EAST FIFE MAIL, Scotland
February 6, 2008
Pupils’ message for today from yesterday’s horror
School events help mark Holocaust Memorial Day
by Ralph Mellon (ralph.mellon@fifetoday.co.uk)
Caption, the photo at left: Buckhaven High School pupils Verity Caiger, left, and Janine Johnston show some of the photographs used in their presentation.
Caption, the photo at right: At Kirkland, artist Akiva Kenneth Segan is pictured with Jayne Ashley, the school’s acting principal teacher of international studies and citizenship.
MOVING reminders of one of mankind’s most appalling atrocities have been experienced and shared by Levenmouth school pupils.
Kirkland and Buckhaven High School each stages events last week to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which they looked at the significance and legacy of a truly horrifying period in recent history, in which six million people, mostly Jews, were exterminated during the Second World War in Nazi death camps.
Last week’ presentations followed a visit to Poland by pupils from Kirkland, Buckhaven and Wald Academy, along with other Scottish schoolchildren, under the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lessons From Auschwitz’ project.
Their trip included a visit to Auschwitz where they saw a sole remaining gas chamber and crematorium, a collection of victims’ personal belongings, and the converted stables and barracks where many prisoners were housed.
Last week, as part of a community link initiative following the visit, Buckhaven High School hosted a public display entitled ‘Beyond Tears.’
The insight into the harrowing events of the 1940’s and their relevance today was presented by two senior pupils, Verity Caiger and Janine Johnston, who had been on the Polish trip.
“It was very moving and was well received by the audience, made up of pupils, staff and members of the public,” said Buckhaven’s principal teacher of history, Grahame Fraser, “Tricia Marwick SMP was also in attendance, as a guest of the girls.”
The venture was so well received that a second presentation was given later in the week to senior pupils.
Kirkland High School, focusing on the theme of education in art, welcomed visiting American artist Akiva Kenneth Segan, from the International Shoah Art Museum – and was the only Fife school to invite him during his Scottish stay.
Mr Segan, a Jewish artist from Seattle whose relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, delivered a presentation entitled ‘Underwings.’
It contained a selection of photographic images from the Warsaw ghetto, Krakow and Auschwitz-Birkenau, which he had redrawn in ink, paint and mosaic.
In some cases, he had added wings to the people in the pictures representing freedom in death – a freedom which had been taken away from them in life.
Mr Segan’s illustrated talk was given to S2 youngsters, along with pupils in Standard Grade, intermediate and higher history, and the intermediate and Higher art students.