Margot Barnard was a pioneer of Holocaust education. As early as the 1950s, the German Jew began openly discussing the Holocaust with Germans. The spirited 92-year-old has talked to students at hundreds of schools in Germany and England over the decades. Her tiny stature and south-German sense of humour put students at ease, explained Barnard. She has subdued hostile skinhead teenagers in German schools with her smile and kind manner; resistance from some of the Jewish Community has been more difficult to dispel. Some Jews saw her education campaign as fraternizing with the enemy. Her brother, Walter, once asked whether her forgiveness would extend to her parents’ murderers.
“There are many holocausts,” said Barnard. “We have to stop it somewhere; we have to try at least.”
When Barnard arrived in England in 1945, she met with hostility and ignorance. She had moved to Palestine in 1933, three years after Hitler gained power. Her parents wanted to join her later, but could not get visas. She joined the British forces and married a British soldier, Ted Barnard. As they sailed from Egypt to England, Barnard heard the announcement: “The war in Europe is over.”
When her husband was stationed in Germany in 1956, she returned with him to her homeland. She was, however, a foreigner even there. Being Jewish and now a British citizen— part of the occupying power—she felt unwelcome. Many Germans continued to support Nazism, others denied the genocide. What was worse for Barnard, however, was the feeling that life continued as usual. She watched a woman eat cake outside a Hanover café as though millions of Jews had not been led to gas chambers. Barnard’s grief burst to the surface.
Barnard spoke at a German school for the first time in 1987. The students were happy to talk about the Holocaust openly, as many of them were unable to do so at home. They felt guilt and shame; they knew some people hated Germans for the Holocaust.
For Barnard, it is important to not only discuss the war, but also the roots of anti-Semitism. She finds teachers are often ignorant of those roots, and thus unable to educate students.
“You are our teacher,” a teacher in her native Bonn told Barnard.
A testament to Barnard’s educational influence is the recent renaming of Bonn’s Medinghoven Realschule (secondary school) as Margot Barnard Realschule.
To take a virtual tour of her home in Ha’arlem, Holland, which has been converted to Corrie ten Boom Museum, click here.
And, like the Ten Booms, you can bless God by following the directive He gave us in Ps. 122:6 to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
To read Ms. MacIsaac’s in its entirety, click on the link below:
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