The terrible human tragedy - the Holocaust. 

The boys were given a peer-assessed score of 1-3 based on their oral presentation of LEER writing about the scale of this time in history. Here is an example Vincent Kennedy's work that gained a score of 3 from his classmates:

The Nazi German Holocaust is the most horrific and evil event in past time and we should use this to learn how bad the Nazis were and how to prevent something like this so a war of this size does not happen again.

Adolf Hitler was a politician he was the leader of a party called the Nazis and when they became in charge they made Jews have a big handicap. The first reason how it started was that the Germans thought they were smarter and better than all of the other races and that Jews would make them go extinct which is stupid so they decided to try and kill them all led by Adolf Hitler. It started by invading Poland in 1939 and making it their own killing all the Jewish Woman and kids and moving into their houses. 30,000 polish men were moved and made slaves and a third starved to death as slaves and the conditions were terrible. After Germany invaded over half of Europe the soviet union who were previous allies attacked from the north on June 22nd 1941 and it forced the Nazi's to retreat and send the slaves on the "walk of death" and over a hundred thousand men, woman and kids died in the walk over 9000 miles long from the highest camp in Poland to the lowest in south Germany. After other countries ganged up and stopped the Nazis and retook their countries and Germany Adolf Hitler killed himself just before he would have been killed by shooting himself.

At the end of the war they were desperate and killed all the slaves if they hadn't died of other reasons like starvation and sicknesses, they would shave the prisoners head and were fed bread sausages and cheese they were also sprayed with a brown chemical that helped them not to get sick and they shaved their heads. They took them into a room with a whole in the roof and gas the room out with poisonous gas called Zyklon B. One million people died in gas chambers it contained Hydrogen Cyanide which would make your eyes melt in your skull. The total civilian deaths were 55 million and 6 of the 55 were Jewish, they also targeted the people who did not fit the "perfect" standards. You had to have blonde hair blue eyes and anyone who were homosexual, too short or had a sickness or disability were also killed but Adolf Hitler was not even "perfect". 19 million soldier and war related deaths are also added to the total. The soviet union was the country that lost the most men by losing 16,825,000 soldiers. Another group like the Nazi's are the current group named Isis where in their religion they believe their god wants them to kill everyone and for them to own the world basically. In November 13 2015 they did a terrorist suicide bombing in the city centre of France in 6 different locations killing over 150 people and over 200 injured. There were 3 suicide bombers and 3 men with rifles gunning down civilians who were eventually killed by the swat team. The man in charge of the 6 attacks was Abdelhamid Abaaoud and he was shot. This is another example like the Nazi's ruthlessly killing civilians and innocent people and there is still people who think like this and that believe in the same things as Isis and the Nazi's.

This is the worst event in human history, it is silly how they killed people on how they looked or what they believed in when even they did not fall into those categories and how the thinking of a small group of people turned into a world war. The way they treated the prisoners and how they killed millions of innocent children and woman is disgusting and I think Adolf Hitler and the men that controlled the killings are some of the most terrible evil people to live and the thought of them makes me angry.

This week the boys have been looking further back into history and discussing the history of persecution and prejudice that the Jewish people have been subjected to for the last 4000 years, and where Jesus fits into that story. Their score of 1-3 this week will be based on construction of a timeline highlighting key moments and events leading up to the Holocaust.

Year 9 Connected Humanities teachers