Holocaust Memorial Day

It has been moving reading this thread. It’s so important that the information is passed on to young people. My parents didn’t talk about their experiences and we didn’t have TV at home so I was sheltered from images of war, but at Easter times we’d stay with GM and avidly watch her TV. The televised Easter service had images of men in concentration camps which was horrifying. Later, at secondary school, my class read “I am David” by Anne Holm, about a 12 year old boy ( similar age to us) who escaped from a concentration camp and eventually traveled back to Denmark to find his mother. At the same time there were programmes on TV about the concentration camps which my friends told me about - all very disturbing. My own children didn’t have the same input at school but as adults are aware of the history. Due to the media coverage of the Holocaust Memorial Day, they lit a candle in a window at 8pm.

Many of my relatives perished during the Holocaust my Mother and Grandmother were lucky to escape to this country. Sadly I don't think we have learnt anything at all and it breaks my heart to read about folk not believing thst the Holocaust happened.

It must also be remembered that not only Jewish population had been incarcerated in the camps. With the ultimate objectives for all inmates of first being gassed a then put in ovens.

My dad was in Germany in 1945 going round the camps releasing people. He caught TB and died in 1949. I never knew him. I became an orphan a year later. I cannot believe there are still wars today! It’s still affecting me all these years later.

Sorry, should say government departments.

When visiting Berlin a few years ago I visited the House of the Wannsee Conference, a beautiful villa set by the side of a lake in a suburb of Berlin. The conference took place on 20 January 1942 to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various governments in the implementation of 'The Final Solution'. To walk into the room where the documents were signed, and to see photographs of the attendees who made that terrible decision was, in its own way, as shocking as some of the sights that I saw when I visited Auschwitz.

Quite probably, putting children into a shower and turning on
gas, then gathering bodies and burning them

I know I read somewhere that quite a few young men (not sure if they were SS )but they actually committed suicide because they could not bear to be part of the atrocities….

I watched it in floods of tears :

I know people , who lost their grandparents and relatives in concentration camps .
I know three people , who came over on the kinder transport .
One of my mother's Dutch friends ate Tulip bulbs to survive . Many did .
But none of them even mention it . I only know of their history through others .

I also know two Swedish men - one Jewish and one formerly German and a Hitler youth member , who are best friends .
The latter told me that at nursery school they had to colour in pictures of Jews with hideous facial features and sing nasty songs about them .
We were brain washed ,he'd say .
And I have a German relative , who defended Jewish people and was lucky not to have been put in a concentration camp .

Yet I grew up listening to people talking of Yids and Jew boys - all of them without a shared of pity .

EmilyHarburn

Yesterday evening, I watched on TV the beautiful memorial ceremony held in London with William and Kate present. Also the film Musicians of the Holocaust. Very sobering.

Do you mean the documentary, The last Musician of Auschwitz? It was very interesting.
To think that the music of Mendelssohn and Mahler was revered in early 20th century Germany, but then their works were banned on Hitler's instructions just because the composers were Jewish.

valdali

It wasn't just people with learning disabilities, was it? Deaf mute people, people with epilepsy were also at risk & probably many other disabilities.

I don’t see any suggestion here saying it was confined to people with learning disabilities. The third reich wanted to wipe out non Arian people they saw as healthy, compliant and committed to the cause

Yes, the children.

Seeing children caught up in war, dying, injured is horrific, dreadful. I want to gather them up and keep them safe. 😥

This was a deliberate cruelty perpetrated by the Nazis, taking little children from their mothers, stripping them and making them march to their deaths.
Deliberately targeting and murdering thousands, millions of small children was on another level.

It wasn't just people with learning disabilities, was it? Deaf mute people, people with epilepsy were also at risk & probably many other disabilities.

In particular it’s the children. One and a half million children murdered in the Holocaust. Thousands have died in the recent Palestinian/Israeli conflict, both Gazan and Israeli. Whilst I feel huge sympathy for adults suffering in war and conflict, it’s always the children that upset me the most. When I’ve been to Holocaust museums and seen the pictures of the little faces, or seeing the children being taken out of Gaza to be treated in other Arab countries, or seeing the pictures of the two little red haired boys taken hostage, it’s always the children.

LizzieDrip

^This poster says she refuses to watch anything about the holocaust because she’s seen it all before. I find that very sad. Exaggeration of the present, and ignoring the past is sad, and unhelpful in my opinion^

I agree maddyone.

And surely it is possible, as human beings, to have empathy with the victims on both ‘sides’.

Remembering those murdered in the Holocaust 80 years ago does not prevent one from having sympathy with those affected by the horrors in Gaza today.

I agree LizzieDrip and others who have posted similar thoughts.

Sympathy is not confined, it can extend to all those living in such frightening times.

Anniebach

Born a Jew, died with a number tattooed on their arm,

Or a Roma, disabled, Jehovah's Witness etc

Exactly LizzieDrip

This poster says she refuses to watch anything about the holocaust because she’s seen it all before. I find that very sad. Exaggeration of the present, and ignoring the past is sad, and unhelpful in my opinion

I agree maddyone.

And surely it is possible, as human beings, to have empathy with the victims on both ‘sides’.

Remembering those murdered in the Holocaust 80 years ago does not prevent one from having sympathy with those affected by the horrors in Gaza today.

Iam64

The holocaust aimed to kill all Jewish people. It also aimed to kill people with learning disabilities, gypsy people, homosexuals and those with political beliefs the Third Reich disapproved of
Lest we forget doesn’t mean we don’t care about oppressed or victimised groups in the here and now

Well said Iam64

Iam64

The holocaust aimed to kill all Jewish people. It also aimed to kill people with learning disabilities, gypsy people, homosexuals and those with political beliefs the Third Reich disapproved of
Lest we forget doesn’t mean we don’t care about oppressed or victimised groups in the here and now

And this.

Lizzie44

I watched a lot of the TV coverage yesterday and found myself in tears many times. I've been trying to work out why it moved me more than usually. I think it's partly because of the significance of it being an 80th anniversary and the fact that many of those bearing testament to what happened will not be around for much longer. As someone in my 80s it chills me to think that I was alive at the time of these atrocities.
We absolutely must never forget what happened and we must understand how easily prejudice and hatred can spiral out of control, especially given the instability in today's world. Every generation should be made aware of this. A while ago one of my neighbours told me that she had watched the film "Schindlers List" and hadn't realised that it was a true story. We must go on educating all ages about the past and its rlevance for the future.

This.

children, most of them now amputees

We all know, and are upset by the number of children killed and wounded during this war, but exaggeration doesn’t help anyone. Most of the children in Gaza are not amputees, although some are, which is horrible. Most of them amputees is a gross exaggeration of the truth, whereas most children have been displaced would be true. This poster says she refuses to watch anything about the holocaust because she’s seen it all before. I find that very sad. Exaggeration of the present, and ignoring the past is sad, and unhelpful in my opinion.

I watched a lot of the TV coverage yesterday and found myself in tears many times. I've been trying to work out why it moved me more than usually. I think it's partly because of the significance of it being an 80th anniversary and the fact that many of those bearing testament to what happened will not be around for much longer. As someone in my 80s it chills me to think that I was alive at the time of these atrocities.
We absolutely must never forget what happened and we must understand how easily prejudice and hatred can spiral out of control, especially given the instability in today's world. Every generation should be made aware of this. A while ago one of my neighbours told me that she had watched the film "Schindlers List" and hadn't realised that it was a true story. We must go on educating all ages about the past and its rlevance for the future.

What is it with some people that they can verbally commemorate the Holocaust without mentioning the words "Jewish people" is that deliberate one wonders? whilst there were other people who perished in those death camps, 6 million Jews were murdered so why can't you say it Angela Rayner and Ranvir Singh

I had an aunt who said Germany was a country she would never visit, my uncle worked for BOAC so they'd been everywhere through concessionary travel. Her justification for that was, "Germany murdered 6 million Jews as well as non Jewish people who were part of the resistance, they plundered other countries wealth, they started 2 World Wars, they left Europe in ruins, then they got rebuilt via the Marshall Aid scheme by the mid 50s they were back to normal when the rest of Europe wasn't, and they'd never paid enough in reparations. Her list was extensive. l knew better than to get her started

What I did learn from a German friend and colleague, in the aftermath of the war when the Red Army went through Germany raping women and children, her mother aged 17 was one such victim of that, which left to a lifetime of depression.

The holocaust aimed to kill all Jewish people. It also aimed to kill people with learning disabilities, gypsy people, homosexuals and those with political beliefs the Third Reich disapproved of
Lest we forget doesn’t mean we don’t care about oppressed or victimised groups in the here and now