"2014 marks 100 years since the start of the First World War. In August 1914 all of Europe’s great powers went to war. Few conflicts in history have been so popular at their onset and eventually proved so tragic.

We decided to commemorate this catastrophe, which apart from the effect that it had upon the individual human lives, had such a huge impact upon the political and economic lives of European states that its implications barely worked out 100 years after its outbreak.

Within the frame of a general Middle & Senior assembly, Mercedes Mariño and Macarena González Virgili introduced the different parts of the presentation. Our tribute started with a short video of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the short term cause of the First World War. At the end of the video, Martina Freire (S5H), explained the long term causes, with a PPT presentation in the background, which had been prepared by Manuel Dillenberger (S5H).

After Martina’s  introduction,  we watched a video prepared by Juan Martín Sarquis (S5H) with the music of the early XX century. Then, there was a presentation prepared by M2A and Mónica Loria (Geography), with poems and pictures making reference to the battlefields and the scarred land left behind. S6S prepared yet another PPT about the deployment of new weaponry and the use of chemical weapons, narrated by Sebastián Grill.

A special chapter was devoted to Wilfred Owen, the greatest writer of war poetry. Yael Kohan (S5L) prepared a video and Candela Kalaidjian (S5H) recited “Dulce Et Decorum Est”. Art was also present with a video prepared by Maggie Galarraga and S6L, about Art in the early XX century. Sebastìán Papp (S6H) and Ezequiel Fernández (S6H) explained the situation of Argentina during the years of the war and the Math Department and  M2C presented a Statistics project using figures related to the war.

The commemoration ended with another famous poem, In Flanders Fields, by John Mc.Crae, and a film showing the battlefields covered by red poppies, the flower that became one of the world’s most recognized memorial symbols for soldiers who have died in conflict.

We hope that everybody learnt something about the First World War and we would like to thank all the teachers who contributed to this project and all the students who willingly participated researching, preparing videos and preparing posters to help us understand how such a terrible catastrophe could have happened".

Mónica Bruck 

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