 Teacher for a daySaturday morning, April 25, 1998, Cracow, Poland.The day was about to change our lives in many different ways. This day was going to make us more than just students with travelling experience, it was going to make us teachers. April 25 was the day when we went to the most horrible places we had ever seen, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). We saw the concentration camps, the gas chamber, the crematorium and the prisoners hair, we saw hell. Back at homeWe decided that we wanted to do something, so when we came back home we wrote a PM which we sent out to all local lower secondary schools. We offered us to teach other youths about what happened in Auschwitz and tell how we felt during the visit. We have now been to three schools and our form teacher, Staffan Hagström, and the porters have helped us with the transports.The visits have been made during our schooltime and we have had great support from all teachers who have given us the opportunity to "skip" lessons.How we´re doing itWhen we went to Auschwitz we brought a digital-camera and it is from those negatives that we have made our overhead copies. When we have our lessons we tell the students about the camp from our view, how we felt , how we saw things and how we reacted. But we also tell them what former prisoners have said about the hard time in the camps. We try to give them all the information that we have. We show our overheads, our photos, a short videosequence from the gas chamber and a few books which give you a lot of information. We tell them about our feelings and we end the lecture with a discussion about violence and racism today.Point of viewWith our lectures we are trying to get the students to talk and have own thoughts and we want them to see that they can make their own choices. What they really want to stand up for. The student have given us a lot of response and they have listened carefully to what we have said. That is one of the reasons why we go out to the schools. We feel that we can do something about the problems with racism and nazism, at least we are trying to prevent it. It is not just the two of us that have been talking either, the students have also given us some questions to think about.Reactions and reflectionsThe visits to the schools have made us more secure about how to talk in front of other people and they have helped us through the hard time after the trip to Auschwitz. Both students and teachers seem to appreciate the way we carry through our lectures so we will keep on doing it as long as they ask for us.
© 1999 Freeway Writers: Marielle Sundin (sp00-22@park.se), Lisa Hennström(sp00-08@park.se). HTML by: Kaj Wiklund (nv01-25@park.se). Profiles |