Trips provide a powerful lesson
A FORMER Huntingdon teacher has set up a travel agency which specialises in educational trips to Auschwitz. Jonathan Salt said the trips for school children have been so popular that parents and other members of the public are joining them. Ojemba Travel
A FORMER Huntingdon teacher has set up a travel agency which specialises in educational trips to Auschwitz.
Jonathan Salt said the trips for school children have been so popular that parents and other members of the public are joining them.
Ojemba Travel based in St Ives, works in collaboration with the Auschwitz Memorial Museum to provide educational visits.
Mr Salt, a former RE and drama teacher at St Peter's School in Huntingdon, said: "These trips are life-changing. As part of the excursion, the visitors meet a Holocaust survivor, a former law student who spent the whole war as a prisoner in a concentration camp and later testified at the Nuremberg War Trials."
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Mr Salt's first group to Auschwitz was a party of young actors from St Ives Youth Theatre preparing for their play about the Holocaust.
The play, Korczak, was later awarded three stars at the Edinburgh Festival and shortlisted for an Amnesty International Award.
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To research their performances, the young actors went to Poland to investigate the story of Janusz Korczak who refused to abandon 200 orphaned children in his care, although he could have escaped from the Nazis. He died with the children at Treblinka.
His writings were used as the basis for the UNESCO Bill of the Rights of the Child.
Mr Salt said there had been a great deal of interest in the trips to the former concentration camp, particularly after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
He said: "These children are our future and understanding what happened during the Second World War is important when we hear statistics like a 40 per cent increase in racist attacks in schools in the past year."
The next trip will be during the Easter Holidays from March 25-30. The trip includes three days at Auschwitz and three days in the nearby, medieval city of Krakow.
INFORMATION: Contact Jonathan Salt on jonathan@ojemba.com or see www.ojemba.com
