A Post-It note from the Programme Director: 29 January

Post it from UCL centre for Holocaust Education’s Programme Director:

‘Be a light in the darkness’ – this year’s theme for HMD has been the inspirational motif for so many events this HMD.

Today, my colleague Corey Soper and I had the pleasure of interviewing students from Core Academy Trust as part of a special symposium that concluded a month-long Echo Eternal Horizon Festival whereby each school, each day, honoured a survivor they had met either face to face or through video testimony recording. The event was the Leon Greenman Youth Symposium – a new annual forum which will be held every year in Leon Greenman’s memory. The students were strident in their thinking that the Holocaust was important to the education of young people and to genocide prevention and described how the experience of meeting survivors had changed mindset about people of different communities. 14-year-old, Ethan James, of City Academy recited a poem he had written as part of the #Leon 110 poem challenge (see below). The poem, entitled, After, showed an intuitive grasp of Leon’s suffering and struggle with Leon’s survival but also his determination to share his testimony so that future generations will learn from the Holocaust.

AFTER
After surviving a Holocaust,
How do you survive everyday life?
Facing the trauma of separation,
Remembering the memories of rations,
The constant reminder of losing all,
And the symbolism of a yellow star,
But keeping all your emotions inside,
Not sharing fears with family,
In such a big world, feeling alone,
Left to deal with the memories, the experiences,
But my mission now is to share my story,
To shape the views of the future,
The views that will help build the new world.

By Year 9 student, Ethan James, City Academy. Core Education Trust.

Do take a look at the top 10 poems submitted to UCL as part of the #Leon 110 challenge.

I would like to extend UCL’s special gratitude to Cathy O’Driscoll, Head of Development at Core Education Trust. She played a key role in the creation of The Echo Eternal Project in Holocaust Education – which recently won the Pearson’s Gold Award in Partnerships in Education. She retires today after an outstanding career in education. Her contribution in bringing survivors and students together in most powerful ways is significant and we particularly want to thank her for building the partnership between Core Education Trust and UCL Centre for Holocaust Education.

We Launched our ‘After the War’ materials this week with a well-attended and highly successful CPD course with the author Tom Palmer. Be sure to take a look at the range of History, RE, and SMSC/Citizenship lessons we developed for your use with Year 7-8 students.

We would like to congratulate Holocaust survivors Manfred Goldberg and Zigi Shipper on their zoom conversation with the Duchess of Cambridge this week to mark HMD. Zigi is a close friend of our Centre. He was caught on camera telling the Duchess (with a twinkle in his eye) how delighted he was to be on the call was with her, rather than with her husband! Only Zigi can get away with such cheeky charm!

Have a good weekend,