Learning To Teach Berlin's Holocaust Lessons

A group of British teachers were in Berlin recently to gain new ideas for teaching children about the Holocaust. Andrew Pendlebury, a British teacher who was on the trip, wrote for The Local about his experience.


As the decades roll on and we all become further removed from first-hand experiences of the 1940s, it becomes increasingly difficult to know how to teach about the Holocaust with any kind of authority or insight.

The Holocaust Educational Trust, a British foundation which aims to support teaching about the Holocaust, organises regular trips to Berlin, Auschwitz and Paris for teachers who have a particular interest in the subject.


Andrew Pendlebury, a British teacher who was on a recent trip to Berlin with the trust, wrote for The Local about his experience.

Standing on the Putlitz Bridge in northwestern Berlin, 28 participants of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Teacher Study Visit caused a small inconvenience. We filled the pavement and cycle track as we looked at the monument ascending into the sky, a disjointed Star of David leading into crooked steps. 

We looked at a railway track and discussed its value as a site of education – a deportation site. I felt lost as a teacher, “What can my pupils learn from this site?”; “How can I assess their knowledge here?” 

It was only when a cyclist stopped, gawped at the bizarre tourists, stared at the monument and then peered over the bridge that I realised the value of this classroom. It is not what you see, but what you look for.

Too often as a teacher I do little more than provide information. The visit to Berlin organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust has reinvigorated what I already knew, but practise far too infrequently; education is about prompting questions and answering them. I hope the cyclist we inconvenienced asked some questions about the site we were examining.


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