Earlier
this month Universities UK held its third national conference on tackling violence
against women, harassment and hate crime in all its forms. Making progress in this
area remains one of our key priorities, so I was privileged recently to
participate in the first ever Lessons
from Auschwitz project for universities, a government-funded initiative run by the
Holocaust Education Trust and Union of Jewish Students.
On
a freezing winter's day, approximately 150 staff and students of UK
universities arrived at Auschwitz to participate in the programme.
There
were many moments when the horror of what happened there eight decades ago hit
home: the scale of the site; the constant reminders of the individual lives
affected, including discarded children's shoes, keys to family homes, and a mass of
human hair used to stuff mattresses; the starkness and exposure of the location
where an estimated 1.3 million people were sent, and where so many endured
bitter winter months and intolerably hot summers; the depraved pre-meditation
of Birkenau, with its purpose-built railway line terminating within the
confines of the camp; photos of men, women and children arriving at the camp,
bemused, exhausted and largely unaware of the brutality to come; and the beauty
of the nearby village, juxtaposed with the horror of what happened so close
by.
In
truth, no matter how many documentaries you watch or books you read on the
Holocaust, nothing prepares you for visiting a place like Auschwitz. Approximately
1.1 million people lost their lives there during the Holocaust. Around 90% of
those sent to the camp were Jews, but many others were targeted by the Nazi
regime, including Polish citizens, Romani, political prisoners, Jehovah’s
Witnesses and countless gay people.
The Lessons from Auschwitz programme was structured to enable participants to share their thoughts, as
well as reflect and question. In small mixed groups of senior university
staff and student sabbatical officers, we learned about the Holocaust and
pre-war Jewish life, and the calculated systematic way in which Jewish families
were targeted and degraded.
Hearing the different experiences and
perspectives of individual group members emphasised to me how critical
partnership working is to tackling hate crime in all its forms, and I was also
struck by powerful personal testimony
from Susan Pollack MBE, who as a teenager was transported with her family to
Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. It is a remarkable testament to her that she built
such a successful life afterwards. Her story will stay with me always.
Completing
the programme has intensified my own commitment to tackling hate crime, and as
a result, at Brunel we are working on new initiatives with our Student
Experience Committee to give this renewed focus.
My
commitment to free speech has also strengthened. The persecution of the
Holocaust was so calculated and terrifying in the way it took hold, it is
frightening to think how such inhumanity could prosper. And yet it did. Our
universities must remain spaces where debate flourishes, and where
uncomfortable views are explored and countered, and not left to fester unchecked.
In these toxic and febrile times, this has never seemed more important.
Tackling hate crime, including anti-Semitism, must
remain a priority for all university leaders. We have made good progress in
recent years with the UUK Taskforce and its subsequent Changing the culture report,
while a recent roundtable on race-based hate crime, efforts to tackle
cyber-bullying, and a new survey to assess the sector’s recent activity will help to keep the momentum up.
These projects are valuable, but it’s clear
that more work is needed. A good starting point for my fellow university
leaders and student representatives would be to participate in future
iterations of this powerful programme.
