22/02/2024
This week I flew with The Holocaust Educational Trust to Auschwitz on one of their LFA (Lessons from Auschwitz) trips. It was my 42nd time accompanying them as their photographer. While LFA focuses on educating 6th form students from all over the UK about the horrors of Auschwitz and the holocaust, this particular trip was aimed at teachers specifically.
From all the trips I have attended over the years, this one felt more poignant. The sad realisation of the enormity of the task of educating people about the Holocaust, is so evident. The challenge of what still needs to be achieved in Holocaust education and combatting antisemitism, feels like climbing Everest.
The pain was amplified by the fact that we are living in a time where antisemitism is increasing at an alarming rate.
Primo Levi’s quote: “It happened, therefore it can happen again. This is the core of what we have to say,” has never rung so true!
Also seeng the names of some of my relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust inscribed in The Book of Names just added to the emotion.
Despite my 42 trips to Auschwitz, approx 17,000 photographs, 82 flights, 87,000 flight miles, 3000 miles in busses and 840,000 steps around the camps, the depths of depravity continues to shock me. It is impossible to, and I will not allow myself to become desensitised to this evil. I remain convinced that education is the only tool for enlightening people convinced by extremest rhetoric and blind predujudce.
In life things are not black and white but in some cases as represented by these photographs, it is simply good and evil.
