Holocaust Memorial Day Event: The Dignity of Difference

Friday 26 January 2007, 9.00am to 5.00pm

At Endeavour House

 

 

Programme

 

Exhibition

 

Endeavour House will throughout the event host an exhibition of displays that include:

Judaism; Roma/Gypsy; race/ethnicity; Jehovah's Witnesses; mental health and other disabilities; trade unions; gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender; county library materials on Holocausts; selection of photos from the Faces of Suffolk project; and more.

 

Each display will include a poster especially designed for this event, depicting the symbols used by the Nazi regime, in order to identify people according to: their religion (Judaism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pagans); sexuality (gay and lesbian); culture (Roma/Gypsy); disability (mental health and learning, physical, and sensory disabilities); trade union membership and more.

 

Raising awareness

 

Persons entering Endeavour House will be offered a Holocaust Memorial Day sticker to wear on the day.

Films

 

The Britten Room we will feature a programme of films, varying in length and subject matter, which will be shown throughout the day.  They include:

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s DVD; two films on the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective; Stand Firm (a film from the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ perspective); Refugee Voices; They Wore a Pink Triangle and Bent (from the gay & lesbian perspective); a film from the Imperial War Museum; and Talk (a film on disability produced by the Disability Rights Commission).

 

A programme list of the films showing will be displayed on the door to the Britten Room.

 

The key part of the day’s programme will take place in the Elisabeth Room

1.00pm to 2.00pm

 

Elisabeth Room programme

 

1.00pm

Welcome

Cllr Charles Michell, Chairman of the County Council

1.05pm

The History of the Holocaust

Elizabeth Sugarman, a member of the local Jewish Community

 

A minute’s silence for reflection

1.10pm

Frank Bright, a survivor of the Holocaust and Suffolk resident
(click here to read his presentation)

1.35pm

Romany Theatre Company

Silvie Parker, Eva Ruszo, David Soanes, Ruth Soanes & Dan Allum

1.50pm

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s Statement of Commitment

Cllr Henry Davies, Mayor of Ipswich

1.55pm

Thanks and close

Tanya White, Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource

 

The Suffolk Holocaust Memorial Day Event planning group included representatives from SIFRE (Suffolk Inter-Faith Resource), Suffolk County Council, CSV Media Clubhouse, Suffolk Police, Unison, the Romany community, the Jewish community, the Jehovah’s Witnesses community, Suffolk Gay & Lesbian Helpline, Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Suffolk Mental Health NHS Trust and Suffolk County Council’s staff disability and LGB networks

 

About Holocaust Memorial Day 2007: The Dignity of Difference

(Reproduced from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s website is http://www.hmd.org.uk/)

 

“May the memory of the victims of the Holocaust become our immune system against hate. May we stand together, fighting prejudice together.”  Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi

 

Introduction

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2007 encourages us to look at what we learn from the Holocaust about the consequences of exclusion based on people’s difference from us.  It highlights the experiences of a variety of groups under the Nazis.  It also explores the opportunities this history gives us to consider how we can create a society based on respect for difference.  The theme involves several aspects:

 

History

The theme explores how exclusionary policy towards the Jews, Gypsies (Roma and Sinti), disabled people, lesbian and gay people, and black people and other groups developed under the Nazis.  It attempts to understand the consequences of the Nazi theories of racial purity within what has become known as the Racial State.  It will identify how populist ideology led to different patterns of persecution, in which different institutions or professional classes within military and civil society participated – including health, police and the judiciary. In particular, it questions how ordinary bystanders reacted to the increasingly divisive legislation.

 

Reflection

The theme questions what might have been done in the past to overcome the exclusion experienced by victimised groups – and to recognise the particularity of their experience.  It reflects on the consequences for a number of individuals and groups caught up as victims of exclusion, and on what might have been done differently to avoid or alleviate the suffering they experienced.  It also looks at the way people can face discrimination or exclusion because they are identified as belonging to a targeted group.

 

Action

This theme encourages us to think about the lives of people marginalized and excluded in the Holocaust, in subsequent genocides and today, and what might be done to celebrate difference and create a culture of respect.  It identifies that victims are never in the best position to defend their own victimisation and that the champions of change are those who are prepared to widen their ‘universe of moral obligation’ and consider the lives of others as a part of their own life. The theme explores how individuals and communities might contribute to this in a meaningful and practical way.

 

History

 

The Indignity of Exclusion

The Nazis knew how to exclude.  In their warped world view, they needed to maintain Aryan genetic purity or ‘hygiene’, as they described it.  Jews and Gypsies were excluded because of their parentage and culture.  Jews were scapegoated as bearing particular responsibility for many of Germany’s woes.

 

Disabled people and people with mental health needs were excluded because the Nazis viewed their disability or health need as indicative of ‘weak’ genes.  Lesbian and gay people were excluded for two reasons: because their sexuality was in itself deemed an indication of genetic weakness; and because, particularly in the case of women, if their behaviour did not conform to strict Nazi gender role models, they were deemed genetically ‘asocial’.  Black people and Slavs were excluded purely on the basis of their race.

 

Individuals and groups were pushed to the margins because of their identity.  This led to loss of livelihood, loss of friendship, loss of security.  It led to the indignity of persecution, incarceration, torture, starvation, slavery and death.  Identified as the enemy, the Jews were stripped of the rights of citizenship, their human rights abused.  The Nazis created an ideology based on supremacy, in which one group had rights which purposefully targeted specific groups.  They described them as ‘lower people’ - ‘Untermenschen’.  The development of a hierarchy created a sense of better and worse, safe and dangerous, good and bad, righteous and evil.

 

Ultimately, the Jews of Europe were driven from their homes, shot in forests, crammed into cattle wagons, gassed and burned.  The Gypsies were also subject to mass murder; many were shot by special killing squads and thousands killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.  The disabled were targeted in a euthanasia programme.  Many lesbian and gay people died as prisoners in the camp system.  Many Slavic people were taken for use as slave labourers and died from executions and mistreatment.

 

That is the ultimate destructive power of exclusion.

 

Reflection

 

Dignity through Remembrance: Public remembrance is not for the benefit of victims to remember what happened to them.  Victims remember well what happened to them.  Public reflection is the act of recognition.  It states to the victims and their families that their humanity is valued, that their loss is our loss and that their suffering is shared, if only through recognising the tragedy and error of its occurrence.  Conversely, ignoring suffering is an act of denial.  Forgetfulness insults, excludes and marginalizes the victims through uncertainty and humiliation.  Recognising and reflecting on all the victim groups persecuted by the Nazis is part of ensuring the dignity of remembrance.  There can be no comparison of suffering.  Every life lost through the ideology of hatred engendered by the Nazis was a life wasted and should be remembered as such.

 

Remembering the Jews who were all, without exception, marked out for murder gives identity to many who have been forgotten.  The Nazis intended to wipe out the Jews without trace of any memory afforded to individuals and their lives.  There are still almost two million Jews who do not have the dignity of a name.

Our act of remembrance recognises that they were individuals just like us.  It opposes the anonymity that genocide imposes and remembers that although they are lost to us, they are remembered nevertheless.

 

Remembering the Roma, who were murdered because of their ethnic identity, lends belated but hitherto forgotten dignity to their suffering.  Forms of remembrance in the Roma tradition mean they are often less visible and therefore less public.  Their untimely deaths cannot be reversed.  Their humanity still needs recognition.

 

Remembering the victims of racial persecution, including black and mixed race victims, provides dignity to the many who were humiliated through sterilisation and pain throughout their lives.  It recognises that such pain is real and has lasting consequences.  Now these victims are fading from history with no heirs, thus completing the genocidal cycle begun sixty years ago.

 

Remembering mentally and physically disabled people who, then as now, were among the most vulnerable members of society.  We reflect that it was their vulnerability which led to their isolation, removal and death.  Their experience is all but lost, because they did not have a voice then and their deaths are shrouded by guilt.  The next of kin either complied with the conspiracy of silence or were oblivious to the reasons behind the deaths of their relatives.  It reminds us of the extent to which the vulnerable within our society rely on others for protection.

 

Remembering lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and trans-people who were branded as degenerate and incarcerated in the network of concentration camps, police prisons and slave labour camps – or were forced into lives of hiding, repression and fear.  In recognising the indignity of enforcing the wearing of the

‘A’ or the triangle on clothing, dignity is given to their endurance in intolerable circumstances.  This reminds us that sexuality was no reason to be enslaved and to value individuals irrespective of sexual orientation or gender identity.

 

Remembering the courageous few who spoke out in political or religious opposition to the oppressive politics and evil ethics of Nazis assists us to reflect on their bravery and their outspokenness against oppression.  They used their voice, irrespective of the consequences.  Reminding ourselves about their courage expresses gratitude that they stood by the basic freedoms of free speech and used it effectively, even if at the time it seemed in vain.