As a practising Christian, Holocaust Memorial Day forces me to confront an uneasy truth. The Holocaust was not carried out by some distant, godless civilisation, but unholy Christians.
Really powerful articel. The point about the Holocaust taking futures, not just lives, cuts deep. Adrian's story about never knowing his grandparents isn't just about absence, it's about an entire inheritence of warmth and identity that was deliberately severed. I've been thinking alot about how remembrance protects against abstraction lately.
There is a palpable anti-semetic sentiment in the Birmingham district of the West Midlands that isn't evident in the Black Country. One wonders if the reluctance of West Midlands Police to address it, has given it tacit endorsement and empowered those groups and individuals who perpetrated and perpetuate it.
My husband visited there as a soldier. He said he would never forget it. The total silence, no birds, no sounds at all. Bleak, empty, terrifying. He later discovered, and was helped by our daughter doing a short family map, that his great-grand parents were Jewish people who had come to England and changed their surname into a British one. He had always wondered why his mother enjoyed several Kosher fish recipes, and realised that they would have been part of the regular family meals. Leeds has always had a large Jewish community, with their own shops, plus supermarket aisles to cater for them. I first discovered matzos when I came to Leeds.
Really powerful articel. The point about the Holocaust taking futures, not just lives, cuts deep. Adrian's story about never knowing his grandparents isn't just about absence, it's about an entire inheritence of warmth and identity that was deliberately severed. I've been thinking alot about how remembrance protects against abstraction lately.
There is a palpable anti-semetic sentiment in the Birmingham district of the West Midlands that isn't evident in the Black Country. One wonders if the reluctance of West Midlands Police to address it, has given it tacit endorsement and empowered those groups and individuals who perpetrated and perpetuate it.
My husband visited there as a soldier. He said he would never forget it. The total silence, no birds, no sounds at all. Bleak, empty, terrifying. He later discovered, and was helped by our daughter doing a short family map, that his great-grand parents were Jewish people who had come to England and changed their surname into a British one. He had always wondered why his mother enjoyed several Kosher fish recipes, and realised that they would have been part of the regular family meals. Leeds has always had a large Jewish community, with their own shops, plus supermarket aisles to cater for them. I first discovered matzos when I came to Leeds.