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College
February 10, 2023

On Wednesday the Year 12 History students honoured the victims of the Holocaust by delivering a presentation on ‘ordinary people’, the theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day. They spoke powerfully and movingly about the ordinary people who lived in extraordinary times during the 1930s and 1940s. During the assembly they celebrated the legacy of a number of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, including the inspirational Polish educator Januscz Korczak, who chose to stay with the children when they were being transported to the Treblinka death camp, and Irena Sendlerowa, a Polish social worker who helped to save almost 2500 children from certain death by providing them with false papers. The students’ message at the end of the assembly was this: ‘What can we do? We should be upstanders, not bystanders. We should be allies. It is critical that the brutal truth of the Holocaust is not dimmed. We must continue to honour the past in order to create a safer present and a better future. That includes keeping the truth alive and challenging the kind of racism, hatred and intolerance that energised the Nazis to commit mass murder.’ Congratulations and much thanks go to the following students: Anna, Charlotte, Cicely, Francesca, Jessica, Rose, Saya, Sophie, Tara and Teyte.