To aid their understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the world, History students in Year 9 attended a workshop delivered by the charity Protection Approaches on the 15th March.

During the 2 hour session, students learned in detail about different groups that were affected in the Holocaust such as Jews, Homosexuals, disabled people, the Roma and others. In this session students learnt about the historic prejudiced attitudes towards these groups and how the Nazis stepped up discrimination towards these groups in the 1930s and 1940s. During this learning time students delivered short presentations and taught others about the minority groups that were targeted in the Holocaust.

During the second hour of the workshops, Symon, who ran the session, introduced students to the theme of Holocaust memorial this year which is ‘Ordinary people’ and how it was the actions of ordinary people that allowed the genocide to happen. Furthermore, during this section of the session, students were given ‘active bystander’ training and worked their way through a series of challenging real life scenarios where people had been confronted and how to manage these scenarios in an effective manner where they discussed how best to de-escalate conflict and in particular how to help the victims.

Students across both sessions displayed a great level of maturity for a sensitive subject and were praised for their fantastic contributions and their confidence to deliver presentations of such high quality.

Mr Dodkin, History Department