Moriah students shed their hair to help kids with cancer

More than 100 students at Sydney’s Moriah College have volunteered to have their hair cut at school, donating their locks to have wigs made for KIDS WITH CANCER. 

Many of the kids had put off having a haircut since September last year, to donate as much hair as possible – the longest plait was around 35cms.

A team of top Sydney hairdressers from four different salons volunteered their time to chop plaits and pony-tails off, then give the kids a ‘tidy-up’ haircut.

Jaimi Knep in Year 12 spearheaded the whole initiative with classmate Liav Brill.  They were overwhelmed by the response! Initially about 60 students signed up and, on the day, more than 100 participated!

There is a major connection between the Jewish people and human hair.  When concentration campus such as Auschwitz-Birkenau were liberated, masses of human hair was found packed into bags.

“……the notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele…. human hair “was often used in delayed action bombs, where its particular qualities made it highly useful for detonating purposes.” Women’s hair was preferred to men’s or children’s, because it tended to be thicker and longer. The hair was shorn from the heads of corpses immediately after their removal from the gas chambers (the hair of prisoners selected for labor was shaved off when they entered the camp) and was then “cured” in lofts over the crematorium’s ovens and gathered into twenty-kilogram bales. The bales were marketed to German companies at twenty pfennig per kilogram. I have been told that some of the products manufactured in those plants may still be in use in German homes today…..” The New Yorker November 15, 1993 – Full Article

The action of our students turned the representation of bags of human hair into a positive icon – helping thousands of children.

The hair will now be sent to Israel through the  Zichron Menachem organisation.