This excursion provided a high impact learning experience for the students ...
On Monday 26 August, three Year 10 History classes visited the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick to learn about the Holocaust as part of their Depth Study into the nature of conflict during World War II. The Centre was established in 1984 and serves as a museum and shrine of remembrance to victims of the Holocaust.
This excursion provided a high impact learning experience for the students both in the confronting nature of the content and in the powerful learning opportunity that came from hearing the first-hand testimony of Holocaust survivors.
On the day, students were fortunate to hear from Abram Goldberg, who was imprisoned in the Lodz ghetto as a young man. He spoke about overcoming Nazi-enforced media blackouts in Poland by constructing his own radio to access information about the course of events during World War II. He shared that this placed him in the difficult position of deciding whether to inform the Jewish community at Lodz of Allied actions that had not yet secured victory over Nazi Germany, or to provide information about armed resistance in the Warsaw ghetto by Jewish freedom fights. The latter, he knew, would no doubt lead to deaths of Jewish people at Lodz who would be inspired to resist.
Abram reinforced that his story was one of triumph over adversity. When asked by Alessia Z, what gave him strength during his time at Lodz and at Auschwitz, he replied that it was his belief that 'humanity was better’ than the treatment he experienced, and his promise to his mother to survive.
The Jewish Holocaust Centre is open to the public. For more information visit https://www.jhc.org.au/.
Mr Tom Crowle
Learning Leader, Humanities