History

"The Holocaust memorial service in the Isle of Man commemorates the holocaust but of course it is also taking into account all of the other horrors which are still going today.

"The theme of this service is “Stand Up to Hatred” which is a general theme for all the holocaust memorials which have been happening, and will be happening all over the world.

A visitor at a memorial in Berlin

"I am Jewish by culture although I am not a religious person.  I tend to believe in being nice to your fellow human beings before more than following a strict religious path however I would never deny my Jewishness because 3 million people died in the holocaust for being Jewish. 

"Some of the persecuted people didn’t even know they were Jewish; they may have had Jewish grandparents or great grandparents.  So for me, taking part in the holocaust memorial service, keeps alive what people have suffered. 

"I could never deny the suffering people went through, bearing in mind a lot of them weren’t even religious.

"My reading this year is a true story.  It is the story of a lady I met when I was in Israel in 1970s.  She was a holocaust survivor and so was her husband.  Her husband had been in a concentration camp and he still had his number tattooed on his arm.

"It’s that kind of thing which really brings it home to you.  It’s so easy for the holocaust just to become a story until you actually meet people face to face who were involved in the atrocities.

"It’s only then you can feel the reality of the horror  they went through.  I finish my talk by saying that after the 2nd World War everybody said this could never happen again and yet it still continues.

"I hope that this reminder of man’s inhumanity to man may touch someone somewhere.

"This is my reading;

"Imagine that you are around 12 years old, leading a normal, happy childhood in a loving home with your parents, older brother and two younger siblings. Keep that thought with you as I read my piece.

"Such was the life of Chava in Poland. But this was Europe in the 1940s, Chava’s family were Jewish and horror was just around the corner. 

"The German invasion suddenly propelled Chava’s family into the unimaginable horrors that were ghettos, yellow star of David badges, inhuman treatment, concentration camps, the final solution, and the holocaust.

"Attempts to get children out, dangerous as they were, were undertaken by groups. 

"The details of these groups are unknown to me, however, Chava’s parents found an escape group and sent off their eldest son. 

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"His fate would be unknown to them, but it is a risk they decided to take.  Deprived of possessions, they put the fathers watch and a family photo into the heel of his shoe.

"So began the break-up of this family.

"Learning of a second attempt to rescue children, they sent out Chava.

"As a young girl she endured the hardships of escaping from the Nazis with a group of strangers, walking across the Alps and somehow, finally, arriving in Palestine. 

"She told me of her homesickness, her longing for her family, this alien country with its scorching climate and strange language. 

"She was given refuge by the pioneers of Kibbutz Gesher.  The kibbutz was being built and this fourteen year old stranger in a strange land became another of the pioneers.

"She eventually married and, when her first child was a few months old
a knock came at the door and a man stood there that she didn’t recognise, but in his hand he carried the watch and the photo – word of her story had got round and resulted in the two being reunited.

"Needless to say Chava never saw her parents or two younger siblings again.  They perished under the Nazi regime.”