Pupils tell Australian Jews you are not alone

Students at Heritage College in Officer, in Melbourne’s outer east, held the school’s second annual Holocaust memorial in June, an event organised by the students themselves.

The school, owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, last December sent a memorial stone to be placed at Auschwitz in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

At the memorial, students read excerpts from Holocaust literature and spoke of the need to challenge prejudice in Australia today, referring several times to the Bondi massacre.

Holocaust survivor Peter Gaspar spoke about how he and his parents survived, and challenged the students to stand against prejudice.

“I was here last year for the first time, and I’m enormously flattered and excited to be here again by request of the students,” he told The AJN.

“It is a special atmosphere and ethos in the school, which makes me feel hopeful. They inspire me because there is hope if there are students like these.”

Gaspar said the students “absolutely get it”.

“It’s not about history, it’s not even remembering the Holocaust, it’s learning the lessons from it, because we can’t change the history. We can remember, we should remember, must remember, but we should learn from it for the future.”

Asked whether the Jewish community should reach out to more Christian schools, Gaspar was emphatic.

“Absolutely. There was a suggestion today from one of the visitors that we should invite schools to come to the communal Holocaust memorial service. There is plenty of space there to have schools, and not just this school, but every school, any school.”

He said the school’s location made the memorial particularly significant.

“This school is on the outskirts of Melbourne, in a place where surrounding schools’ students would never have met a Jew. They don’t know what a Jew is, so having it in this location is particularly important.”

Senior student Ire, whose class began the tradition last year, said studying the Holocaust as part of the Victorian curriculum inspired the students to act.

“Learning about all of the survivors, all the testimonies, it really inspired all of us that we need to keep these stories being told,” Ire said.

“It all really came to a head when we visited one of our neighbouring schools, Alkira College. We visited their memorial service, and it was just like, we could probably do that too.”

Fellow senior student Jeda said the memorial deliberately looked beyond the past.

“We find that it is really important to focus on not only what happened in the past, but also how we can continue that and help to make sure it will never happen again in the future.”

Asked whether racism was something the multicultural school needed to tackle early, Ire said education had to start young.

“Kids these days have easy access to social media and things online. If they are not taught what’s right and what’s wrong immediately, it’s really easy for it to quickly grow into something worse than just making comments. They need to stand up when they see something like that happening.”

Both students had a message for the Australian Jewish community.

“We would want them to know that they are not alone in this, and that there are people who are willing to listen to their stories, willing to stand up for them, willing to donate, willing to do anything that we can to make this time of their lives a lot easier,” Ire said.

“I want to say that we stand with them, and we are supporting them through this incredibly difficult time,” Jeda said.

Students from Bialik College also attended, and one of them spoke.

At the end of the memorial, students were offered stones to place on a table as they left, symbolising their commitment to combating hatred.

Sarah Perry, head of learning and teaching at Heritage College, credited the Gandel Foundation with inspiring the event.

“I attended the Gandel Holocaust Studies Program for Australian Educators, which gave me the vision for this whole-school memorial. The seed of this idea and our deepest gratitude truly belong to the amazing work of the Gandel Foundation.”