Primarily Year 8 students are taking part in Culture Week but students in Year 10 and 12 have also been benefitting from the workshops run by the Humanities department. The week enables students to get the opportunity to experience the effects of the war on a personal level.
Throughout the week students have been involved in a variety of different events. Collaborating with the Art department, groups of Year 10 students spent the day with an artist producing drawings related to events of the Holocaust.
A personal account of the war from Holocaust survivor, Ruth Barnett left students astounded by her incredible journey from Berlin to England in 1939 at the age of four. Ruth and her brother then lived with three foster families for 10 years until they went back to Germany to live with her father.
Students were shown a French film and were given a workshop from an educator at the Holocaust Educational Trust.
The purpose of the event is to open the eyes of students, so they can see the atrocities of the Holocaust from a different perspective.
History teacher, Mr Barker, feels that in past years the events have been received very well by students.
He said: “The Culture Week is a brilliant experience for students. When you are in a classroom it is very easy to teach them about what happened in the Holocaust but it is hard to get them to fully understand the devastation that it caused.
“Having visitors in school to recall their account of the events during the Second World War brings it down to a personal level for the students and that is particularly powerful.”
The Culture week has been running in school for the past four years and obviously leaves a lasting impression, with many upper school students remembering the events that they attended when they were in Year 8.
Head Boy, Adam Saleh listened to Mrs Barnett’s talk.
He said: “Hearing Mrs Barnett’s story was astounding and took the events of the Holocaust directly to a personal level.
“As a History student myself it was great to meet somebody that had experienced the effects of a war that I usually only learn about through text books.”
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