Holocaust Memorial Day
Olivia and Charlie recount their visit to the University of Sussex:
Olivia - On Wednesday the 4th of February, 15 students were selected to go to the University of Sussex for a Holocaust Memorial Day event. We watched two short films that were about experiences of the Holocaust. The first short movie was Humo, this was about a mother and a son getting sent to the concentration camp and how much they struggled. What I liked about this film was the animation being made out of paper, and how touching and sad it was.
After that we watched the second movie, Girl no. 60427. It was about a girl who stayed over at her grandmother’s house and found her old diary, which was about her experience of the holocaust. The film depicted what happened with animation. Her grandmother never told anyone about her experience and felt ashamed that she couldn't save her poor sister. I really enjoyed watching this one. It gave a sense of understanding on how much this affected the poor woman, she was stiff and firm, but at the end, as the girl hugged her grandmother, we saw her loosen up and hug her back
which was very touching. Two people, Judie Ironside and Amanda Reuben debriefed and we were able to ask any questions we had about those two films.
After the films we met a Holocaust Survivor, Malka Levine. She told us a whole story about her and her family just trying to stay alive during this time. There were Jews from Ukraine who went through so much during this time at such a young age, and her father and grandmother died. It was just her mother and three young children left, but not once did she give up. Her mother kept fighting to the end. Afterwards, we asked questions to the lovely lady. I was so honoured to be part of this experience and to be able to listen to her talking about it first hand.
Overall, this whole trip gave me such a better understanding of the Holocaust than I had before. I was very lucky to get the experience and learnt so much more on how terrible this time would have been and how much it just affected everyone. I would thoroughly recommend this trip.
Charlie - I found Malka Levine’s speech to be very inspiring and it was definitely an audience favourite on that day. Overall, I think that the Uni of Sussex Holocaust Memorial Day is very worth coming to, because of the interesting story and to remember all the lives lost during the holocaust.