East Renfrewshire marks Holocaust memorial day
OVER 200 invited guests attended a Holocaust memorial event in Eastwood park theatre last Thursday.
The annual event saw schools, churches and the community come together to mark the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
The legacy of hope was the theme for the memorial with Mauthausen concentration camp survivor Eva Clarke giving the keynote address.
Provost Alex Mackie said: "Eva's talk was very moving and thought-provoking. As home to Scotland's largest Jewish community, it's especially important this council holds an annual Holocaust memorial event to ensure the terrible lessons of the Holocaust are never forgotten".
Although the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau was yesterday, the event was held in the theatre last Thursday.
This was the ninth year the memorial has been commemorated by the council.
Carly Whyborn is the chief executive officer of the Holocaust memorial day trust.
She said: "When we were planning the theme, we were particularly struck by the fact it was the 65th anniversary.
"This means it's 65 years since the Soviet Army liberated the largest Nazi killing camp.
"This is a very poignant year, it's one of the last years, difficult though this is to face, it is one of the very last years that we are going to have Holocaust survivors in the quantity that we do in the UK today.
"We estimate there are around 5,000 survivors left and we really wanted to supply a theme which brought their stories and their experiences to a much wider audience and this is how we came up with our theme – the legacy of hope".
AS one of the youngest survivors Eva Clarke now works for the Holocaust Educational Trust.
She was born in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria after her mother Anka survived a three-week train journey from Auschwitz on a filthy coal truck just days before they were liberated by the Soviet army.
Her family was affected by three concentration camps all of which took their toll. Eva and her mother Anka were the only survivors, 15 were killed in Auschwitz alone.
Anka was a 23-year-old law student in Prague when the Nazis took Czechoslovakia in 1939.
Eva, now 64, was conceived during Anka's imprisonment in Terezin, a Jewish ghetto 30 miles from Prague.
She then spent her pregnancy in Auschwitz before Eva was born en-route to Mauthausen.
Eva's father, Bernd Nathan, was a German-Jewish architect who was shot near Auschwitz a week before liberation. He never knew Anka was pregnant.
Eva said: "I didn't breathe when I was born and I didn't move. They found a doctor who was also a prisoner and he cut the umbilical cord, smacked me and I began to breathe.
"There are two reasons we survived apart from my mother's inherent toughness. The first is on April 28, 1945 the Germans blew up the gas chamber at Mauthausen to try to conceal the evidence. My birthday was April 29.
"The second reason is three days after my birth the camp was liberated.
"When you think about it there is still genocide today – in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur in the Sudan.
"Racism starts in a very small way but it has a horrendous conclusion one race trying to get rid of another race.
"We need to learn tolerance and acceptance of different races, sexuality and religion".
ALTHOUGH it is 65 years since the end of WW2 survivor Steven Frank can't water the tomato plants in his greenhouse without seeing the face of the old man he befriended in a concentration camp.
The man, whose face is indelibly etched in his mind, asked eight-year-old Steven to look after his plants as he was to be transported to the death camp at Auschwitz in Poland.
After an idyllic childhood before the invasion of Holland, Steven was deported to Barneveld in March 1943.
Steven (73) said: "I was then taken to Westerbork in September 1943 and finally to Theresienstadt ghetto, which is now in the Czech Republic, in September 1944.
"I survived along with my two brothers and mother. We were liberated by the Red Army on May 9, 1945".
His own father, who had secretly worked with the Dutch resistance, had been arrested, tortured and killed while they were still in Amsterdam and his last memory of him is saying goodbye as he left for work in the morning.
The most significant aspect of his recollections is the screams of children being removed from their parents and siblings still haunt him.
He also described the day he found himself too close to the camp's perimeter fence. Two guards set their Alsation on him and he was badly mauled much to the delight of the Nazi soldiers.
When WW2 ended, Steven was in Theresienstadt aged nine and was one of only 93 children who had survived to be liberated. There had been 14,907 children held there.
LAST year, Eastwood high school pupils Laura Pasternak and David Paterson participated in Lessons from Auschwitz.
Laura said: "We both found the experience moving and emotional, but also hugely educational and informative.
"I wanted to see where my late Polish grandfather could have been sent to, as he fought for the Polish army and was a prisoner of war in Yugoslavia. Luckily, he managed to escape with his life".
David said: "I had learnt about the Holocaust in history and thought seeing it myself would be more influential than reading about it on a page.
"When we arrived we were met by the sign Arbeit Macht Frei at the entrance to the camp. This means Work Brings Freedom.
"The streets seemed strangely harmless to us at first, which we were then told by our guide was intentional as to ensure secrecy, extermination was carried out inside the red-brick buildings.
"Mounds of shoes, suitcases, hair, glasses, pots and pans and baby clothes resided inside one of these- this sickening sight seemed to knock the wind out of everyone".
Laura added: "It is important to remember that perpetrators were human beings just like anyone else who were products of the society they lived in.
"We should also recognise the role of the bystander – those who had an awareness of the unfolding events but did not or could not stop them.
"The main lesson which we both learnt was never to hate. Hate is a common source of war and killing". and Henry played the organ".
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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