Holocaust Memorial Day

Last night I went to a vigil organised by Oxford University Students’ Union for Holocaust Memorial Day and I can’t actually describe the feelings and emotions I experienced.

I can’t begin to comprehend the suffering that went on in Nazi-occupied states and in the death camps. It was really cold last night, and I started to complain about it until it suddenly dawned me that I wasn’t cold - at least not in comparison to the bitter cold experienced by millions of people in the ghettos and camps. Oxford in late January is nothing compared to, say, Poland in late January…

That’s just a small example, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to really understand what it was like. I can’t even imagine what 6 million people would look like - how many double-decker buses would they fill? How much is that? And yet over 6 million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis - in 1933 approximately nine million Jews lived in the European states that would be occupied by Germany during the Second World War. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed.

And it didn’t stop there. In addition to the 6 million Jewish people who were murdered, it’s estimated that a further 9 million lesbians, gay men, Roma, disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Slavs, Africans, trade unionists, people with different political views, and anyone else seen as racially inferior were also killed by the Nazis.

It’s 60 years since the liberation of the notorious Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, but you’ve got to ask what’s changed in those 6 decades. People are still being persecuted, tortured and killed. The far right still exist, people keep voting for them even though they represent everything the Nazis stood for. Some people stand up and deny that the Holocaust ever happened, making hateful claims that the stories and evidence are just part of a so-called conspiracy.

That’s not progression - how can we move forward, how can we stop it happening again when prejudice and discrimination still exist, bigotry that’s not based on anything more substantial than hatred of people because of the religion or faith, their gender, the colour of their skin, or sexuality…

As I said, I don’t think I can fully describe what I think and feel about the Holocaust and other incidents of genocide and xenophobia, so I’ll leave you with those often quoted but immensely powerful words by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

'First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing.
Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing.
Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist.
And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little.
Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.'

Jo Salmon
jo.salmon@nus.org.uk

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/josalmon/270387.aspx