Projects of the year 2006-2007: reactions from students

Memories like a flame.

There is nothing, almost nothing. Not a single fum escapes from these black ovens, of which only ruins remain. The rails are stretching out in front of us, but they are no longer really the rails of yesteryear, except for the ground that turns green: our feet. Nature has reclaimed her property, and her insidious way has sunk its stubborn roots around the rails.

A port e, a survivor, had said a few days before killing herself in the 1970s that there had never been any birds: Birkenau. Today, she would be wrong: they are l, those dark and sinister crows. They soar, twirl, and then land in the immensity of the camp. They are fun birds. People say that they are here to announce death, but here, they cruelly remind us of it. But how could we forget him? Unfortunately, with the green grass and the weather, there are still all these barbels. How many of them have, corch, their hands, how many have given death and shed blood? Those bars that were marking the families, who hurt and still hurt.

Stand up, there are still a few watchtowers left. The soldiers, with their weapons in hand and the dog on a leash, had to settle there and, day and night, under the light of the moon or the sun, watch over their thin and weary prisoners, who were almost dead.

The Nazis burned the foundations, they wanted to erase everything just as they wanted to erase every single Jew, but they didn’t sing at the ruins. They speak, they tell the horror of Nazism and the suffering, the ignobility and the pain

We walk on the grass and a dirt road. Here, they have walked; also: Jacques and Jules, Simone Veil, Primo Levi and then all those others whose names, lives and sufferings we will never know. As for them, there isn’t much left if it’s these moving photos, less than a happiness, never fled since one day a man and an id ology knew that Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and many others no longer had the right to live. They are so beautiful, these husbands clutching their bouquet of flowers, these children playing, these proud and smiling men. They are beautiful because they were happy and we had happiness for them, until hope, until their humanity. What has become of them? They have lost weight, shivered, and maybe we are tinting their ashes, gray snow on the mud of the camp

Like the flames of candles, they burst, flickered, and then some flames died. Others, very few, have missed a small tincelle but how much this tincelle has been difficult to feed! However, all these small flames, tinged by an unspeakable barbarism, we have the power to rekindle them into a single great fire because we know it, because we heard their cries in the silence of the visit to Auschwitz. The survivors will reach the beginning of their lives, but because they had the strength to remember for themselves, for their own and those who did not return, because they merged into their own, so as not to be forgotten, we must take up the torch and pass on to others what we know about their history.

Because remembering is still the best way to avoid the worst and build a world of peace and tolerance, a world where everyone, without distinction of race or religion, has the right to live, simply the right to live

Lucile, lyc e Simone Weil, Saint-Priest-en-Jarez (42)

� This day has been overwhelming and we don’t know how to molest the ports that have surv cu the admiration they prove for their courage and kindness. Courage because, despite the pain and memories, they insist on returning to these places of torture. Kindness because without any taboo, without shame, or hatred, they tell their sad experience and count on us to share it.

El ve de 1 re ES, lyc e Pardailhan, Auch (32)

You have to go at least once: Auschwitz in your life because in our thinking, there is a before and an after Auschwitz.

El ve de 1 re ES, lyc e Pardailhan, Auch (32)

� In the bus that led us to camp, I tried to imagine; but I was far away, far from imagining what I would see, hear, and cover. I see life differently today. I can say that I feel it, I see things differently.

Florian, senior professional priv. Sainte Th r se, Rumilly (74)

� As a result of the motion that inspired us, this place, the incomprehension occurs; the questioning on the causes, the facts and above all the destructive cons quences of this human drama. We also come to question the fundamental values of our company, those that must not be forgotten and forgotten as they have been, t. It is therefore a question about the moral pillars but also about our relationship, we who have visited the greatest cemetery of humanity, because following this visit, proving, one feels like "burdened with a mission" to transmit what one has seen and heard; and especially that of not forgetting.

Fatima Aouidat, lyc e Jean Mac, Niort (79)

� During the visit to the Birkenau camp, I was surprised by the resemblance of this place to an open-air factory: there is a ramp for loading, ports and sorting them with m decins, like cows, the slaughterhouse; there are the many bars of bars and bars; the warehouses (huts and latrines) are like dominoes, there are tons of objects, hair, glasses, shoes. And then there is the entire camp organization, which is as impressive as its surface.

T.T., lyc e europ en Montebello, Lille (59)

� The first thing I saw when we arrived at Auschwitz was the void, the space on which the camp had built. The immensit: a large plain swept by the wind on which there were hundreds of barracks, of which only the paths remain today.

T.C., lyc e europ en Montebello, Lille (59)

� What struck me most when I entered this camp was the silence. Nothing, not a sound, not a word, not a bird’s song, nothing. No one dared to speak. Everyone looked at each other without finding what to say. We could only notice the horror of the pass. And, was there really anything else to say? I don’t know.

Romain Boudec, professional teacher at Michelet, Nantes (44)