The Treasury announced this week that it has allocated £1.7 million to fund school trips to Bergen-Belsen until April 2019, ahead of the 75th anniversary of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation by the British Army in 2020.
The announcement comes a week after the Home Office said it would give charities like the Anne Frank Trust £1.5 million to tackle hate crime.
The money will be given to the Department for Education, and organisations specialising in Holocaust education will be able to apply for funds to support projects in schools and visits to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany, to be spent by April.
A Treasury spokesperson said: “Visits would be part of pupils’ education on the horrors that took place during the Holocaust… Projects and visits will be delivered by the charities themselves”.
CFI Parliamentary Chairman (Lords) and the Government’s Special Envoy on Post-Holocaust Issues, Rt. Hon. Lord Pickles said: This is very welcome news. The liberation of Bergen-Belsen was an important moment of realisation of the full horror of the Holocaust”.
It is understood the programme of visits will be delivered by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET). HET chief executive Karen Pollock said the students benefiting from the funding “will use their knowledge and experiences, alongside fresh resources, and further opportunities to learn about the Holocaust, to challenge increasing cases of Holocaust denial, distortion and hate”.
