91热爆

From Julia Neuberger, Senior Rabbi at the west London Synagogue:

Tonight, on 91热爆1, there鈥檚 a remarkable documentary being shown, The Holocaust: A Story of Remembrance. Kitty Hart-Moxon tells us her memories of Auschwitz, as she displays the numbers once branded on her arm and her mother鈥檚, that she had removed because people asked stupid questions about it- your boyfriend鈥檚 telephone number? Judith Kerr, acclaimed author of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, tells of her family鈥檚 escape from the Nazis, and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner goes to Lithuania to see what became of her family. All make the point that it happened to them, to their people, to their families- and mine- and should never be forgotten.

Yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In a decade, many Auschwitz survivors will be dead. Their stories will no longer be told in person. So how can we be sure the world will remember?聽 For people like me, who grew up with the awareness of what had happened to my family members, that now seems an urgent question. My mother didn鈥檛 talk about how most of her family had perished, until the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Then it all came flooding out, in the last few years of her life. Her father could not leave memories behind, even though he escaped Germany. In old age, with a particularly cruel form of dementia, he could see in his mind鈥檚 eye the Nazis chasing him around his home town, Heilbronn.

So this Sunday evening my synagogue is taking part in a joint service with Westminster Abbey to commemorate this 70 year anniversary, hearing from survivors, recording the Roma, gays, left wingers and others who were targeted, but always coming back to the key point that it was the Jews whom the Nazis wanted to remove from the earth. The only comfort amongst the sorrow and the memories is that we have survived, and there are enough people around to remind us what human beings are capable of. But all these accounts need to be written down urgently, whilst their owners are still alive. The imperative is to remember. For only by remembering have we any chance of preventing such genocide happening again.聽