Rumble Museum Council students present Holocaust Candles project to the King

On Monday 13th January, Rumble Museum Council students Amy Bedding (Year Eleven) and Nadia Heer (Year Eight) were invited to present their Holocaust Memorial candle holders project to the King at Buckingham Palace.

In October, students from Rumble Museum Council groups in Years Eight, Nine, Ten and Eleven took part in a project designed by Beth Jones from the Museum of Oxford, and funded by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust as part of their 80 Candles for 80 Years project.

The project involved Museum Council students from Cheney hearing the moving story of Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist who survived Auschwitz by joining the Women’s Orchestra. The students discussed how museums can engage with and exhibit difficult histories, and they each then worked on decorating an individual candle-holder, thinking carefully about how their design might reflect the story and themes we had been discussing. While decorating, a piece of music by Carl Jenkyns was played.

Nadia and Amy were able to talk about their designs for several minutes to the King, who met them, accompanied by Holocaust survivor, Manfred Goldberg, and asked them questions about their designs and their thoughts.

Amy explained how her candleholder was decorated with musical notes, alluding to Anita’s musicianship, and also broken glass, which symbolised her experience in Auschwitz. There are also human figures that show Anita’s community and orchestra, through which Amy said “she and others were able to join together and share a common human experience and keep hope alive in order to survive”.

Nadia explained that projects like this are important ways to “immortalise” the Holocaust, so “even generations hundreds of years into the future will realise how significant [the Holocaust] is”, and through which they can learn about people “who are just like ourselves but born during a different time.”

Rumble Museum Founder and Director Dr Lorna Robinson and Museum Lead and History Teacher David Gimson accompanied the students to Buckingham Palace.