On the 27th of January was Holocaust memorial day. This year was especially crucial as this may be the last generation to see Holocaust survivors.

I had participated in the Auschwitz project last year and I have recently submitted my research. The project involved history students in year 12 and 13 nominated from across the country. It involved three live seminars and information on case studies*. We also met a holocaust survivor on one of the seminars who gave us their testimony and who answered questions from the students.

For my research I had decided to focus on Jewish culture. Every individual who perished was part of a community, so loss also meant loss of ideas, customs and culture as well as people. This involved looking at the pre-war life of Jews in Europe before it was torn apart by the Nazis and their collaborators.

One aspect of the Holocaust I learnt from the project was that it is important to humanise EVERYONE involved. For the victims this is important as the Nazis tried to strip them of their humanity via properganda, unmarked graves, being transported on crowded and unsanitory cattle and coal trucks in freezing weather, taking away their names and replacing them with numbers tatooed on their arm to name a few. By learning about them as individuals not numbers we are able to remember them properly, know better what took place and its impact. Even the perpertrators of these crimes against humanity musn't be dissmissed as "monsters", "evil" or "mad" - this would prevent us from understanding the Holocaust. They are products of a society that they lived in.

*If you would like to know more about individuals experiences then you I would recommend a podcast on BBC i-player called "Survivors: Portraits of the Holocaust". Also, the book "Night" by Elie Wesel, which I read (among a number of books) for my research.