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Editor attacks Assembly over Auschwitz trips

A newspaper editor has launched a stinging attack on the Welsh Assembly government for refusing to fund educational trips to Nazi death camps.

South Wales Evening Post editor Spencer Feeney made the comments at an event in Swansea last week to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

Spencer himself took part in a trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in modern day Poland and told the 1,000-strong audience about his experiences.

He praised the success of the project, run by the Holocaust Educational Trust, in raising awareness of the Holocaust among schools pupils and university students.

Said Spencer: “Government funding has helped it organise these trips. But now there is a problem.

“Funding announced last year, which will support the project until 2011, will only apply to English schools. The Scottish Parliament has agreed to provide funding for Scottish schools. The Welsh Assembly has refused to fund Welsh schools.

“It says our cash-strapped councils should pay for it. Why should Welsh schoolchildren be discriminated against in this way?

“The Welsh Assembly Government should reconsider its decision, and provide the funding.”

Evening Post journalists also covered the row in Friday’s edition of the paper, pictured right.

Speaking after the event, Spencer said: “If funding is left to individual councils, it will create yet another postcode lottery. Seeing the effect the visit to Auschwitz had on the 150 school pupils I accompanied, convinced me that government funding would be money well spent.”

Comments

Howard Barlow (03/02/2009 08:42:00)
I wholeheartedly agree with Spencer that the Welsh Assembly should fund these trips, in line with English and Scottish government.
I commend Spencer and the South Wales Evg Post for taking a stand on this issue. My own daughter went on an educational trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps and found the experience permetated throughout her class in raising awareness to an evil atrocity in history that should never be forgotten.