This session is for university students and together we will look at survivor testimonies and begin to understand and process their thoughts around the Holocaust. Looking at four survivor testimonies, this will be a safe space to ask questions and a more intimate session to discuss your thoughts and feelings. Looking from the university perspective, we will hold a conversation around what we can do to ensure the Holocaust is never forgotten. 

The Aim

Around Yom Hashoah, on university campuses and J-Socs around the UK and Ireland, students would have the opportunity to come together, listen to testimonies to understand and commemorate the Holocaust. This is an alternative method, creating an online community to express your thoughts, feelings and questions. This is a safe space, where students can come together and process the testimonies. Together the aim of this is to learn and ask questions and see how we can make a difference in Holocaust Education.

How this will work?

To begin you will be presented with four themes. Please click on the one that resonates most with you and read the testimony associated with it.

Once you have read the survivor testimony, each testimony has the same 6 questions, and 1 specific question to that testimony. 

We will then convene over the call, on the 21st April at 2:10pm, through the UJS Facebook Page, with one person reading the summary of each testimony. We will then have an open discussion, with the questions used as a prompt for this. 

There is then a subsequent group of questions about how we can use the lessons of the past to implicate what happens in the future. These questions will then lead onto an open discussion. 'please feel free to share other testimonies.

We will then come up with ways to bring Holocaust Education onto campus. Discussing issues on campus and current methods, we will begin to create some feasible points of action on what we can do as university students.

Whilst there are structured questions, we want this to be as comfortable for you as possible. We encourage you to go off tangent and share your thoughts and feelings, so we can begin to understand, and learn together. 

If you have not registered to take part in this session yet, please contact Lauren at [email protected]

These slides and information will remain on the UJS website for you to refer to and to spend more time reading. There are also subsequent links to read more about their stories.

Resources from Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) and Holocaust Educational Trust (HET)