Our HMD2025 response is accessible for students across KS3, 4 and 5, and takes the form of materials that aim to provide a compelling and engaging learning encounter – through a series of suggested activities for use in tutor time, lessons, during an assembly, or to frame and support discussion and reflection. It can be worked through step by step in entirety, or be a something to dip into, ‘pick and mix style’.
Although HMD2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, our resource, takes the Warsaw Ghetto as its focus. Centring learners and teachers’ attention on one space, place and ‘foundations’ allows us to learn more about the Holocaust and reflect on what ‘All that remains’ meant/means, then and now. It responds in a range of ways to several prevailing myths and misconceptions revealed in across the Centre’s research and each activity or suggestion encourages self-reflection and offers a historical and contemporary lens.
The resource, comprising a Teacher Presentation and Student Workbook, explores the idea that to build ‘a better future’ we need strong foundations. It encourages students to reflect whether those foundations might be faith, human values or rights, morals or character. Or perhaps they might also be more literal, such as bricks, concrete and stone, or they may even be people.
Dependent upon the time available, the Teacher Presentation and materials can be explored in its entirety – with students engaging with slide 1-31 (and thus able to respond with the corresponding student workbook), or teachers may simply choose specific elements of the stimuli, as the presentation can be divided up into discrete segments, and knowing your students best, teachers and support staff can discern which elements may be most effective and meaningful.
The material has the central tenets of our Centre approach woven throughout, whilst designed to be flexible, engaging and pragmatic, irrespective of time, format, audience, knowledge and confidence of those leading the session. To that end, the Teacher Presentation might be understood to include the following segments
- Slide 2-11: we use a visual source analysis and ‘slow-reveal’ pedagogy to introduce and explore the Warsaw Ghetto – and its wall/bricks (akin to ‘Authentic encounters’) and a literacy approach to a short quote and exploration of terminology, through creation of a visual glossary.
- Slide 12-13: A selection of images (archival photos) as opportunity to consider pre-war Jewish life, diversity and humanising the history, a map and short historical context to locate the Warsaw ghetto in time and space.
- Slides 14-16: Sources A and B provide short quotes and introducing two testimony accounts, Janina Dawidowicz and Ed Herman, encouraging students to humanise the history and understand the experiences of some of those living in the Warsaw Ghetto. The materials include personal stories and testimony to reflect upon human/lived experiences and also time to consider what liberated by not really free might have meant. They also speak to opportunities to reflect on freedoms and civics today.
- Slides 17-21: Provides materials for students to develop chronological and historical understanding regards the establishment and history of the Warsaw Ghetto. Like the maps, chronology enables us to locate the Warsaw Ghetto is both in time, place and space.
- Slides 22-26: Compares and contrasts two images, historic and contemporary – to explore what students think about what ‘remains’ of the ‘foundations’ that can be seen.
- Slide 27: provides a summary context for what HMD commemorates, in specific regard to the Holocaust.
- Slides 28-31 offer some ideas, stimuli and suggestions to support students individually or collectively to create a piece of work, based on their ‘Foundations: All that remains’ learning. Our aim is that outcomes respond to the question of how do we build a ‘better future’ from ‘all that remains’? This might be, ‘Visualising our foundations’, ‘Every brick tells a story’, ‘Walled in’ or ‘Missing bricks’ – through displays, poetry/creative writing, art or other.
The student workbook provides the templates or resources and are downloadable/ printable as discrete workbooks or individual pages to scaffold and support young people. Alternatively, students could complete the activity and respond on lined/plain paper or in relevant exercise books.
In some schools and contexts, time and opportunity may exist for slides 1-31 to be explored in turn across the HMD week or a series of tutor time sessions, or a collapsed timetable day. But in other schools and settings you may choose to use specific segments or mix up the above suggested order – the component parts are all there, so colleagues may use professional judgement to prioritise certain tasks over others. Alternatively, as a Beacon School, you may want to draw upon cross-curricular opportunities and be more creative and collaborative about how the materials might be delivered and experienced – for example, History might take some time during HMD to deliver the timeline activity, perhaps in English or an Assembly the human stories and testimonies could be explored, or lead on the creative writing response, or Art might etc. These materials are not designed to be prescriptive – rather, they are flexible and adaptable, can be used in conjunction with other resources from other organisations, archives and sources, dip into our textbook (pages 46-49 may be helpful) and may be used to compliment aspects of your scheme of learning and so on.
The resources are designed to be accessible and inclusive irrespective of students age or stage – and this can be explored in various ways by students in a range of settings and contexts.
These materials look to support discussion in tutor time and are flexible to be used across pastoral, curriculum and enrichment settings to enable ALL young people to consider the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s national theme. Learn more about the 2025 theme.
In addition to our materials and discussion questions, you may like to consider the opportunities HMD2025 provides for whole school literacy. Read more.
In coming weeks, we will be raising awareness of Holocaust Memorial Day with social media engagement. We would love to see how you use some/all of these #HHMD2025 ‘Foundations: All That Remains’ materials, and to hear how your students engage and respond. We are keen to celebrate and amplify you and your students efforts, Please do let us know how you marked #HMD2025 in your school, so please do send us any photos, films, using our @UCL_Holocaust Twitter handle, and/or uclholocaust.bsky.social or by an email to n.wetherall@ucl.ac.uk
A range of HMD resources and materials, events and initiatives can also be found via our HMD partner’s website – these are particularly helpful for thinking about genocide, particularly as 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia, and mass atrocity more broadly, tackling denial, minimisation and distortion – so do check that out and see how it can complement your Beacon School work, UCL materials, citizenship, safeguarding and school values.
Image: MyGuide, Warsaw
*Special thanks to Beacon School Quality Mark alumnus, Mrs Charlotte Lane, for her ongoing engagement and support, and for her time and contribution to framing and curating these materials in conjunction with the Centre.
** Schools interested in exploring more about the genocide in Bosnia may like to explore, the HMD website as above or visit and explore the sites and work of https://www.bget-uk.org, https://warchildhood.org/, https://srebrenica.org.uk, or https://srebrenicamemorial.org/en