International Holocaust Memorial Day has in recent years been observed on January 27, the date troops entered the camps. In Israel,
Yom haShoah is timed around the anniversary of the
rising in the Warsaw Ghetto of 1943, but its closeness to Pesach can lead to some variation.
I was immensely honoured and moved to be a guest at the Council of Christians and Jews celebration of Yom haShoah yesterday in Oxford. The
Oxford Jewish Congregation is a vibrant and extrordinary outfit which encompasses a wide range of expressions of Jewish practice under one roof.
Proceedings began with the simple but compelling voice of Max Bruch’s
Kol Nidrei, played on the cello by
Lynton Appel — music reflecting traditional chant from the eve of the Day of Atonement. Another unforgettable part of the evening was an address by
Ruth Shire, a refugee from Nazi Germany, evacuated with other children in 1937. Ruth put everything in historical perspective, briefly, then told her story — of living with a family near Oxford, of the internment of her father during the war, and of the life she had built in this country.
Ruth’s story reminded us that
amidst evil, the kindness of strangers and the resilience of the human spirit make for an everlasting remembrance. Her simple words reminded us that we all have stories that can bless us or curse us, by informing the decisions we make and the attitudes we take. Worst of all is to travel in ignorance of one’s own story.
This being a Jewish community, there was, of course, a prodigious family party afterwards.
The memorial included the recitation together of the
Kaddish, two minutes silence and the lighting of candles around which we placed stones. In Bible times graves were marked by cairns. Placing stones on them was a way of making them more permanent. Stones do not fade like flowers, and bear witness that others have visited and not forgotten.
It was immensely significant to leave stones for those millions who were denied the basic dignity of a grave — an expression of the respect they were denied by their persecutors.
It is important to focus on the historical aspect of this, all the more as time passes.
However it added a very special additional dimension to be a guest within a resonant community, in which memory is not a museum piece, but living consciousness.
The evening was not simply about feeling sad, but also about identifying with those who died and those who suffer injustice and genocide in the world today:
We remember those who died in the Holocaust,
when madness ruled and evil dwelt on earth. We remember those of whom we know, and those whose very names are lost.
We cherish the memory of those who died as martyrs, those who died resisting, and those who died in terror.
We mourn for all that died with them; their goodness and their wisdom, which could have done so much to enoble and enrich humanity. We mourn for the genius and the wit that died, the learning and the laughter that were lost.
We stand in gratitude for their simple, decent lives. Their spiritual resistance remains an enduring testimony to a community where light persisted in darkness. Each person was unique, and we remember them all in love and compassion.
We salute those who had the courage to stand outside the mob, to save us, and to suffer with us. They too are God’s witnesses, and a source of hope when we are tempted to despair.Because of the suffering, may such times never come again, and may their sacrifice not be in vain. In our daily fight against cruelty and prejudice, tyranny and persecution, their memory gives us strength.In silence we remember those who sanctified God’s name.Many thanks to Alison Ryde for the picture of candles and stones afterwards, and to the community of the Oxford Jewish Centre for their generosity and hard work.
comes Learning? As various politicians catch up on much-needed beauty sleep and decide what to do this weekend, there’s a distinct feeling in the air that the whole game is up for the old politics, but nobody quite knows how, or what to do about it. I’ll be off this stuff tomorrow but as a trained historian, I wonder what the three main parties could learn from their various disappointments of the past 76 hours.
The whole New Labour Thing has rather run out of steam, holed below the waterline by the moral legacy of the Iraq War and an uncomfortable feeling that some labour people had grown disturbingly fat out of government. Secular New Labour 1997 messianism is a gone coon. Gordon Brown is a man of genuine passion and commitment, but to make himself electable he would need to turn back the clock to the weeks after he assumed power, and hold that snap autumn election he never did...
The party is still in serious transition, but in a direction that might make for majority government one day, with a popular leader. The overwhelming likelihood of DC becoming PM brings the opportunity to demonsrate skill and responsibility, and a collaborative leadership style that fits contemporary mores and aspirations. In Boris Johnson’s wonderful phrase the Meat in the Sausage, morally, should be Conservative. In terms of Tory tradition, they need to develop a way of doing Disraeli for Today, not Stanley Baldwin dressing-up games or Thatcherism, which is as repellent as ever — the Tory gone coon.A terminally frustrating night for LD’s! Their popular vote very modestly increased, but they suffered badly from third party squeeze in many places in the South. The Voting pattern is becoming far more volatile, quirky and granular than ever and this is beginning to hurt rather than promote the Liberal Democrats on their way up the greasy pole. Think of last Thursday as a big stretch up, followed by a greasy slip down to where, formally, they were when they started. Ouch! The silver lining in their cloud is that a large majority voted for parties which were willing to question our rather deadbeat and now clearly ineffective voting system. Time to dust down the Royal Commission on Proportional Representation of 1918, and actually do something about its conclusions. Ninety years is a long time in politics! Lib-Lab pacts, however, have a long but toxic history...
The biggest challenge for anyone who cares has to be those people who couldn’t or wouldn’t vote. It must be time to take serious steps to draw younger (= under 30) voters into the frame, perhaps by developing a system for internet or mobile phone voting. Almost anything would be more secure than present postal voting, but this would not be anything like as easy as it may sound. However there must be no repetition of the banana republic scenes outside, and even inside voting stations in Sheffield and London. Our present practice is too narrow and remote for the needs of this generation...
