Anniversaries
seem to be part of our lives in a very substantive way. The birth dates of our
children, our own birthdays, the date of our marriage, the time when we lost our
parents and many more occasions.
We mark such dates with joy or sorrow as they invoke
memory that is personal and significant.
The date of today’s
posting coincides with an internationally recognised date, Holocaust Remembrance
Day. It was on this date that
Russia
’s Red Army in its drive from the East, sweeping through
Poland
, reached the small town of
Auschwitz
and finally entered the Camp whose name, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
would soon be associated with the worst horrors of war.
It was to recognise the enormity of this event that
Holocaust Memorial Day was established. Since those terrible weeks in 1945 as
the war in
Europe
drew to a catastrophic close, there have been other
occasions and places on Earth where the oft-used phrase “Never again” has
been ignored. In
Cambodia
, in
Rwanda
, in
Bosnia
and currently in the mayhem that is the political scene of
the
Middle East
.
Maybe it is not without coincidence that Francis
recently visited the Synagogue in
Rome
, anxious that both Christians and Jews recognise their
common root in Scripture and in Faith. During his visit to the synagogue the
Pope met with survivors of the Holocaust along with the Chief Rabbi of
Rome
, Riccardo Di Segni, and Ruth Dureghello, the first female
President of the Jewish Community of Rome.
On the Holocaust victims and survivors the Pope
said: "the Jewish people have had to experience
violence and persecution, to the point of extermination of European Jews during
the Holocaust. Six million people, just because they belonged to the Jewish
people, were victims of the most inhumane barbarity perpetrated in the name of
an ideology that wanted to replace God with man. On
October 16, 1943
, over a thousand men, women and children
Rome
’s Jewish community were deported to
Auschwitz
."
He went on: "I wish to remember them in a
special way: their suffering, their fear, their tears must never be forgotten.
And the past must serve as a lesson for the present and for the future. The
Holocaust teaches us that utmost vigilance is always needed to be able to take
prompt action in defence of human dignity and peace. I would like to express my
closeness to every witness of the Holocaust who is still living; and I address a
special greeting to those who are present here today."
The
theme adopted for this year’s anniversary is quite simple: “Don’t stand
by”. Easy words but then we must face the consequences of their utterance and
that is not so easy, as European nations are finding out as they attempt to
manage the crisis of so many refugees on the move to the West.
Back in ’95, when we marked 50 years since the
relief of
Auschwitz
, I wrote these few lines. They still stand.
This
chilled earth
Words
do not come easily
–or
perhaps
they
have come
with
too much ease
over
the intervening years
and
so have been devalued.
Across
the plain of
Europe
came
the herded harvest from emptied towns, vacant city quarters,
full
gathered grief to be welcomed
at
open gates of wire fenced fields, harbouring brick buildings designed
for
determined purpose.
They
arrived
day
by day by day by day
day
by day by day by day
and
trains leaving empty
collected
further families
from
other places, faces without future.
In that chilled space
-
snow bound in Winter
under grey-grown sky,
sun-soaked in Summer
through July-long days-
it
made no difference.
They simply sliced
the
life of David’s people
and
sent clouds of darkness, wind blown
free beyond the fence,
leaving lost ones whose turn must come
–maybe
in the morning.
END
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