Sir, The Government’s plan to enable two students from every school in England to visit Auschwitz to learn about the Holocaust is to be welcomed (report, Feb 4). For most it will be a memorable life experience, which should enlarge not only their compassion but also their understanding that the Holocaust really happened and that civilised, educated and advanced human beings could kill millions of people in a planned, detached way.
However, students also need to learn understanding in other areas. First, they should learn about the conditions that allowed the Nazi party to come to wield total power, the bitterness created by the financial penalties and humiliations imposed by the peace settlement after the First World War and the subsequent financial catastrophes that reached everyone in Germany in a way that no political party could.
Secondly, students also need to remember the words of the historian Antony Beevor, that the majority of Germans have faced up to their past and that: “No other country with a painful legacy has done so much to recognise the truth.” This is particularly true of Nuremberg, where last May a conference was held to consolidate a network of European cities opposed to racism. Moreover, the attendance of delegates from St Petersburg showed that that age-old hostility between Slavs and Germans is being overcome. That Auschwitz can be followed by Nuremberg is the basis of hope for the future.
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Diane Packham
Newcastle upon Tyne
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Sir, It will be important not to allow political correctness to distort the stark lessons to be learnt.
Currently, in order not to offend the sensibilities of modern Germans who had no part in the Holocaust, the word “Nazi” is used to describe almost any Second World War action. eg, “Nazi armies invaded Russia”, “Nazi death camps”.
The Nazi party was a minority political party — thus the majority of the soldiers, concentration camps guards etc, were just ordinary everyday Germans, no different from the rest of humanity.
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The unpleasant, and unwelcome, lesson that must be learnt is that we humans have to always guard against our nastier instincts and that any group of humans is capable potentially of evil. This has been amply demonstrated since Auschwitz in the Balkans, Rwanda, Darfur and Iraq.
Political correctness could obscure the message.
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Jan Manning
West Chiltington, W Sussex
Sir, Is the Government seriously expecting that a presentation based on a fleeting visit to Auschwitz by two fellow pupils will make a lasting moral impact on their peers? How did previous generations learn the lessons of history? By studying the past — aided by such old-fashioned items as history books, diaries, documents, even museums.
If these are no longer effective, let’s employ the media — films such as The Diary of Anne Frank and Schindler’s List — to give immediacy and create empathy. Auschwitz is for adults and they should take the responsibility for reinforcing the lessons of the past.
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Kate Hobson
Malpas, Cheshire
Sir, The German factories of death were a unique example of human brutality. However, Hitler had 18 concentration camps and Stalin, at about the same time, had 150. The number of people who died in the Soviet camps is conservatively estimated at double the German figures and the number of Jews in the Soviet concentration camps was approaching 40 per cent of all prisoners.
The tyrants aped each other in many respects.
Oleg Gordievsky
London WC1