Twenty years ago in Whitwell Middle School, Tennessee, students found it hard to comprehend that six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered during the Holocaust.
The teachers explained Jewish people were forced to wear yellow stars, and many citizens wore paper clips on their clothing as an act of solidarity.
This sparked the idea for the students to collect paper clips of their own – six million of them to express their remembrance of Jewish families lost and the communities torn apart in the Holocaust.
It was slow at first, students digging through drawers at home, but by the end of the school year the class had 700,000 paper clips. In just a couple of years, they had gathered enough paper clips to honour not only the Jewish victims of the Holocaust but to mark all victims of Nazi persecution.
Eleven million paper clips now sit in the Children’s Holocaust Memorial, in Whitwell, in a train carriage outside the school. The site is visited by people from all over the world.
What does this story tell about Holocaust education? It tells us that it’s better to remember the victims of the Holocaust but as individuals, unique people that each met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis, rather than an undifferentiated six million.
Even more, it tells us that Holocaust education is often challenging, in that it is difficult for people, young and old alike, to comprehend the scale and systematic nature of one of the worst acts of genocide the world has ever seen.
Understanding the Holocaust, its enormity and impact, is a difficult task. But the most successful projects and exhibitions contextualise this dark period in our history in the personal stories of just a few individuals.
Others, such as the Children’s Holocaust Memorial, provide a space where the visitor can engage on an emotional level with a sense of loss and remembrance.
I’m proud to be leading a programme that will provide a national space of remembrance and education in the UK, a new Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. It will be right next to our Parliament.
In this country we are lucky to have access to excellent Holocaust education resources, represented by organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust, UCL’s Institute of Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, National Holocaust Centre, the Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre at Huddersfield and the Imperial War Museums.
What we are proposing in Victoria Tower Gardens is a memorial that is at once a place to remember the victims of the Holocaust, a learning centre underneath that will challenge the visitor to learn the lessons of history through individual stories of survival, bravery and courage.
The view from the Memorial to Parliament will remind us all of the role of democracy in standing up whenever our shared values are threatened.
It might be easy to say that the Holocaust didn’t happen in our country but this undermines the reality that education on the Holocaust and subsequent genocides is one of the most powerful tools we have in the fight against prejudice, intolerance and misinformation. This has never been more important as we see reports of rising antisemitism and hatred in all its forms.
I’m pleased to announce the Government has this week formally submitted a planning application for this proposal in Victoria Tower Gardens.
I understand that there has been some concern on the chosen location, but equally we are clear that this is the right place for such a memorial.
We are taking a wide range of measures, to preserve and enhance the local park and ensure that it remains fully accessible to the public.
I can also confirm that leading businessman and philanthropist Gerald Ronson, and former Conservative Party Chairman Lord Feldman, will be leading a country-wide fundraising effort for the Memorial and are setting up a charity to deliver on their aims.
We firmly believe that the Memorial will, through the example of the Holocaust, contribute towards creating informed citizens who will stand up to hatred and intolerance whenever and wherever they occur.
