Posted: Thursday 19 January 2012
This year, to commemorate International Holocaust Day, the Art Department has been working with F1 and F2 pupils as they each design and produce a ceramic shoe, as part an artwork which is being erected opposite the War Memorial in the foyer of the Main Building. The shoe theme was chosen as, when prisoners arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenhau Concentration Camp, all their belongings and most poignantly their shoes, were taken from them, processed and redistributed to Germans being resettled by the Third Reich.
The build-up of shoes each day symbolises how the persecution of various groups of people escalated during the Nazi regime, eventually culminating in the systematic mass-murder of millions in the death camps. Click here to see the daily updated images of the artwork. Our pupils responded extremely well to a difficult and harrowing topic and, with their mature attitude and engagement with the project, were a credit to the school. The Art Department, and the pupils involved, would be grateful if staff and parents could spare a few moments over the coming week to view the installation as it develops, as well as the completed piece, which will be in place by Wednesday 25 January, two days before Holocaust Memorial Day: comments, observations and opinions would be most welcome. Next week the History department will be running a series of assemblies about the Holocaust and there will also be an exhibition in the library.
Auschwitz was a group of three Concentration and Extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Poland during World War Two. Auschwitz 2-Birkenhau was designated by SS Heinrich Himmler as ‘the place of final solution of the Jewish question in Europe.’ By the time that the Soviet troops liberated Birkenhau on 27th January 1945 it is estimated that 3 million prisoners had lost their lives in the camp.