Posted: Wednesday 1 February 2012
International Holcaust Day 2012
In recognition of International Holocaust Day 2012, pupils of the High School of Dundee have opened “Holocaust” – a collaborative art installation at the School’s War Memorial. This powerful and extremely moving collective art piece, which was created by all first and second-year pupils, was officially opened by Holocaust survivor, Flora Selwyn.
The display is highly evocative, reflective of the haunting exhibition of the room of vast quantity of victims’ shoes which are on public display in enormous heaps at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. Many of the victims were young children. 
Annie Caldwell, Form 2, said: “It was really emotional making the shoes when you considered that the people who would have worn them had died under such terrible circumstances. It is important to remember this heart-breaking event, to remember every life lost and to hope that it never happens again.” 
Miranda Cook, a Form 1 member of the History Society, added: “We have worked on all types of shoes from workmen’s boots to expensive ladies’ high heels to babies’ booties. It has been difficult to think that whole families and whole communities would have been wiped out in one go. We must never forget what happened during the Holocaust.”
Particularly poignant was the official opening by Mrs Selwyn. Flora Selwyn, now living in St. Andrews, was born in Vienna in 1934. Flora spent time with pupils relating her very personal experiences of World War II and the Holocaust. One of her first memories is of a group of Nazi soldiers breaking into her family home, ransacking the house and taking her father, a middle class Polish businessman, captive. She was 4.
Working with art and history departments, pupils have taken a cross-curricular focus of World War II. As part of this, they have been learning about the atrocities which took place at the concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany during this period. Sometimes referred to as the “Death Factory”, Auschwitz was set up in May 1940 in Oswiecim, Poland and the conservative estimate is 2.1 to 2.5 million victims, although the actual number is believed to have been a great deal higher.
George Mackenzie, Head of Art, explained: “The pupils responded extremely well to a difficult and harrowing topic and, with their mature attitude and engagement with the project, have been a credit to the School. Their hard work is commendable and they have provided fellow pupils, staff and visitors to the School with an ideal opportunity to recognise International Holocaust Day.”
The children’s installation, which began on a small scale, has grown in size over the past ten days to symbolise how the repression and persecution escalated, culminating in 200 hand-crafted ceramic shoes. Visually shocking, the creation of each individual shoe reveals the story of individual human beings, many of whom were small children.
School Rector, Dr John Halliday, said: “I would like to thank everyone involved in creating this high quality artwork. It provides a very powerful and moving tribute to the memory of the Holocaust and its victims. The children have worked hard, and have learnt a very valuable lesson, not least from the experiences of Mrs. Selwyn who herself experienced the great atrocities of war at first hand.”
The ‘Holocaust’ art installation is on display alongside the War Memorial at the High School of Dundee from now until mid-February 2012.