These sessions are free to attend and open to anyone who has previously undertaken an introductory teacher training workshop, or other training, with the Holocaust Educational Trust.
- Unless otherwise stated, all sessions will take place on Zoom.
- You will need a computer with a camera and microphone to participate.
To sign up for any of the following seminars please click here (see below for further details):
- Sunday 15 September 2024 - The Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Sunday 15 September 2024 (10:00-12:00)
The Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Join us to explore the 80th anniversary of the Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau (7 October, 1944).
The Sonderkommando were those prisoners, almost all of them Jewish, selected by the SS to work in and around the crematoria in Birkenau: although the Zyklon B pellets were always dropped into the gas chamber by an SS man, the rest of the gruesome labour associated with the killing process was performed by prisoners in what Primo Levi termed "National Socialism’s most demonic crime."
The members of the Sonderkommando were ordinary human beings confronted with circumstances which no person should ever have to face. They found themselves, often after years of deprivation and persecution, brutally wrenched from their families on arrival in Birkenau and forced to work – there was no choice other than death – in circumstances whose horrors can scarcely be imagined; many saw their loved ones murdered in front of their eyes.
Yet this sense of despair and abandonment should not be confused with apathy. The Sonderkommando revolt was, in fact, the only instance of active armed resistance in the history of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Like the uprisings of the previous year in Treblinka and Sobibór extermination camps, it demonstrated that there were Jews who fought back even in the most desperate of situations.
Alongside exploration of resistance in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dr Na’ama Shik’s research focuses in particular on female heroism, including the role played by women in supporting the Sonderkommando revolt.
Dr Na’ama Shik is Director of the Online Learning Department at the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem.
To sign up for sessions in our Teacher Study Seminar series please click here