Manchester-born Habonim Dror leader Lucy Travis, 24, represented the youth movements. “I am surprised that no one from other movements came on this seminar,” she said. “I thought we would have to fight for a place.”
Ms Travis intends to create Holocaust education booklets that junior movement leaders can use with 15-year-olds on summer schemes. “It’s a filter-down system,” she explained. “The Holocaust has been modernised by films like Defiance, but it’s still a hard thing for young people to experience, even though we’ve heard stories from people’s grandparents.”
The Nottingham University graduate described her connection to the Holocaust as “reactionary. There’s a rise in Holocaust denial, people are portraying Israel with a swastika. We need to educate about this.”
Habonim runs an education programme focusing on “resistance to the Nazis among the youth, particularly those who used their leadership skills. In some places they held them off longer than the Polish resistance did. We are also looking more in depth at the role of antisemitism today. We want to relate the Holocaust to how the situation is now.”
