Holocaust Memorial Day

 

The Holocaust Memorial Day in England was a commemoration bringing together the ever diminishing number of Holocaust survivors with the future king of England, William, whose Greek ancestor hid a Jewish family during WW2.

A picture showed all the holocaust survivors together, with members of the royal family, William and Kate, with British ministers.

People sometimes ask why we see so little of the other groups who suffered. I looked online and learned that unfortunately there is only one UK survivor of the Sinta-Roma group. 

1 Hidden Jewish Survivors in London.

Some survivors kept very quiet, private, after their experiences in WW2. Anne Frank's father lived in Edgware, near where I lived, but he was not known about for decades. 

A second holocaust survivor, from his family, his step-daughter, started visiting schools and wrote a book only when she became much older.

Why is a commemoration held in London? What has London got to do with the Holocaust?

1 The Kindertransport. 

Many Jewish orphans and young children were brought on trains to London, to safety, after Kristallnacht, just before WW2, in the expectation that they would go back to  their parents later. But after the war they had no parents nor homes to go back to.

2 Well-known Holocaust Survivors

Probably the best known is Sigmund Freud, who left Austria to live out the rest of his life in London. (His sisters were killed in the Holocaust.) You can visit the Freud Museum in London.

3 Well-known Jews from Before the Holocaust Who Contributed to Modern Britain

Ann Pavolva, whose golden statue is above the dome facing Victoria train and bus station. You can see it far above, shining in the sunlight, if you look up. Her house is a museum which can be visited.

Moses who founded Moss Bros the tailors.

Marks of Marks and Spencer.

4 Well-known Jews Of A New Generation in the UK

Alma Cogan. Helen Shapiro. Amy Winehouse. 

London has a variety of cultures. We now have former Jewish delis serving Jewish style food run by a Christian Greek family in Edgware and Hatch End.  Kosher festival food is sold at a Jewish supermarket in Golders Green - the shop is run by Indians. 

Tesco and Marks & Spencer started in England, but are now in countries as far away as Singapore.

If you want to know about other groups, and the holocaust, you will find them mentioned on websites about the holocaust and about Anne Frank House and the Anne Frank Foundation.

Useful Websites

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

https://hmd.org.uk/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Holocaust_memorials_and_museums

What you see and learn about Auschwitz and camp 2 called Auschwitz-Birkenau

 Holocaust Memorial Day is in January, recalling the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, where the larges concentration camp was situatedarn and the huge majority died. Our guide told us that although we were tired after touring several barracks buildings and the forecourt were the roll call was held and poeple were hanged, we must go on to Birkenau down the road. 

In Auschwitz you see te railway track which brought the trains from all over Europe. In Auschwitz, you see the receiving room where those who were kept alive were given numerical stamps on their arms, and you see the before and after photos, inlcuding one girl I recall. 

After 3 months the inhabitants were so thin and haggard they were not recognizable from photos and needed numbers. Then in other blocks you see the suitcases with names, then the children's shoes, the eyeglasses. The underground cells for the priest who took the place of a prisoner and was held until he starved to death or was killed.

When you reach Birkenau with the gas chambers, you go from the individual horror to the horrifying scale of the tragedy. You see the fields surrounded by tennis netting and watch towers. 

Your guide, who usually has a connection such as a relative who died there, is a guide for a set time and then needs a break from the emoitonal strain. Your guide says, this field held the French, the next field held the Italians, the next field held the Greeks, the next field held ..." Jews and other prisoners from the whole of Europe, transported here, en masse, and exterminated.

All the more remarkable are the ones who got away, some just before the war, or after the war started before the killings. Plus discoveries of items buried at concentration camps or elsewhere. And new reserachers, seeking grandparents or other relatives as the internet expands the numbers of people doing family research.

For more about the survivors and Prince William and Kate see previous post.

Interesting Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

https://holocaustlearning.org.uk/learning/untold-stories-for-key-stage-2/

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9192831/Survivors-Britain-escaped-Nazi-Germany-mark-Holocaust-Memorial-Day.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9189127/ID-tags-children-aged-6-12-murdered-discovered-Sobibor-Nazi-death-camp.html

About the Author

Angela Lansbury is teacher of English. (Advanced English and English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, French and other languages, an aspiring polyglot.)

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Member of many toastmasters  speaker training clubs, and speaking contest judge.

Angela Lansbury, the author of 20 books including Wedding Speeches & Toasts, and Quick Quotations, has lived in the USA, Spain and Singapore. 

She  has several blogs and writes daily on at least two of the following:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

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