Holocaust Memorial Day: commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz

 
On Sunday Gavin spoke at Luton’s Holocaust Memorial Day observance service, with the theme of keeping the memory alive. Today marks 70 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Read his address from the service below.
This time last week I stood in a land of great lament. A land with a rich oral history. I was in Israel. And, today, I am struck by the power of choosing to tell the stories of our past – so they’re not forgotten and so they can shape our future.
Today we gather to remember. Because the alternative is to forget.
And when confronted with such pain, to forget almost becomes logical. To ignore can become rational. To deny, conversely, can become plausible.
This is human nature. But that is why, today, we stand here, in this room. Why we, here in this place, choose to remember, despite the pain it confronts us with. The shocking truth we must face.
That man can do this unto man; that we – each of us – bear not only the perceived imperfections that could lead us to find ourselves the concentration camp inhabitant; and the corrupted and defaced human power to be the concentration camp guard.
The theme of this year’s HMD commemorations is to keep the memory alive. It asks us to stand still and experience the dissonance, the confusion, and the reality of what we do to us; of what humanity is capable of.
It is a time when we seek to learn the lessons of the past and to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own. That it’s a steady process which can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked and prevented. And in this time of hate; of easy answers and of identifiable groups to blame; it asks us to remember.
There is nothing more powerful than telling the stories that shape our today-history; our cultural conscience. Let this be our oral history.
1941: HOLOCAUST (1)
Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews. It was systematic and planned. From the time they assumed power in 1933, the Nazis used propaganda, persecution, and legislation to deny human and civil rights.
They used centuries of anti-Semitism as their foundation. By the end of the Holocaust, millions of Jewish men, women and children had perished in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps.
Nazi beliefs categorised people by race; their opposition to racial mixing was part-justification for their hatred against Jews, Gypsies (Romani), Slavic and Black, disabled and gay people who lived in Germany.
1975: CAMBODIA (2)
The radical communist Khmer Rouge, under their leader Pol Pot, seized power in Cambodia in 1975. The population was made to work as labourers in one huge federation of collective farms. The inhabitants of towns and cities were forced to leave. The ill, disabled, old and very young were driven out, regardless of their physical condition. Children were taken from their parents and placed in separate forced labour camps. Lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, scientists and professional people in any field were murdered, together with their extended families.

Together with Kelvin Hopkins MP, Gavin attends Luton’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations

It was possible for people to be shot simply for knowing a foreign language, wearing glasses, laughing, or crying. Civilian deaths in this period, from execution, disease, exhaustion and starvation, have been estimated at well over two million.
1994: RWANDA (3)
In 100 days in 1994 approximately one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in the genocide in Rwanda. The genocide took place following decades of tensions between Hutus and Tutsis, and a recent history of persecution and discrimination against Tutsis. Extremist Hutu leaders accused Tutsis of killing the President, and Hutu civilians were told by radio and word of mouth that it was their duty to wipe out the Tutsis.
This genocide was carried out almost entirely by hand, usually using machetes and clubs. Frequently the killers were people they knew – neighbours, workmates, former friends, sometimes even relatives through marriage.
Each of these stories is shocking. But perhaps more so is what is going on today. Remembering forces us to engage the shocking part with the urgent now. For genocide is a fact of our world, and not just history
GENOCIDE TODAY (4)
IRAQ
In Iraq, today, IS fighters, who have already driven out Christians from their ancestral homes in northern Iraq been especially targeting the Yazidis. The Yazidis are the latest victims of the brutal advance by the Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, whose Sunni Muslim fighters have been targeting Iraq’s Christians and other minority groups, as well as Shiite Muslims.
ISIS captured the Yazidi towns of Sinjar and Zumar, killing nearly 2,000 and forcing 200,000 to flee into the nearby mountains without food and water. Other atrocities include beheadings, rapes, and being sold into slavery.
MYANMAR
The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic minority of one million people that has lived in Rakhine state for centuries, but they face systematic religious and ethnic discrimination there. The Rohingya are not a recognized ethnic minority and are, therefore, robbed of the rights inherent in citizenship.
During 2012, violence increased against Rohingya and other Muslims in the Rakhine State, and the Pullitzer Center on Crisis Reporting said the Rohingyas have become one of the most oppressed ethnic groups in the world.
NIGERIA
Boko Haram (literally translated as “Western Education is a Sin”) is a genocidal criminal movement, who has vowed to destroy every Christian school in Nigeria, and to carry out terrorist attacks on Nigerian government police and government officials.

In Borno state, northeastern Nigeria, Boko Haram has murdered over 1,500 people in the past year, and over 3,000 in the past five years.  It kidnapped over 200 girls from a Christian school in April 2014 and despite the Nigerian government’s efforts, none have been found.
The leader of Boko Haram has taken “credit” for the kidnappings and says more Christian girls will be kidnapped and sold into sex slavery in neighboring Cameroun.  In May 2014 it began a new wave of kidnappings and bombings.  The leader claims that he is Muslim, but he has been denounced by every Muslim leader in Nigeria.
This is the reality of Genocide today; so what may be our response?
We come back to remembering; for in remembering, we see the age old patterns of human nature – and our ability to dehumanise. The great power we have to create, and the shocking power to destroy. We see parallels in the past time – and our own time. Heroes who find the grace and bravery to oppose scapegoating. Men and women of planned evil. Most of us, caught between the high calling of opposition, and the cost.
But it is not just history. It is defiance. Our act of remembering today is not some passive pastime, but an activity of defiance. A stance: a statement.
This time last week, I stood in Jerusalem – overlooking some of the most holy sites of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths. Its history is one of capture and recapture. Of conflict and division. But in the surrounding litter of buildings, of subverted ownership, there lies hope – even today.
These places stand on a testament to a history – a hope even – that despite our humanity’s nature; the divine is sought. We stand humbly today and ask for long memories, keeping short accounts, and asking for hope – and peace at last.