Holocaust Museum Excursion

On the 4th of September we went to visit the Melbourne Holocaust Museum, it was a very emotional but interesting experience. We were privileged enough to meet Charles who is a survivor of the Holocaust and hear all about his experience growing up during the Holocaust as a Jewish child. Overall it was a great day and I learned a lot of interesting information.

- Aysha H

The Holocaust Museum was very interesting for everyone that attended. It was mind-blowing and disgusting how Jewish people were poorly treated in these camps. They were trying to survive and sustain themselves, but many were just kids. We talked to one of these survivors and he said he was only 6 when he was brutally put in a camp with his parents.

- Vince R

On August 4th I had the pleasure to attend the Holocaust Museum in Caulfield along with other classmates of mine. We met at Flinders St in the morning at 11 then caught a train from Flinders to Caulfield where we roamed around until around about 12 where we met at the front of the museum to be let in.

Inside the museum a lovely gentleman and lady showed us where the facilities were and a box to put our bags in. Then with masks on we entered a room where we were seated and debriefed about why we were there, what we were going to learn and why it was important that people, especially young people like us, are learning about what had happened during those frightening events of Hitler’s extermination project alongside WW2.  

Shortly after we were separated into two groups, my group went up a flight of stairs and entered a room where we all sat in groups of 4 or 5 at a table with a piece of replicated artifacts in front of us to analyse. I sat a table with three other girls, who were very nice, and were given what appeared to be an escape plan by a Jewish family during the holocaust and a Nazi system for categorising Jewish prisoners as they arrived at the camps. We organised them into different categories then discussed why we put them where we did, then headed back down to join with the other group again in the previous room. That is when the most exciting part of the visit took place. We met a holocaust survivor named Charlie.  

Charlie was taken to a Nazi camp when he was five years old with his mother and father. The were taken to a camp between Romania and Ukraine. He then told us about how the adults would work on building roads, then when completed, the Nazi’s would blow it up and make them start again, eventually killing prisoners from the lack of food and hard work; literally working them to death. Charlie continued by explaining that the children would during the day hide and stay out of sight from the Nazi’s on guard out of fear of becoming their target practice. He also told a story about how one of the Nazi guards found him, brought him to his post and told Charlie to meet him at his post everyday around the same time and he would provide Charlie with some food to eat. But unfortunately, the next day Charlie learnt that the kind guard was taken away and shot dead for being found helping a Jewish prisoner. 

Then about 3 or 5 years later living in that fear of getting shot or dying, he and his parents along with all the other prisoners still alive were set free. He explained how his parents then got divorced and remarried to other people, how he enjoyed being around his stepfather and had a close relationship with him but lost contact with his biological father after the divorce. How when he got older, he got married to a beautiful woman, moved to Australia, and had children and grandchildren. Naturally there was a shower of inquisition by many students including me, all met with an in depth and more than satisfactory response from Charlie.

After our session with Charlie, we thanked him for the opportunity to listen to his incredible story and answering our questions. Then the nice lady from the beginning asked us about what we had learnt and if we remembered why it was important that we did. We then were given a piece of paper to write down what was something that we had learnt that was meaningful to us. Something that I had learnt was that from Charlie’s story about the kind guard was that even in the darkest of times around every corner there is a good person.  

We left the room grabbed our bags and made our way back to the station, climbed on the train and made our individual journeys home.  

- Louisa C