Contributor

Lucy Hamwijk

18, currently studying at Bishop Ramsey CE School

18 years old
Currently studying at Bishop Ramsey CE School
On why she wanted to take part on the Lessons from Auschwitz Project, Lucy mentions her Grandfather’s involvement in the Dutch resistance.

Why did I want to go to Auschwitz? My reasons for wanting to be involved in this project were many, but the main influence came from my Opa.

He had been the same age that I am now when war broke out and found himself fighting in the Dutch resistance, blowing up things and stealing food stamps to pass on to Jewish families hiding in the local community. Opa told me what life was like for him even though he found it traumatic to retell. I saw his actions as heroic, secretly blowing up train tracks, breaking into post offices but this was not the whole story. Opa was fighting for people, real people who were being persecuted. I wanted to know for myself as much as I could about what actually happened to real people who were persecuted. The experiences offered by the Holocaust Educational Trust would allow me to find out more and to speak with people like my Opa who had lived through this tumultuous time.

One of the Trust’s youngest Regional Ambassadors, following her participation on the Project Lucy was keen to organise for a Holocaust survivor to share their testimony at her school. She has also spoken about her experience, and shared her on reflections on the importance of Holocaust remembrance, at a number of events within school, at local church groups and at the Greater London Authority in City Hall.

In July Lucy travelled with a group of 20 Holocaust Educational Trust Ambassadors to the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, one of the world’s leading Holocaust research institutions, for the Trust’s first ever Ambassador Study Visit.

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