Projects for the year 2006-2007: students' reactions

Memories like a flame.

There is nothing, almost nothing. No fum escaping from these black ovens of which only ruins remain. The rails stretch in front of us, but they are no longer really the rails of the past, since the ground that rolls green our feet. Nature has taken back her property, and its insidious manner has embedded her stubborn roots around the rails.

A survivor had said a few days before killing herself in the 1970s that there had never been any Birkenau birds. Today, she would be wrong: they are these black and sinister ravens. They hover, spin, and then land in the immensity of the camp. They are fun birds. It is said that they are there to announce death, but here, they cruelly remind us of it. But how could we forget it? Despite the green grass and the weather, there are still all these obstacles. How many of them have had their hands covered, how many have died and shed blood? These beautiful things that adorn families, who hurt and who still hurt.

Stand up, there are 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, watched over their thin and tired prisoners, with eyes that were almost dead.

The Nazis destroyed the foundations, they wanted to erase everything just as they wanted to erase even the slightest Jew but they did not have a chance at the ruins. They speak, they tell the Nazi horror and suffering, the ignominiousness and pain

We walk on the grass and a dirt road. Here, they have also walked: Jacques and Jules, Simone Veil, Primo Levi and then all those others whose name, life and suffering we will never know. For them, there isn’t much left if it’s not these moving photos, less than a happiness never fled since one day a man and an id ology knew that the Jews, the Slavs, the 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 used to be happy and they have you until the end of happiness, until the end of 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 camp mud

Like the flames of candles, they have brill, have flickered, and then some flames are dead. Other rare ones kept a small tinkle but how much this tinkle was difficult to feed! However, all these small flames stained by an unspeakable barbarity, we have the power to relight them in a single great fire because we know, because we heard their cries in the silence of the visit to Auschwitz. The survivors will often reach the goal of their life but because they had the strength to remember for themselves, for theirs and those who have not returned, because they merged their tinkle so as not to be forgotten, we must take up the torch and pass on our knowledge of their history.

Because remembering is still the best way to avoid the worst and to 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 was overwhelming and we don’t know how to show compassion for the port s who were surprised by the admiration they showed 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)

One must go to Auschwitz at least once in their life because in our way of thinking there is a before and an after Auschwitz.

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

� In the bus that was taking us to the camp, I tried to imagine but I was far away, very far from imagining what I was going to see, hear, cover. I see different things in life today. I can affirm that I feel I see different things.

Florian, private professional high school Sainte Th r se, Rumilly (74)

� Beyond the motion that this place has inspired us, arises the incomprehension; the questioning about the causes, the facts and especially the destructive tendencies of this human drama. We also come to question the fundamental values of our company, those that must not be forgotten and pi tin es as they have t. It is therefore a question about the moral pillars but also about our r le, we who have visited the largest human remembrance, because following this proven visit we feel like "charged with a mission" to convey what we have seen and heard; and especially that of not forgetting.

Fatima Aouidat, high school and Jean Mac, Niort (79)

� During the visit to the Birkenau camp, I was struck 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 at the slaughterhouse; there are the kiloms of barr res of barbel s and of b ton; the entrep ts (huts and latrines) pos as dominos, align s; there are the tons of objects, hair, glasses, shoes And then there is the organization of the camp which is impressive as much as its surface.

T.T., European high school in Montebello, Lille (59)

� The first thing that came to me 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 whose only paths remain today.

T.C., European high school in Montebello, Lille (59)

� What struck me the most when entering this camp was silence. Nothing, not a noise, 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 note the horror of the pass. And, was there really something to say? I don’t know.

Romain Boudec, professional high school Michelet, Nantes (44)