Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
"We are indeed all here to remember because if we forget of course we endanger the future
by risking a repeat of the past. It's well known that guards in the Nazi concentration
camps would torment their victims by saying 'no one will believe you. No one will remember.
And if you say it no one will believe you or care what you have to say.'
So forgetting would be a betrayal of what
those people endured in those horrific circumstances. It would be a betrayal of the values of reconciliation
which is embodied in this memorial day, and it would also deprive the generations of today
and of the future of the knowledge of history which is such an important inoculation for
tragedies in the future.
I know a little bit myself from my own experience and from my own families of the value of remembrance.
My mother spent many years with her sisters in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Indonesia.
My brothers and my sister and I were aware of this as we grew up, but my mum sheltered
us as small children of the horrific details, and it was only when we were older that she
told us about everything she'd been through. It made a lasting impression on me, of everything
she'd been through, an enormous impression on my outlook on things.
So remembering the past , even if its of the
past which thankfully this generation is not experiencing, is an extraordinarily important
thread which binds us altogether as we face the challenges of the future. And I'm hugely
grateful to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for all the work they're doing. I think it's
enormously impressive that they're organising around 2,000 events up and down the country.
It is a huge honour to meet you Ben, and you
Sabina. I was talking to Sabina when we were listening to that lovely choir singing earlier,
about your experience as a 16 year old girl fending for yourself in the cold wildernesses
of the woods in Poland. Your tales, your resilience, your persistent good humour is an example
to all of us, so thank you very very much for being here.
I hope the ceremonies and events later in
the day go well as well. And with that I would really like to thank everybody involved; thank
you for being here, and I hope that year in year out we continue to remember the Holocaust
for all of society and for all generations in the future. Thank you very much."