Tower Hamlets Met Police cadets visit Auschwitz scene of Nazi crime against Humanity
The Auschwitz Gate... 600 special transports arrived at the death camp on German National Railways over 900 days from 1942 to November 1944 - Credit: Auschwitz archives
Young police cadets from Tower Hamlets schools have returned to east London from visiting Auschwitz Nazi death camp where they took evidence of the Holocaust in the Second world War..
Starved prisoners soon to be gassed to death at Auschwitz - Credit: Auschwitz Holocaust Memorial
They toured Auschwitz-Birkenau near Krakow where almost a-million Jews and 250,000 others were murdered in a systematic genocide in German Occupation of Poland.
“Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau was humbling,” cadet Regan Healy from Stepney’s Bishop Challoner Secondary said.
“I will never forget the experience, seeing the sheer scale and the conditions in which people were kept, in such a horrendous place.
Guard watchtower and barbed wire fencing at Auschwitz Nazi death camp - Credit: Met Police cadets
“But at least I have some understanding of what happened. It is an important lesson, so that the horrors will never happen again.”
The Trip was organised by Chuni Kahan, whose paternal grandparents were among the 960,000 Jewish men, women and children murdered at Auschwitz. He explained to the cadets what a lack of intolerance can lead to, as the Holocaust “didn’t happen overnight”.
The 25 cadets also toured Krakow and the old Jewish Quarter. Cadets’ coordinator Sgt Steve Austin told the East London Advertiser: “I had concerns they wouldn’t understand the enormity of the crimes that took place at Auschwitz.
Met Police cadets Regan and Fareha at Auschwitz - Credit: Met Police cadets
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“I needn’t have worried—the asked profound questions and were visibly moved by the experience.
“Children the same age as the cadets were put to death when they arrived at the camp.
“The experience of visiting Auschwitz will stay with us all our lives.”
The Auschwitz Nazi death camp - Credit: Met Police cadets
One of the cattle trucks used to transport Jewish families from all over Occupied Europe has been preserved on the rail track leading directly into the death camp, used 75 years ago to deposit its human cargo.
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945, a date kept as International Holocaust Memorial Day in memory of the six million Jews and one million others exterminated in the Nazi death camps in Occupied Europe.
