This week, on January 27, it is the 60-year anniversary since the liberation of Auschwitz, but a recent survey carried out by the BBC revealed almost half of the respondents had never heard of the concentration camp. Although education about the holocaust is a compulsory part of the national curriculum in Britain, many people have a distinct lack of knowledge and understanding about the biggest act of genocide to take place in the twentieth century. "I did GCSE history and specifically studied Hitler’s Germany. We did just one lesson on the holocaust. The rest of it was all politics," says Amy, a 17-year-old A Level student.
 | | Yad Vashem Candelabra memorial |
Paul Masters, a 27-year-old Maths teacher thinks that every child in the world should do at least one series of lessons on the Holocaust. "Those that don't know their history are doomed to repeat it!" he says. Bringing history to life Prince Harry, and other uninformed people could do worse than visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem in a bid to educate themselves. Yad Vashem brings the facts and figures of history to life in a vivid and memorable way. In 2000, the Pope visited Yad Vashem to take part in a memorial ceremony for the victims of the Holocaust. On his visit to Israel, Pope John Paul famously pushed a letter on behalf of the Church apologising for 2000 years of anti Semitism into the cracks of the Western Wall. That letter now stands in a glass case at Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem is Israel’s second most visited site, after the Western Wall. It is not an easy place to come to, but that many visitors feel it is an important part of visiting Israel. Esther Laundsman is a 21-year-old student at Birmingham University, visiting Yad Vashem for the first time. With red eyes, she explains: "I’ve been to the beaches, the Dead Sea, the markets, but this was the most important part of my time in Israel. This shows me why it is so important that Israel remains strong." Avenue of the Righteous among the Nations
 | | Garden of the Righteous - Yad Vashem |
Yad Vashem is a huge complex rather than a static museum. Visitors enter by walking along the tree lined Avenue of the Righteous among the Nations. Each tree is representative of a non-Jew who risked their lives to help Jewish people during the Holocaust. Amongst them is the tree planted by Oscar Schindler, made famous by the book and film Schindler’s List. The Historical Museum is the main feature of the site, telling the story of the Holocaust chronologically through a series of connected rooms. Walls are covered in huge black and white photographs, genuine artefacts from concentration camps, and textual explanations in English and Hebrew. Rooms are dark and have a strange atmosphere, although groups of visitors, chattering quietly in English, Italian, Arabic and of course German add vibrancy and life. A small screening room shows images from concentration camps, looped over and over until they remain etched upon the viewer’s brain. One young London boy enters as cool as a cucumber, snapping photographs of everything and looking chilled out. At the other end of the history museum, he sits, head in hands, still and silent. Children's Memorial Few emerge from the children’s memorial unmoved. It’s a simple memorial, made up of a single candle and cleverly placed mirrors to create the illusion of an endless galaxy of tiny flickering lights, in every direction. Each light represents one of the 2 million children who were killed in the Holocaust. A voice reads out names and ages of children who perished. There is no sound other than that single voice. It’s an extremely effective experience, and one that many visitors never forget.
 | | Children's Memorial - Yad Vashem |
Mia, a 19-year-old student from Toronto, in Israel as part of a group tour, said quietly: "We all hugged each other as we exited, and everyone was silent…we were silent for a good half hour." In 1999, Yad Vashem started a project entitled "Every Person Has a Name," aiming to gather the details of every single person who perished in the Holocaust, so that they should never be forgotten. Now, six years on, Yad Vashem have about half of the estimated six million victims on their database. This information is available on the website www.yadvoshem.org.il where they say they are "determined to persevere until the last name is retrieved." Visitors to the website can search for details of Holocaust victims, and add details of friends of relatives. Belief in the good of humanity Although a visit to the Holocaust Memorial may sound depressing, many visitors leave feeling uplifted and with a determined belief in the good of humanity. Daniel Bradshaw, a 27-year-old postgraduate student from Birmingham, sums up his experience. "While sobering, I did not find Yad Vashem depressing in the least. "The very fact that such a place exists speaks very strongly to me of the determination of all humanity never to allow such a magnitude of evil to occur again. And as long as Yad Vashem stands, no one will ever be able to deny that the Holocaust took place." All images courtesy of Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority | 
