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For many the Next Steps doesn’t stop with your projects and accreditation from the University of Hull. You remain a Holocaust Educational Trust Ambassador for life, continually sharing your Lessons from Auschwitz and inspiring your communities with what you learned.

This was Auschwitz...

Louise Jones from St. Martin’s School Brentwood, who participated 2011, used her award-winning blog to pass on her experience of the Lessons from Auschwitz Project to members of the online community.

‘This was Auschwitz ...’ details the immediate and complex range of responses that accompany a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau and is an intimate insight into this component of the Lessons from Auschwitz Project.

Louise was named Channel Four’s Young Blogger of the Year in 2010 and continues to use her blog as an effective tool to express her views on a range of social and political issues.

You can read her blog entry, ‘This was Auschwitz...’

First-Time Voters Initiative

Participating in the Lessons from Auschwitz Project in 2009 gave Nadia Caney, City of Sunderland College, a keen sense of her responsibility to use her vote. Together with the Holocaust Educational Trust Nadia contacted her fellow Ambassadors and urged them to stand up to extremism and exercise their right to vote in the 2010 election. You can read Nadia’s message below.

Dear Student,

Two years ago I took part in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Project – and like you, I am now proud to be an Ambassador.

Since taking part in the Project I have tried to apply what I learnt in everyday life – by sharing what we saw and were told at Auschwitz-Birkenau, by standing up to prejudice wherever I have encountered it and by getting active with causes that promote social justice.

A big part of what I learnt is that we all have a duty to get involved with the democratic process. As you know, a general election has now been called - the first opportunity for any of us to have our say on how the country is run and on who represents us in Parliament.

There are so many people in the world who simply do not have a say in society and are wrongly deprived of their say. The message that I have been trying to get across to my friends at college, and anyone who will listen, is that it is so important to vote and to not just throw votes away.

Exactly 75 years ago, the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jewish people in Nazi Germany of their citizenship – and of their right to vote. Remembering how fragile democracy can be makes me more determined than ever to exercise my right to vote. There will be candidates standing in this election who will be promoting the same hateful and prejudiced ideas that ultimately led to the Holocaust. I won’t let them win by default, just because not enough of us voted.

So on May 6^th this year I am going to proudly cast my vote for this first time – and encourage everyone I know to do the same.  I hope that you will too.

All the best,

Nadia Caney
LFA Ambassador

PS: Why not write to your local newspaper to let everyone know why voting matters to you?