Lest We Forget...

No doubt, we have all seen the images and footage of the Holocaust. There's been a recent run of programs to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I have to say that even though I'd seen footage, these recent programs (including very personal accounts) have been even more shocking, words cannot convey. It's very hard to believe that something like this could have been carried out not that long ago, relatively speaking. Very upsetting...

 

The inhumanity of man rarely surprises me. It was only forty years ago that the Khmer Rouge started their genocide in Cambodia/Kampuchea.

I once knew a survivor of the extermination camps. He talked about it one day when he caught me looking at the tattoo. The most humbling ten minutes of my life.

 

Indeed!

 

And there are people who say it never happened? How can they possibly believe that? And Auchvitz still looks the same today,
Jenny
we must NEVER EVER forget....

 

I was listening to one of the survivors on the radio Jenny and his story was very moving and the subject came up about people not believing that any of it actually happened and the conclusion was that if you tell people the same thing enough times then in their minds it never happened and once the seed has been sown and the brain worm takes hold then nothing on this earth will convince them that it did happen.

My old next door neighbour when he was alive was talking to me one day and with tears running down his cheeks he told me that he was one of the people that had to drive the diggers and scoop up all the dead from the piles that was in one of the camps that was liberated.(Can't remember which one).He said that he had to take a hanky and smother it with a liquid that smelt quiet strong (not sure if they had aftershave in the war)and had to tie the hanky round his mouth and nose to try and hide the smell of death and rot as he did this task.When I asked him what he thought of having to scoop up all those dead people in the digger bucket he said to me that he had to blot it all out because if he stopped to think about what he was doing and what he saw it would have sent him round the bend,so he had to just think of it as another job he was ordered to do.He was a very brave man....

We were not taught anything at school about either of the two wars as it was too fresh and my dad only told me little snippets of his time in Palestine when he was a Lance Corporal in the Royal Engineers,so I don't know what he knew about the Holocaust and what happened to all those Millions of men,women and children.

I only know what I know about the Holocaust because I sat and watched all the programmes when I was a teenager about what happened as I knew that would be the only way I knew about it all and just watching and learning I found it quiet sad...

 

thank you for your post @Kandy
Jenny

 

My husband's family are Jewish and through them I met Henry Wermuth, a survivor who wrote 'Breathe Deeply My Son'. He's just the most amazing man and though his stories are harrowing I feel so privileged to have met and talked with him. I've had some bad and some tough times in my life but listening to him puts it all in perspective, and makes you realise you haven't actually been through anything at all.

 

One thing I watched, was Freddy Knoller's War, a personal account told in his own words. Available on BBCi player, here

 

I spent 24 years in the army and met many amazing people who survived the unthinkable.

 

The Father of the man I used to work for helped in the building of the Japanese Burma railway, he would never speak about it though!!!

 

I cared for a chap and a lady in their their twilight years who bore 'the tatoo' ..Remarkable folk and will never be forgotten...

 

In 1939, 30 Jewish children were rescued from Nazi Germany and given refuge in our village, and that's something I feel really proud about . My wife is 7'th generation in this village and very proud of this, right from a very young age as she was told about this at the village primary school.

 

I really do urge you folks to watch this, very interesting, he's quite a character!