Imagine the Facebook profile of a victim of the Holocaust.
This is just one of the ways young people from Essex and Suffolk were asked to investigate the horrors of the Holocaust as part of a special day of activities and talks being organised to launch this year’s Dora Love Prize.
Dora Love was a Stutthof concentration camp survivor who received an Honorary Degree from the University of Essex in recognition of her tireless work to educate younger generations about the Holocaust.
The prize established in her memory encourages schools from across Suffolk and Essex to develop projects for a special presentation evening during Holocaust Memorial Week at the University of Essex in January 2015. The week will mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps at the end of the Second World War.
This year’s prize was launched with a one-day event on Tuesday 23 September at the University of Essex for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 students focused on the theme ‘Keep the memory alive’, the official UK theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2015.
The schools taking part are:
• Colne Community College, Brightlingsea
• East Bergholt High School
• Maltings Academy, Witham
• Northgate High School, Ipswich
• Ormiston Endeavour Academy, Ipswich
• St Bernard’s High School, Westcliff-on-Sea
• St John Payne School, Chelmsford
• St Thomas More High School, Westcliff-on-Sea
Projects can be performances, art work or historical research, they can also reflect on the subjects students might be studying such as religious studies and politics. Other successful projects in previous years have looked to engage with the local community.
Contributors include Holocaust survivor Frank Bright, historians Professor Rainer Schulze and Dr Nadine Rossol, Chair of the Gypsy Roma Traveller Police Association (GRTPA) Jim Davies, Arts Education Outreach Officer Kate Beckwith, artist Alison Stockmarr, apartheid activist Siya Twani and Deputy Headteacher at Northgate High School in Ipswich Dale Banham.
Workshop sessions will look at many issues including forgotten victims of the Holocaust, today’s victims of discrimination and creative ways to engage audiences with the issues surrounding the Holocaust.
Professor Schulze, who has coordinated Holocaust Memorial Week at the University of Essex since 2007, said: “Through the Dora Love Prize we hope to ensure that the Holocaust is not seen by young people as something that happened a long time ago in a far-away country but as something that has real significance to their lives today.
“We also try to highlight that whilst the Jews were obviously by far the largest group of victims of the Nazi racial and extermination policy, the Nazis targeted other groups as well in their attempt to create a “racially pure” and “homogenous” society – this included Sinti and Roma, disabled people, people of Slavic origin, gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses and more.
“Prejudice and hatred of people just because they seem different from us continues to exist in our society today, including in Britain, and we want to ask what attitudes and prejudices still prevail around us, and within ourselves, which made the Holocaust possible.”
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