Psychology students from NEW College Pontefract spent five days in Krakow, Poland this summer visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps, Schindler’s Factory Museum and the Jewish ghetto and synagogue.
Students applied their understanding from topics they are studying in the classroom to explain how orders to exterminate millions of innocent people were so easily carried out without much ethical or moral consideration.
Student Bethany Addy said: “I think that the trip to Poland and Auschwitz gave me a real understanding of what the prisoners of Auschwitz endured and the way they were treated. It was an emotional experience and it really brought to reality what you read about.”
Psychology teacher Lindsay Barnes believes that this trip was very beneficial for the students to fully understand this topic. “I believe the excursion offers students the chance to understand how psychology can be used to explain real life events like the holocaust, by offering students an insight into how the acts which underpin genocide such as the dehumanisation of innocent groups of people, actually occur.”
