Holocaust Memorial Day 2016

On this day every year Britain remembers the Holocaust -

the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.

The deliberate attempt to exterminate an entire community

And here at the Guildhall in London, 200 survivors are among those

gathered for this year's commemoration.

On Holocaust Memorial Day we also remember genocides elsewhere -

Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur.

And human beings' capacity to hate is even seen in Britain -

where research released today suggests one in ten people have been

the victims of a hate incident or crime.

Today, candles will be lit in memory of those persecuted and killed

in the Holocaust and since, their fate is a reminder not only

of the horror but of where hate and racism can lead.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists

Welcome to this commemoration marking Holocaust Memorial Day,

one of many events taking place across the country.

And a special welcome to the survivors of the Holocaust

and those who have survived more recent genocides.

We are here to remember the six million Jews,

who were exterminated by the Nazis in a planned,

One and a half million of whom were babies and children.

Millions of others, including Roma, political prisoners,

homosexuals and disabled people were all targeted and murdered.

We also remember the genocides that have taken place in Cambodia,

The Holocaust threatened the very fabric of civilisation.

Yet the road that led to the horrors of Auschwitz,

Treblinka and Sobibor, began years earlier.

Historian David Olusoga returned to Bergen-Belsen to trace the path

of escalation that resulted in the scenes that so shocked

the world at the end of the Second World War

When the British Army arrived here in 1945 they encountered a camp

that was overcrowded with tens of thousands of starving and dying

people, a camp that had been completely overwhelmed by disease

and, perhaps most shockingly, a camp that had become

There were thousands of bodies piled up across the camp.

What the British soldiers who arrived here had stumbled

across was a place that revealed the full scale of Nazi barbarism.

Those liberated by the allies across Europe in 1945 were survivors

of the brutal concentration and extermination camps established

Barbarous institutions where millions of people had been

sent to be worked to death, or worse, to be killed

For millions of people places like Auschwitz represented the final

phase in a nightmare that had begun back in 1933 when Hitler

From the early days of the Nazi regime anti-Semitism was actively

Perhaps the most significant moment in the pre-war persecution

of the Jews of Germany was Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish

Following a night of barbaric state-sponsored violence

and vandalism, laws were passed banning Jews from owning businesses,

from attending schools and eventually from public life

If you were a Jew living under Hitler, the list of things

you couldn't even own constantly expanded.

A Jew for example couldn't own a radio, or a telephone,

or a bicycle, or even a newspaper or a bottle of milk.

By the end of 1941 this oppression was sealed with the enforcement

Every Jew over the age of six was forced to wear a yellow star.

Having been robbed of their livelihoods and their professions,

the Jews now lost their homes, they were transported to ghettos,

special compounds that were built right across the occupied areas.

As the net of Nazi persecution widened across Europe,

Hundreds of thousands died of disease and starvation.

However, even this form of slow, agonising suffocation was not

Execution squads were used to speed up the extermination of those deemed

But it was decided that these methods were simply not efficient

enough and now the Nazis began to look for an industrial solution

The decision had been made to finally deliver on the ambition

Camps were to be used as centres for death to obliterate not

just their lives but their faith, their culture, their history.

This is a significant place in lots of ways but it's significant

in the story of the Holocaust in that it was the images taken

here, the films and the photographs that were taken here that defined

and give us the image, the reality of what the Holocaust was.

This is one of those places that define the modern age,

it's one of those places that I think is contaminated by history,

too much happened here, too much misery and suffering took

place on this spot for it ever to be anything other than a warning to us

of what, what lies within us and what can happen

In 1944 the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators organised

the deportation of Hungarian Jews: in less than two months from mid-May

1944, almost all Jews were deported, mostly to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

My father was imprisoned before and murdered.

Along with Laci, my brother, and my mother, we were all sent

to a ghetto in Vac and from there to a prison camp.

In late May 1944, we were sent by cattle truck to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In the wagons the sounds were crying, praying,

The only consoling mantra for us - we were abandoned.

On arrival we scrambled out of the trucks, and men and women

I was also then separated from my mother who was sent to join

I was left on my own, surrounded by shouting,

I soon learned that my mother had been sent directly

My emotions shut me down, shut me off fromst world. I survived as a

robot. From there I was used as a slave labourer in Guben, Germany. We

were sent on a death march in the bitter cold. Over frozen fields, to

a place of death. Bergen-Belsen. On 15 April 1945 I was liberated

by the British Army. I managed to crawl out and they

picked me up and placed me in a clean bed.

How do you get over such an experience?

There was no revenge. There was no justice. I chose to walk away and

rebuild my life in the hope of a just and hate-free future for all of

us. Thank you. And now preparing to carry six

memorial candles to the stage are young people working with

the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust who have committed to continue

the work of the survivors in ending hatred and racism amongst

their own generation. # Et ne ultra memineris

iniquitatis nostrae # Ecce respice populus

tuus omnes nos # Civitas sancti tui

facta est deserta. # Et ne ultra memineris

iniquitatis nostrae # Ecce respice populus

tuus omnes nos # Civitas sancti tui

facta est deserta. Everything we have heard

happened because cultured, educated Europe allowed an evil

ideology to take root. by in the face of what was

happening around them - some afraid to speak out -

many simply indifferent. But a few brave people

refused to be bystanders, and would not accept that some

people's lives were deemed to be One person who took a stance

was Frank Foley. A British diplomat who was also

an MI6 agent working in Berlin. Liable for arrest at any time,

he ignored the rules to help countless Jews escape

from Nazi Germany, among them We left Cologne in June 1939,

it was just about two-and-a-half I think it was July

1939 and we went, came When I left Berlin I

was seven-years-old. As far as I'm concerned,

Frank Foley saved our lives, By the end of Hitler's first year

in power an estimated 65,000 Germans had fled the country,

the vast majority Frank Foley worked secretly behind

the scenes to help as many as 10,000 Jews to escape the rising climate

of fear and persecution. Jewish people were queuing

outside embassies, Here they were only too happy to get

rid of the Jews but they wanted My family didn't have money

and I suppose it was very difficult to do all that and to

get all that together. At great personal risk Frank Foley

broke the rules to grant visas without the required financial

guarantees. He worked around the clock to answer

thousands of requests from people I remember very well the Sunday

morning when we received this letter, my best friend

was with us at the time and we jumped up for joy,

we really didn't know what hit us. And immediately after

that, we started making Our papers were -

I wouldn't exactly say forged, but certainly there was some

skulduggery going on that, For my brother and I,

the papers As far as Frank Foley is concerned,

I did not find out anything We thought until then that we'd been

issued a visa by mistake and only hoped that somebody else

wasn't suffering as a result. I found out when somebody

was researching my husband's story and we discovered

the papers and that was when we found out that it had been

stamped by Frank Foley. Frank Foley returned

to Britain in 1939. His brave and selfless behaviour

remained a largely untold secret Of my own family that did not

emmigrate, none survived Frank Foley is my saviour

and my saint. Not everyone can be a Frank Foley

and save tens of thousands of lives, but during the Holocaust,

acts of humanity took huge Each gesture a defiance

against the prevailing ideology. Joan Salter and Cirla Lewis are here

today because of such gestures. As foreign Jews living

in Paris my family were required to register weekly at

the local police station. On a hot July day my mother,

older sister and I waited our turn My sister started tugging

on my dress, demanding mother put me

down and pick her up instead. I started crying, my sister

continued whining and the official screamed at my mother

to remove us from the office. Terrified, my mother waited outside

until everyone else had registered. Timidly she approached another

policeman, a much more kindly man and he warned my mother

that we were to be rounded up That night the Resistance smuggled

us out of Paris in the back That act of kindness by a very brave

man saved our lives. Sadly I recently came

across a report which said that 33 policemen had been shot for helping

Jews escape that Paris roundup. During the war, I was a young child

growing up in Belgium. My father was deported to a French

labour camp and finished up My mother and I were forced

into hiding in Antwerp. At first, we stayed

with Marie Arekens, a devout Catholic who lived opposite

the Gestapo headquarters. We were later taken in by Betty

and Jean-Louis Liem, in Ghent. Though we were complete strangers

to them, they hid us in their home, along with a British airman

and a member of the In hiding Jews, Marie Arekens

and the Liem family knew they were risking

their lives to help us. My mother and I stayed

with the family for 18 months and were not discovered,

and we survived the war. After I came to live

in England I was determined that the bravery of those

who saved me should be recognised. On 10th September 1997,

Yad Vashem posthumously honoured the Liem Family and Marie Arekens

"Righteous Among the Nations". The Nazis didn't want to just

exterminate the Jews, but to obliterate all traces

of what had been vibrant and flourishing Jewish

life and communities. Clinging onto their sense

of identity, preserving Jewish culture and recording Nazi crimes

became acts of resistance. David Graber was a young man living

in the Warsaw Ghetto. One of 400,000 Jews crammed

into an area of less than one Imprisoned behind ten-foot-high

walls topped with barbed wire and guarded 24 hours a day,

83,000 people died Unable to pay burial taxes,

many families were forced to leave bodies

where they lay in the streets. Despite these appalling conditions

where simply getting through every day took a huge amount of strength,

a small group looked beyond the daily struggle

to the future. Aged only 19 David

Graber was among them. David and his colleagues met

secretly on the Sabbath led by the historian

Emanuel Ringelblum. They collected thousands

of items: diaries, letters, official papers, and

the fragments of everyday life. Such as tram

tickets and sweet wrappers. The aim was to create a secret

archive documenting the way Jews The cultural and historical archive

was code-named Onag Shabbat meaning In the summer of 1942 mass

deportations took place from the ghetto to the extermination

camp at Treblinka. For David and his fellow activists

it became imperative to preserve the archive for a future

they might not live to see. The precious documents were stored

in milk churns and boxes, then buried in three separate

locations in the ghetto. After the war, two of the three milk

churns were discovered and found amongst the papers was

David Graber's last testament. I would love to live to see

the moment in which the great treasure will be dug up and shriek

to the world proclaiming the truth. So the ones who did not live

through it may be glad, and we may feel like veterans

with medals on our chest. We would be the fathers,

the teachers and educators But no, we shall certainly

never live to see it, and therefore do

I write my last will. May the treasure fall into good

hands, may it last into better times, may it alarm and alert

the world to what happened and what was played out

in the 20th Century. David Graber died in

the Warsaw Ghetto at some point after writing this testament

on 3rd August 1942. The Warsaw Ghetto was the place of

an heroic act of armed resistance. In response to the deportations

and threats to crush the remaining population, the starving

and weakened Jews of Warsaw rose up With only a small number of weapons

smuggled into the ghetto they fought against the organised

and well-equipped SS For four extraordinary

weeks they held out, but in the end paid a heavy price

for their resistance. 7,000 died during the

fighting - a further 50,000 were captured

and sent to forced labour A small number of Jews managed

to evade the Nazis and joined Partisan groups, and carried out

acts of sabotage against The song they sang found its way

into the ghettos and even Throughout Europe, persecuted Jews

sang an anthem of resistance. The Holocaust was unprecedented

and shook the very foundations The world's response

was 'Never Again', yet genocides have happened again,

and again, and again. Killing people purely

because of the faith or community they belong to, often

with the active involvement Since the Second World War,

genocides have taken place in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia,

and is ongoing in Darfur, The testimony you are about to hear

is that of a young woman whose family are from the Fur Tribe

of black Africans, who have suffered The Sudanese Government have

supported Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed,

who have destroyed hundreds of villages and murdered

thousands of people. She is so afraid of reprisals

against her family who are still in Darfur that she cannot

appear this evening, but she has asked for her story

to be read on her behalf. In the summer of 2004 I was working

in Khartoum when I heard news that my father had been killed

and my mother had been kidnapped when the Janjaweed

attacked our village. When I found out about what had

happened I went with my fiance Whilst we were there

the Janjaweed came back. They chased us on a horse

and we were shot at several times and he was killed,

I was shot in my leg. I waited four hours with my fiance

after he was killed, with his head on my lap,

until somebody came to help me. A year later I received an anonymous

call at my personal office. A man asked me why I had been

the year before at my home village. At that time the government

was looking for people who might be I was being watched inside my own

office but I didn't realise it. In the summer of 2006

I was walking along the street near to where I lived when three men

jumped out of a pick-up truck, grabbing me and forcing

me into the vehicle. I was taken into an office

where the head man was. He told me it is only prostitutes

who work with rebels. I said to him, "I am not a rebel

and I am not a prostitute either." A man on my right hit me

with the back of his gun, and told me not to talk

to the boss like that. They said the money I sent

to my family in Darfur I told them, "I was not sending any

money to any rebels, I'm just someone with a broken heart

who is looking after my family". The man in charge said he wanted

to examine me to see if I was a prostitute,

so I was taken to a small room which was full of dried

blood on the floor. The boss started

to remove my clothes. I tried to resist but he was too

strong and he stabbed me in the breast and the palm

of my hand with a knife. I tried to escape but two

men stood in the door. At the police station,

I was told no one had reported the security force before,

it's better if you go away. I couldn't talk to anybody,

in my culture you cannot I was taken from the same street

in the same way as before but this I was interrogated with a knife held

under my chin, and forced to give I was raped by individuals

as well as groups. I was beaten and tortured so badly

that I have scars on my stomach, That is when I said to myself

I will never ever let them get me Two months later I left

Sudan for Europe. The Darfuri singer Shurooq Abu el

Nas fled Sudan in 1989 She will now perform a special

version of the song Um Al Yatama, The song has been banned

by the Sudanese Government because of its message of sympathy

for a struggling war widow. MUSIC: Um Al Yatama

By Shurooq Abu el Nas Please welcome to the stage

the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth,

Chief Rabbi Mirvis. If during the concluding years of

the Republic, the Germany electorate would have placed greater confidence

in democracy, then perhaps the Nazis would not have seized power, but as

is well-known, sometimes poverty and desperation can become the allies of

the politics of hatred. If after the Nazis made the Jews into scapegoats,

claiming that they were responsible for everything, the German people

would have said aloud, no, this is a lie, then perhaps legislation

against the Jews could have been prevented. But, unfortunately,

sometimes it is just easier to be quiet, while everyone around one is

turning a blind eye to everything that is wrong. If the employees in

the pesticide factory, if they had turned to their employers and said,

"Why are we making more of this product? What is it going to be used

for?" Then perhaps the murderers might not have had at their disposal

the means through which to carry on with their efficient killing

machine. But sometimes the easiest way forward is not to ask the

difficult questions. But war is complex and it's often difficult to

take critical decisions. If in the aftermath of the war, when there was

a chorus of never again ringing loudly around the globe, our

societies would have internalised the lessons from the Holocaust, then

we could have applied them to prevent other tragedies and

genocides from taking place, and so many millions of lives could have

been saved. But Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda, they seem, for so

many, to be so far away and irrelevant. So many ifs and so many

buts. Six million precious Jewish souls perished in the midst of a sea

of silence. Let us today make a commitment in the presence of

Holocaust survivors and survivors of tragedies and genocides since then,

that we will learn the lessons of the Holocaust and those tragedies,

we will internalise that information and in the future we will never

stand idly by. Let us declare with a full heart with much passion and

total sincerity never again, no ifs and no buts.

How do we comprehend the idea of six million people?

If a minute's silence was held for every Jewish victim

of the Holocaust, the world would be silent for more than 11 years.

In the camps human beings were reduced to numbers -

stripped of humanity, stripped even of a name,

identified only by a series of digits tattooed on their arms.

But behind every number was an individual with a life,

friends, family, likes and dislikes, hopes and aspirations.

Nusia Landau, Dziunia Grubsztein, and Lusia Millier were young friends

Ordinary schoolgirls who loved to read novels and

Everything changed when the deportations began and the three

young girls sent their photographs along with a last message

to their friend, Bronia, who had already left Piotrkow.

Bronia survived the war and kept the photographs.

Today we say their names, we see their faces,

Nusia wrote, "If it has to be like this, if it has to be the end

let my picture be a memento of the old days."

Lusia's last words show how aware she was of what lay ahead.

"It is terribly, terribly sad when young people are dying.

Because everything, everything in me wants to live.

Especially at such a young age, because at the age of 13 one begins

Perhaps it is good that it is at such an early age.

And Dziunia wrote simply, "Bronia, now there will be nothing,

But there was so much - there could have been so much more."

A powerful reminder of the many young lives lost in the Holocaust

when 1 million children were killed. The six candles on the stage will

now be lit in the memory of Jewish and other victims of the Nazis and

of those murdered in genocides in Cambodia, Osney, Rwanda and Darfur

-- Bosnia. Jennifer Pike will play the theme from Schindler's List.

MUSIC: Theme from Schindler's List By John Williams

B'gan eiden t'hei m'nuchatam Adonai hu nachalatam.

Elie Wiesel was 16 years old when he was deported

from Hungary to Auschwitz, together with his family.

His mother and youngest sister were murdered on arrival.

His father died in Buchenwald days after he and Elie had arrived

Elie survived, and after the war he wrote, 'Night', one of the best

In 1986 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

for his tireless campaigning to preserve the memory

of the Holocaust and to raise awareness of other genocides.

This is an extract from his acceptance speech.

I remember: it happened yesterday or eternities ago.

A young Jewish boy discovered the kingdom of night.

I remember his bewilderment, I remember his anguish.

The fiery altar upon which the history of our people

and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.

I remember: he asked his father: "Can this be true?"

This is the 20th Century, not the Middle Ages.

Who would allow such crimes to be committed?

And now the boy is turning to me: "Tell me," he asks.

That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight

Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.

And then I explained to him how naive we were, that the world did

And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human

beings endure suffering and humiliation.

Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy,

national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.

Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race,

religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment -

MUSIC: A Song of Hope By Howard Goodall

# That nothing could survive the grief

# The loss, the void with which we could not cope

# Once our senses, paralysed by disbelief, took fright and anger

# See, see, the gift of life you granted

# See, see, the seeds of hope you planted

# In ev'ry avenue, on ev'ry sun-scorched frontier.

# See, see, the dreams of generations.

# See, see, new destinies and nations.

# Your names and faiths will survive.

# Your words and prayers will survive

And with that Song Of Hope This Holocaust Day Of Memorial Service

Comes To An End. We Hope That One Day Humanity Will Live Up To The

Promises Of Never Again And Thus Truly Learn From This Dark Chapter

In Our History.