Education Briey: Rainer Höss, grandson of the commandant of Auschwitz, testifies before high school students.You don’t choose your family. The grandson of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rainer Höss was condemned to suffer his origins. Rather than hide it, he prefers to testify. On Thursday 29 November, he was at Briey’s high school.“What I like about the students is that after the big leap into the first question, there is a certain freedom of speech that takes hold,” Rainer Höss said at the end of the meeting. Photo Fred Lecocq“Go ahead! Go ahead! It’s a discussion. There will be no stupid questions,” says Marylene D’Onofrio, a German teacher at Louis-Bertrand High School in Briey. In front of her, first-class students, all Germanists. Next to her, Rainer Höss is patient, ready to share this heavy past that he inherited. His grandfather Rudolf was the commandant of Auschwitz extermination camp. He discovered this as a teenager. For several years now, he has been travelling throughout Europe to testify. Rainer Höss that he felt invested with the mission of awakening consciences because the present is constantly fed by the past.A very rigid Catholic family…and anti-Semitic“How did you explain your family’s past to your children?” dares a young man. Unlike his own parents, Rainer Höss never let the mystery hang over the evil role of Rudolf, his grandfather. "When I graduated from high school, my son came across this subject. He had, as a result, a lot to say..." Further questions follow. We want to know how his grandfather got into this position of commander. "By lying! He said he received the Iron Cross for his heroic actions in the First World War. But he was laying the rails... He came from a very rigid Catholic family... and anti-Semitic. So he was given this function. Himmler knew he had falsified everything. He used it, when he ordered him to expand the camp, to accelerate the extermination. Even if he had wanted to, Rudolf could no longer say no.”Rainer Höss shares an anecdote about his childhood: "My parents sent me to a boarding school, a place that at the time of the war was reserved for the Nazi elite. This boarding school was always run by a man who had been the leader of the Hitler Youth. He was very happy that the grandson of the Auschwitz commandant was here. I still didn't know anything about my history. It was the'70s and this man was still supervising children..."Rainer Höss then asked Elisabeth, the translator who accompanied him, to read a letter he received last May. It comes from a female doctor in a hospital in Stuttgart. She writes that it was not the gas that killed in Auschwitz, but typhus. Among the students, there is again a lack of understanding. "But how can she deny what happened? There is evidence!", a young lady gets angry. Their teacher explains the negationism. "And it's not just in Germany. In France, people believe in it too.”"With him, history comes to life"Before the meeting, the students had watched the film The Counterfeiters. "We see the camp commander, who is a good father by the way and who then commits these horrors every day. It was an aspect that interested us because Rainer tells the same thing about his grandfather," explains Fanny Baholet, the other German teacher who made the appointment. "First graders study dictatorships in history class. There, they can see that it is not only in books, that real people could have been around Nazis. All this comes to life.”It's 11:05. The bell rings. The first ones have to clear the room, to make way for the seniors who have a test. It's grumbling. "Can't we give them another room? We still have too many questions..."Claire PIERETTI

Yesterday Simon was one of the speakers at Coventry Cathedral.  

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Leader of Islamic Center of Pittsburgh announces Muslim community has raised more than $70,000 for synagogue attack victims and their families. 

This documentary - and the book of the same title - is nearly forty years old. Kitty has dedicated most of her life to Holocaust education. Many Holocaust remembrance organisations are eternally indebted to Kitty. She is a wonderful and impressive woman. Her written words and the documentaries she has made are amongst the most powerful and informative survivor accounts available.

We are pleased to offer congratulations to our good friend Aleksandar Reljic (and of course to Rainer), after the film "Enkel" received the Program Award at the Al Jazeera Balkans Documentary Film Festival in Sarejevo. Well done to everyone involved.

On 7 September Footsteps member Simon (helped by Simone Boersma and Bev Bell) was honoured to speak at an Anglo-Polish event in Shrewsbury, England. His talk focused mainly on the Holocaust and learning the lessons of the past. To help the audience understand the scale of lives lost in the Second World War he employed a ribbon for visual impact. 1cm = 1000 lives. By that scale: 60cm = British civilians killed, 3.8 metres = British military losses, 25 metres = non-Jewish Poles, 30 metres = Polish Jews, 55 metres = total Polish losses attributed to the German occupation, and 60 metres depicted Jews killed during the Holocaust. If more ribbon was available it could have been stretched to over 200 metres for Soviet losses and 600 metres for total lives lost during the war. The visual impact is powerful and may be a useful tool for educators. Thanks to Andrzej Branski for these pictures.

A new addition to our website is a newsletter. We hope to use the newsletter to give regular updates about activities we are involved in or issues of interest. It can be found on the 'who we are' section of the site under downloads.

The Holodomor, also known as the ‘Terror Famine’ caused a devastating loss of life and damage to the communities of Ukraine in 1932-33. It has variously been attributed to famine that impacted upon wider regions of the Soviet Union, to policies of industrialisation and collectivisation, to poor management of resources and food by the Soviet regime, to forced procurement of grain, and to deliberate policies designed to oppress and starve the peasants of Ukraine in order to enforce the will of Stalin and control a region deemed to be a seat of rebellion. The debate was somewhat suppressed during the Soviet era, and it is only since the middle of the 1980s that a more complete picture has emerged. This essay seeks to consider some of the available research and acknowledge that, based on accepted criteria, it was almost certainly a crime of genocide that appears to have eluded wider discussion.

We talk often about learning from the lessons of the past. In these days of social media and multiple sources of news and information, it is still worth considering the power and effectiveness of the press, and also how governments and political leaders use and condemn journalism. For those who vote, or who have a say in the mind-set of nation states, the media can be the main source of information – whether this is actively sought out by purchasing newspapers and switching on televisions, or by casually glancing at headlines on newsstands or the incessant feed that can invade our social media timelines. Hitler was well aware of the susceptibility of the masses to the words of the press, and which part of the population he should aim his rhetoric at. In Mein Kampf he wrote:‘Journalistic circles in particular like to describe the press as a ‘great power’ in the state. As a matter of fact its importance really is immense. It cannot be overestimated, for the press really continues education in adulthood.Its readers by and large, can be divided into three groups: First those who believe everything they read; second, into those who have ceased to believe anything; third, into the minds which critically examine what they read and judge accordingly.Numerically, the first group is by far the largest. It consists of the great mass of the people and consequently represents the simplest-minded part of the nation. It cannot be listed in terms of professions, but at most in general degrees of intelligence. To it belong all those who have neither been born nor trained to think independently, and who partly from incapacity and partly from incompetence believe everything that is set before them in black and white. To them also belongs the type of lazybones who could perfectly well think, but from sheer mental laziness seizes gratefully on everything that someone else has thought, with the modest assumption that someone else has exerted himself considerably. Now, with all these types, who constitute the great masses, the influence of the press will be enormous. They are not able or willing themselves to examine what is set before them, and as a result their whole attitude towards the problems of the day can be reduced almost exclusively to the outside influence of others. This can be advantageous when their enlightenment is provided by a serious and truth-loving party, but it is catastrophic when scoundrels and liars provide it. The second group is much smaller in number. It is partly composed of elements which previously belonged to the first group, but after long and bitter disappointments shifted to the opposite and no longer believe anything that comes before their eyes in print. They hate every newspaper; either they don’t read it at all, or without exception fly into a rage over the contents, since in their opinion they consist only of lies and falsehoods. These people are very hard to handle, since they are suspicious even in the face of the truth. Consequently, they are lost for all positive, political work.The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of the minds with real mental subtlety, whom natural gifts and education have taught to think independently, who try to form their own judgement on all things, and who subject everything they read to a thorough examination and further development of their own. They will not look at a newspaper without always collaborating in their minds, and the writer has no easy time of it. Journalists love such readers with the greatest reserve. For members of the third group, it must be admitted, the nonsense that newspaper scribblers can put down is not very dangerous or not very important. […] Today, when the ballot of the masses decides, the chief weight lies with the most numerous group, and this is the first: the mob of the simple or credulous’.