‘How do you describe a factory of death?’
LONDON MAYOR Sadiq Khan has declared that the testimony of Holocaust survivors is more important than ever at a time of rising antisemitism.
Mr Khan’s comments were made to coincide with Monday’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration at City Hall, which was also attended by community leaders and Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors.
Speakers included Lily Ebert, who was deported to Auschwitz from Hungary at the age of 14 with her mother and siblings, and Sabit Jakipovic, who survived the concentration camps in Bosnia in the 1990s.
Ms Ebert said she and a sister were the only family members not murdered on arrival at Auschwitz. She still found it hard to talk about her experiences.
“How do you describe a factory of death, a place of industrial killing? How? Hundreds of members of my extended family were murdered in Auschwitz. I have to tell, because they cannot talk.”
The Mayor recited the poem, Toys, by Abraham Sutzkever, a survivor of the Vilna Ghetto.
Mr Khan said in a statement: “London’s diversity is its greatest strength. But with a worrying rise in antisemitism at home and abroad, this year’s [HMD] theme, Standing Together, could not be more apt.
“Progress in opposing hatred and promoting equality must never be taken for granted. That’s why it’s ever more important that we hear survivors’ stories and remember the horrors of the death camps and the millions who died.
“As we mark 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I encourage Londoners of all backgrounds to stand in solidarity with the Jewish community, remembering the six million Jewish lives that were lost during the Holocaust, as well as victims and survivors of genocides across the world. Only by standing together can we ensure it never happens again.”
Another speaker at the event was Holocaust Memorial Day Trust chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman, who told the JC that “the murder of six million Jews, systematically, deliberately, should be commemorated by everybody.
“The fact that it happened on such an industrial scale is absolutely shocking and should shock us.
“We know that antisemitism didn’t disappear after the end of the Holocaust and, in fact, is on the increase, as is prejudice for people of other forms of identity. Genocide didn’t disappear after the Holocaust.”
Rabbi Barry Marcus, who recited a prayer for Shoah victims, said he had grown up as a post-war child “with a fervent hope that the Holocaust was just some historical aberration and that antisemitism, at least as a mainstream phenomenon, had exhausted itself in shame.”
Instead, “there has been a resurgence of antisemitism in Europe and also here in the United Kingdom. Who would have thought that antisemitism would overshadow a general election in the United Kingdom in 2019?” Holocaust victims were murdered primarily because “they were different. But to someone of another culture or faith, we are all different. So an assault on difference is really an assault on all of humanity.”
Two students from Coloma Convent Girls’ School in Croydon spoke about their visit to Auschwitz through the HET’s Lessons from Auschwitz programme. Caitlin Farrell said: “To stand in the place where over one million Jewish men, women and children were murdered was painful.
“In a world where disinformation can spread so quickly, and where people still claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, it is more important than ever that young people really understand what happened and why.”
For Anna Crosland, “one of the most enlightening features of the trip was really getting a sense of the full extent of the Holocaust, realising it reached countries such as Greece and Italy, as well as Eastern European countries such as Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary”.
After the ceremony, Shoah survivor Eve Kugler told the JC that the continuing dissemination of lies about Jews was “a huge problem. Let’s not call them fancy fake news or anything else, it’s lies and it’s demonising Jews for no reason. And this is something that we all have to work to stop.”
Ms Kugler, a member of Finchley United Synagogue, was born in Germany two years before Hitler came to power. Growing up in Halle, she witnessed “the hate on a daily basis. In my town we had signs that said ‘Juden verboten’ —no Jews allowed – and today we see graffiti on the wall that is the same thing.”