Holocaust Education Day

This year’s Holocaust Education Day presented Year 9 pupils with an opportunity to engage emotionally and historically with the traumatic events of that time that continue to resonate today. The aim of the sessions was to ask three main questions: what was the Holocaust and what happened; how was such a horrific crime possible in a modern society; and what does the Holocaust tell us about what it is to be human? 
 
These are huge questions to wrestle with. In response the History department used zoomed in case studies at first, looking at the experience of Leon Greenman and his family, then zoomed out to look at the slow development of Nazi persecution through laws, actions, and their impacts on real people. The aim was to help pupils think historically about intentionalist vs structuralist interpretations of the Holocaust, as well as to debunk any ideas regarding ‘evil’ actors. This hopefully revealed the social nature of the immense crime and added complexity to their understanding of it. 
 
In an associated event, we were delighted to welcome Lady Irene Hatter to School to introduce two special screenings of the film Forgotten Soldier to Year 9 and the wider KES community. Forgotten Soldier tells the story of Sally Noach, Lady Hatter’s father, whose heroic exploits during WW11 to save the lives of at least 600 Jewish prisoners from southern France, only came to light after he wrote his memoirs a quarter of a century later. Lady Hatter and her brother Jacques we