Sunday Life

Left to my own devices I would never have gone to Auschwitz. Not because I was not interested but because I had no desire to put myself through that. I have read books and seen films. I've spoken to survivors of the Holocaust and I suppose more importantly I exist only because my mother is a survivor. I felt no need to go; I understood what had happened there. My Hungarian mother was always reticent to talk of her own experiences during the war, saying she was only a little girl, but both my sister and I were brought up with the full knowledge of the Jewish genocide and we knew that most of our mother's family were wiped out. Through the making of this film my mother has told me many things about our family and her childhood memories.

When I was approached about making a short documentary about using a visit to Auschwitz as an educational tool, I was very interested. I did feel cautious about how my mother would feel about me becoming involved with the project. In fact she was very supportive and is keenly involved with the London Jewish Cultural Centre, an educational foundation, which is based near to where we live in North London. Remembering and teaching are surely the only tools we have to protect against this ever happening again.

A journey to somewhere like Auschwitz does not end when you walk back out through the gates. After I left I wanted to peel myself and erase the continuous unwanted slide show imprinted on the insides of my eyelids. So many images remain with me from that day.

The poems, people telling each other poetry in order to keep staying alive, intelligent educated people taking solace in poetry as they await death.

The useless orders stencilled in black ink on the walls. Rules impossible to obey. 'Keep clean' there was no sanitation. 'Do not drink the water outside' there was no other water.

When we were at Birkenau it started to rain. It seemed so fitting, the despair in that place reached all the way up to the sky. The rain pattered into two square pits full of scummy water, bits of rubble and a greyish mud. All that was left of thousands of Jews from all over Europe. Ashes of friends and relatives of people that I know... all that is left of those who told each other poetry to try and stay alive.

The rows and rows of photographs. The meticulous Nazis documented all who passed through the gates. Androgynous faces stripped of humanity. Heads roughly shaved. It is shocking to realise that you can't tell the women from the men. All look up at something or someone beyond the camera that is terrifying.

The crossroads at the train track called 'the ramp' where the yes or no of life was spoken by a man with a gun. A human being who had forgotten how to be one. In all these horror camps men and women wearing smart uniforms were coldly dehumanising all of Europe's Jews so that they could slaughter them like cattle without disturbing their own consciences. Make them animals and then it would not be murder.

Standing there in Auschwitz it is impossible not to empathise with the souls who found themselves in that hell. At the end of the day, there was only us, three film makers, left in the cold and dark. We walked back past the long low wooden huts, the train track running along side and I tried to imagine feeling so alone in that terrible place, alone and forsaken by the whole of humanity. It wasn't hard.

Georgia was accompanied by students from Lessons From Auschwitz, a project in which sixth formers and their teachers visit the concentration camp. The Project aims to increase knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust for young people and to clearly highlight what can happen if prejudice and racism become acceptable. For more information visit the LFA website.