100 students attend Holocaust talk with Judith Hayman
On Tuesday 11 March, we were privileged to have Judith Hayman from the Holocaust Education Charity, Generation 2 Generation, come and speak to our students and staff about her family’s experience in the holocaust.
Over 100 students and staff attended the presentation and had the opportunity to ask questions and some students stayed to talk further with Judith at the end.
Describing her family’s background in Austria, Judith explained how anti-Jewish laws implemented by Hitler over five years in Germany were introduced in Austria in only a few months following the Anschluss (the annexation of Austria) in March 1938.
She described the horrors of Kristallnacht (the November Pogrom) in November 1938, and its aftermath. The miracle of Charlotte’s and her sister Frieda’s escape was revealed, but so too were the stories of those who were trapped in Austria and perished in the Łódź ghetto and elsewhere.
Judith’s presentation used anecdotes from Charlotte and formal testimonies given by Charlotte’s sister, Judith’s Aunt Frieda, to Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and to the Leo Baeck Institute.
The presentation was richly illustrated with historical photographs and documents and also a disturbing video capturing the warmth of Hitler’s welcome into Vienna.
