Newham Council Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

This morning I attended our annual Council event to honour Holocaust Memorial Day (held on 27 January which is the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz and today is the 75th anniversary) in the Old Town Hall in Stratford.

There was some really wonderful positive songs, musical recitals and poems by Newham children from various local schools.

But the first hand accounts of murder, racism and cruelty by survivors of very different genocide John Hajdu MBE and Arnesa Buljušmić-Kusturawere was so moving.

John Hajdu was a Hungarian Jew who as a small child had both of his parents sent to German concentration camps while he hid with an aunt in a ghetto. After surviving Nazi persecution he suffered further discrimination as a Jew from the post war communist dictatorship in Hungry and had to flee following the failed revolution in 1956.

While Arnesa was a Bosnian Muslim who Serb snipers tried to kill her when she was 6 and who lost many relatives in the genocidal mass shootings and concentration camps of that war.

I had to leave early but I came away very moved by the accounts of John and Arnesa and the beautiful songs and poetry by our young people but angry that our international political institutions did not ,after the horror of Auschwitz, prevent similar genocide in Bosnia nor also in Rwanda.

(Hat tip photos Newham Council social media)

Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day which is held on the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet Troops in 1945 of  the Auschwitz concentration camp.

This morning the new Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis spoke on "Thought for the Day" (Radio 4 "Today" programme) about his Great Uncle, head of a Jewish seminary in Lithuania who while trying to arrange an escape route for his family and students from advancing German forces became separated. He only found out at the end of the second world war that his students, staff, his wife and their 10 children were all murdered by the Nazi.  A shocking story.

We must never forget the unique evil of all forms of fascism.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2013

Today (27 January) is Holocaust Memorial Day.  This date is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945.

On Friday morning I was travelling through Liverpool Street Railway station and the statutes of the "Kindertransport" children next to the main ticket office, reminded me of the 9,500 children who were allowed to flee Germany before the Second World War and live in Britain.

Many of them arrived in Liverpool Street station from Harwich. The vast majority would have died in German concentration camps if they had not been able to flee. Many never saw their parents again.

While 80% of the children were Jewish, the rest were children of anti-fascists who also knew what would happen to their children if they did not escape.

Newham Council and the Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, held an event on Friday morning to unite communities and reflect on the horrors of Nazi atrocities.

On Saturday I received through the post, the latest edition of UK anti-fascist magazine, Searchlight.  Reading in the magazine the accounts of current fascist activity in the UK, you must be amazed and sickened, that there are still Nazi's in our country, such as the those in the BNP, who think there is nothing wrong with mass murder and turning dead bodies into lamp shades and soap.