Exploring ways of commemorating the Holocaust for future generations: A historic intergenerational conference

One third of school students hugely underestimate the scale of the Holocaust, believing that the number killed was two million or less, with 10 per cent believing that 100,000 people were murdered. These were among the preliminary findings of ground-breaking research carried out and presented to a Holocaust Generations Conference earlier this year by Professor Stuart Foster, Paul Salmons and Ruth-Anne Lenga of the Institute of Education’s Centre for Holocaust Education. The Centre had surveyed over 8,000 pupils and held follow-up interviews with over 300 pupils across all years of secondary education in England. Most young people, the researchers concluded, appeared mystified why the Holocaust had happened, beyond a vague idea of ‘hatred’ and ‘prejudice’. At the same time, less than one-third of pupils who had studied the Holocaust knew what anti-Semitism meant; this figure could be compared to over half who knew what ‘Islamophobia’ meant and over 90 per cent who understood the term ‘homophobia’. This historic one-day intergenerational gathering of Holocaust refugees and survivors and their descendants, co-organised by the AJR, the Second Generation Network and the Kindertransport Association, was held in mid-January at University College London’s Institute of Education and attended by some 300 people. The aim of the conference was to explore ways of commemorating the Holocaust for future generations. One of two keynote speakers, Lord Dubs, a former Labour Member of Parliament and a Kind who left Czechoslovakia on one of Sir Nicholas Winton’s trains, lit one of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s ’70 Candles for 70 Years’, designed by Sir Anish Kapoor in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Referring to current events, particularly in France – the murder of four Jews in a Paris kosher supermarket – but in Europe in general, Lord Dubs concluded that ‘we are failing’: prejudice was still around us everywhere. The second keynote speaker, Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE, the daughter of a German refugee who arrived in the UK on a domestic visa, said that her experience as a ‘half’ Second Generation refugee had left her with a ‘very soft spot’ for refugees and asylumseekers as well as for civil liberties and gay rights. Due to her background, she said, she never felt fully secure anywhere. She was, however, very proud of Britain’s reception of immigrants and stressed that more should be done to publicise the help given to Jewish refugees from the Nazis by UK diplomats such as Robert Smallbones. At a fascinating Inter-generational Panel, Joanna Millan, a representative of the First Generation and an AJR Trustee, said she had very early memories of the Holocaust and these had influenced her to carry out family research; Philippe Sands, a Second Generation lawyer specialising in human rights and genocide issues, stated that according to his recollections ‘these things [matters pertaining to the Holocaust] were not really talked about’. Third Generation member Hannah Goldstone declared that she had picked up her knowledge about the Holocaust from her grandfather and that she saw herself as ‘a custodian of the truth of the Holocaust’ – ‘both a heavy responsibility and a necessary burden’. Those in search of an interesting workshop were spoilt for choice, with 11 to choose from, including themes such as ‘Secret Listeners Who Bugged the Nazis in WWII’; ‘Anti-Semitism in Post-Holocaust Europe’; ‘Preserving and Accessing Our History’; and ‘Tracing Your Family Back to Before the Holocaust’.