As part of the Holocaust Remembrance Day, we gave our students the opportunity to participate in the HRD Poetry Contest 2021. Well done to our two Year 7 girls who were selected as winners and thank you to the English Department for judging the contest.
This year’s annual Jack Petchey regional finals of the Speak Out competition came with a difference. Rather than sitting in the hall of a local school, every competitor was at home, presenting their three-minute speech via Zoom. The Girls’ School candidate, Alegria, took her name as the inspiration for her presentation. After all, we all need some happiness in our lives.
She did herself and the school proud, winning the Regional Final to progress to the Semi-finals.
The link to watch the speeches, the link can be found here: https://speakoutchallenge.com/recent-speeches/
Thank you to Mrs Jacobson who ran the competition at the Girls’ School, setting up the initial training day, running the Speak Out Challenge in school before the end of last term, and coaching Alegria to a very high standard.
Green Society
Hasmonean’s alumni body rose to the challenge of the call for speakers. The first was Ilana Goodkin, who became the inaugural guest speaker at The Green Society, a school club run by Sixth Formers, Hodaya and Hannah.
Ilana spoke about the challenges we face to lead a sustainable life and combat climate change. Ilana wrote: ‘I just saw the email about the Green Society looking for speakers at their monthly sessions. Firstly, I just want to say that I think this initiative is AMAZING and it’s so great to see that Hasmo is making an effort to boost environmental awareness! I left Hasmo in 2013, studied Geography at UCL, and I’m now doing a masters at Tel Aviv University in Environmental Studies. While I don’t have anything specific that I’m researching for me to talk about, I would love to share some of the material I’m learning in my course at the moment. One course is on environmental health, and the other is on sustainable food systems (the material in both these courses is often tied to how climate change will affect both these areas).’
She led a very informal yet lively session, with the girls being as excited about her green credentials, as well as the fact that she is studying in Israel.
Art Club
Chedva S and Liat S, two of our Year 12 students have set up an after-school art club – a great way to unwind after a day of studying online. The picture below comes from the last session on calligraphy.
In the Boys’ School kitchen, our students recently had a wonderful time making bagels from scratch with Ms Benarroch and Mrs Fine. They thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the final results were truly scrump-tious!
Thanks to Mrs Fine and Ms Benarroch for their hard work and dedication.
To commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday 27th January, the HIPE team produced a recorded assembly for students to watch during certain lessons.
Many thanks to Rabbi Fachler for the interview and Nethanel Kind for editing it.
If you wish to watch the assembly, please feel free to access it via this link:
It might have been virtual, but it was still a full Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Girls’ School thanks to Mrs Abecasis’ heroic efforts.
The opening ceremony saw Mr McClusky, Rabbi Golker and Mrs Brice share their thoughts, and Mrs Abecasis explained the theme of this year’s HRD: ‘Being a Light in the Darkness’. This was a particularly apt theme as we are living in an unprecedentedly dark time, where small acts of kindness bring light into people’s lives; whether this was volunteering for the NHS, setting up local support groups or simply phoning those who live alone.
Mrs Abecasis’ graphic and powerful opening presentation using Nazi propaganda film and clips of Holocaust deniers, as well as footage of the Tree of Life synagogue attack in 2018 to show that the darkness is still around us. However, she concluded, there is light in the form of those who risked their own lives to rescue Jews, such as Raoul Wallenberg, Irena Sendler, the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Bielski brothers of Belorussia.
Mrs Brice reminded us that even though the Holocaust remains a blood soaked stain on the conscience of humanity, there is still persecution today and it is our responsibility to be a light for those who are suffering.
For Years 10-13, one of our Year 11 students, A Garren presented the story of Abraham Gutrejman, whose memoir she translated from Spanish to English. Her presentation was phenomenal, with a video clip of the Gutrejman family telling their story, and her own tracing of the Gutrejman story from the darkness of wartime Poland, to Munich, Bolivia and Costa Rica where Ariella met Frieda Gutrejman. One example for being a light was the way the Gutrejman brothers looked out for each other. Avraham carried the injured Yankel on his back; and when they were caught – and Avraham was made to dig his own grave – Yankel threw rocks to fool the soldiers into believing the partisans were on their way. Thus, the brothers saved each other. Later, in South America, Yankel never married to enable his brother, married to Frieda, to be able to support his family.
The History department created a workshop for Year 9, which covered different periods of darkness in history, showing that even in terrible times there were always those who provided ‘light.’ There the students studied the historical backdrop to the darkness, and learned about the darkness of other genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries. The light was the learning about the resistance movements and individuals, such as Sir Nicholas Winton and the White Rose students in Germany.
Years 7 and 8 had two workshop sessions. In one, the English Department looked at light in relation to the Holocaust, exploring Simon Wiesenthal who shed ‘light’ on the crimes of the Nazis after WW2. They also explained about the Children’s Memorial at Yad Vashem where memorial candles are reflected infinitely in a dark and somber space, creating the impression of millions of stars shining in the firmament. The names of murdered children, their ages and countries of origin can be heard in the background. Following on, the students brainstormed ideas about light to inspire their own poetry. They also discussed a poem by Holly Peters called ‘The Light of no Hope’, written especially for this year’s HRD.
In the second workshop, JS created a fourfold approach, which began by focusing on Jewish life before the war, and understanding the communities, families, and individuals that were lost. The next stage was to understand how the Jews felt trapped in Europe, focusing on W H Auden’s poem “Refugee Blues” and the paintings of Felix Nussbaum. After that, children’s Holocaust art was explored to try to understand why children would draw pictures of these experiences and how this was also a form of resistance. Finally, as a moment of ‘light’, the girls were taught about the efforts of Dayan Grunfeld and Rabbi Eliezer Silver in rescuing Jewish children who survived the war.
Years 10-13 were all invited to hear the keynote speaker: Mr Mark Weitzman, who is Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, among many other significant roles linked to Holocaust Education, Denial and Anti-Semitism. He lives in the US and attended via Zoom. He kindly agreed to answer questions from the students, which were sent in advance, as it was very early in the morning for him!
He gave a very detailed presentation, which highlighted current Holocaust denial and the side lining of the Holocaust. Drawing together the David Irving trial, the Charlottesville rally in August 2017 and legislation in Poland, Ukraine and Russia, he demonstrated that these omissions and denials must be noticed and acted upon in order that the Holocaust is never forgotten as an attack on Jews.
Thank you to Mrs Abecasis. Thank you to the Girls’ English, History and JS teams who created such exciting and engaging workshops for Years 7-9. This event was a light in itself, as we all sat in the glow of our laptops and safe homes to remember both the worst that humanity can do but also to expose the best of humanity.
The video of the presentation can be found here: https://hasmoneanmat.org.uk/hrd/
The Year 11 girls attended a Healthy Eating session which was organised by Mrs Taylor and run by Mrs Gerber, who has a degree in Nutritional Therapy. The girls explored myths that they may have encountered about healthy eating and discussed the best ways to look after their health through eating wholesome food and exercise to aid their bodies, not just now, but in the future as well.
Mrs Gerber was able to give the girls very sensible advice about caring for themselves through their nutritional choices. There were lots of questions and discussions throughout this very engaging and interactive session.
Last Thursday, the inexhaustible Rebbetzen and Queen of Challa Bakes, Joanne Dove, led the Year 7 Bat Mitzva girls in a special online Challa Bake. The girls were excited and engaged as she demonstrated the magic of yeast, water, flour and Emunah – even if she had to repeat instructions over and over again!
Thank you to our wonderful HIPE team whose creativity and enthusiasm just keeps on inspiring our girls.
The festival of Tu B’Shevat is famous for being the birthday of the trees and fruits.
To celebrate, our students partnered (virtually) with Ulpanit Ort, Teveria which is a high school in Israel and created a beautiful and detailed painting of the Shivat Haminim (7 special fruits). The art session was run by a talented Hasmonean alumna – Yael Berenblatt. The entire event was coordinated by the ISOC students in Year 12 and we were so proud of what they achieved.
The following evening, the Green society put on another exciting Tu B’Shevat virtual programme and invited our students to hear from the wonderful Ilana Goodkin, another Hasmo alumna, for an engaging and interesting talk, looking at solutions for climate change and food production. This was a wonderful way to mark Tu B’Shevat which is all about appreciating the environment and thus giving it the respect it deserves.
The Girls’ School HIPE team sent out almost 600 packages to the Hasmonean students’ houses, which included educational ideas about Tu B’Shevat, as well as seeds to plant sunflowers and the ability to get involved in an exciting new HIPE initiative. Here is a video with more details about what each student received in their home delivered package https://vimeo.com/505238908
Thanks go to the HIPE and admin teams who arranged this logistical operation!
Hugó Klein and his wife, Matild (née Szabo) lived in the town of Hencida, in the Bihar district of Hungary. The couple had two daughters, Suzan (b. 1935) and Lili (b. 1937). When World War II broke out, Hugó was drafted into a labour battalion and Matild remained in Hencida with the children. Suzan and Lili were able to send postcards to their father, Hugó, while he was interned in a labour battalion near the Austrian border.
In May 1944, the Jews in the Bihar district were moved into a small ghetto in the suburbs of Nagyvárad. After weeks of starvation and suffering, they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Matild and her girls were amongst the deportees. All three were murdered.
Hugó survived the labour battalions. In 1946, he married Ilona Mezei, a cousin of Matild’s who had survived Auschwitz. In 1947, their son George was born and in 1957, they immigrated to Israel. Ilona Klein and her son George made the decision to donate the postcards that George’s half-sisters had written to their father, along with locks of their hair that had been cut off in their infancy and preserved as mementos. These precious items were all that remained of Suzan and Lili.
Yad Vashem is not just a museum and a place where we go to remember the Holocaust. It is a place where survivors and their descendants, like Hugo Klein, are able to safeguard their precious artefacts and memories. It is a place where those who have no physical remnant on earth can be remembered. It is a place which is at the forefront of academic Holocaust research.
It is also a place where tens of thousands of teachers and students come to its International School of Holocaust Studies to learn about the Holocaust and how to teach it. Each year for the last ten years, 20 teachers and head teachers from Hasmonean High and other Jewish schools in the UK have participated in the week-long seminar at Yad Vashem’s International School of Holocaust Studies, paid for by Yad Vashem UK. Here they spend a week with world renowned lecturers and academics learning Yad Vashem’s philosophy of teaching the Holocaust. We know that our children will be exposed to increasing incidents of Holocaust denial and antisemitism in their daily lives and it is vital that we give them the tools to cope with this.
Helen Kon
Yad Vashem Education Officer
“Dear Daddy – we are well – goodbye” – Suzan and Lili’s Last Postcard
