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harlotte Mapletoft and Aksa Ghaffar
On the 20th October 2016 we visited the extermination camp Auschwitz as we were selected to take part in the ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ project. We believe it is impossible to truly understand the Holocaust from a textbook photo; visiting Auschwitz helped us gain a much deeper understanding. The most important thing we learnt from the project was to rehumanise: the victims, the perpetrators and the bystanders. The saddest moment in our visit was when we entered the room full of the hair belonging to all the Jewish women. Their hair was removed to strip them of their femininity, to dehumanise them. At the end of our visit, a rabbi performed a memorial service and he made a significant point. He said many people have asked him ‘where was God when the Holocaust happened?’ He said they are asking the wrong question, the question that should be asked is ‘where was man?’ Inspired by his words, we have shared our knowledge with others to make sure that all those who died in the Holocaust are never forgotten.