that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, as it showed the value of preserving the past and gave me a new perspective.

I also was very grateful to take part in the Holocaust Memorial activities, which gave me the chance to present information and discuss the topic of the Holocaust with both pupils and my school and students at a local prison. This was also a very valuable activity as it allowed me to understand the importance of sharing these stories. We are one of the last generations that will be privileged enough to hear these stories first-hand, and we can already see that information around the holocaust is fading. Many people do not know much about it or do not know or believe that it happened in the first place. It is essential that we share information about it and ensure that we use the past to learn from and to preserve our future.