PEOPLE gathered on Saturday to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering the 21 Islanders deported to their deaths during the Occupation in the wider context of Nazi persecution and the genocides of subsequent generations.
In the words of guest speaker Smajo Bešo, the stories of those Islanders – retold in the act of wreath-laying at the Lighthouse Memorial after a short ceremony in the Occupation Tapestry Gallery – live on as an example for the present.
Following a recital of the names of the 21 Islanders on the memorial, the Bailiff, Sir Timothy Le Cocq, Deputy Helen Miles on behalf of the government, and Dr Karen Kyd on behalf of the Crown, led the silent laying of tributes in their memory.
Earlier, the Occupation Tapestry Gallery had been filled to hear Mr Bešo – a survivor of the Bosnian Genocide in which his father and several male relatives were imprisoned and tortured, and his aunt Emina killed in the bombing of Mostar – tell the story of his family’s subsequent journey to the north-east of England as refugees, and the new life they were to build inspired by the example of the aunt he had lost.
He described the stages of the Bosnian persecution, beginning as intolerance and discrimination, but leading inexorably to conflict and the human suffering he had witnessed as a seven-year-old child.
Speaking of his aunt’s death, he said: “Her story didn’t end there. It lives through me. I think about how she lived her life, not being weighed down by anger and hatred. What I have learned through my own ‘truth commission’ is that peace is personal. It is only through making peace with what happened to Emina that I can begin to make peace with the world broadly.
“If we wish to make peace between people, we must first make peace with the personal traumas we have, and the best way of doing that is for all people to be able to share their stories, and have those stories properly heard.”
He explained that the experience of his family’s loss had taught him that the end of a person’s life did not mean that they ceased to exist; rather, that they entered another stage of existence, continuing to inspire those who survived. “Her story lives on through us. Indeed, she is the reason I am here speaking to you today,” Mr Beso said.
Following the address, members of the Jersey Arts Centre youtheatre – Martha Williams, Magnus Surcouf, Olivia Woodward, Alice Posner and Kate Meadows – give a series of readings reflecting on the experience of loss through persecution, and the resilience of the human spirit.
Concluding the ceremony with the symbolic lighting of a single candle, the Dean of Jersey, the Very Rev Mike Keirle, said: “Friends, we have got to learn from this if we are going to have a better future, and that learning must begin with every single one of us, using our freedom not as a licence to behave how we wish with disregard to others’ freedom, or to expect everyone else’s freedom to bow to ours.
“But to protect those whose liberties continue to be fragile and vulnerable…so that one day we will truly learn the lessons of history.”
