ON the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet forces, Islanders gathered to reflect, and hear a compelling account on one women’s effort to keep the candle of remembrance alight.
With the passing years, first-hand accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust are quietening, so this year’s focus of the international day of reflection was keeping the memory of such a harrowing epoch alive through the generations.
Holocaust Memorial Day has always had particular resonance in Jersey – an opportunity to reflect on the sacrifices and suffering of occupied Islanders, which perhaps both complements and contrasts with Liberation Day’s more celebratory, freedom-focused tones.
The keynote speaker at a gathering at the Maritime Museum on the New North Quay – surrounded by panels of the Occupation Tapestry – was Helen Stone, who shared the story of her mother Emmy Golding, who survived the Holocaust by coming to England as a Jewish refugee from Germany in May 1939.
She told the ensemble: “Although I had listened to my mother’s story of escaping from Germany in May 1939 to become a domestic servant in Britain, and how she managed to rescue her parents just three days before the outbreak of war, it wasn’t until 1996 when she was interviewed for the Shoah Foundation, that I heard a coherent and in depth account of her experiences.”
That foundation was set up by Stephen Spielberg from the proceeds of his seminal film Schindler’s List to record the accounts of Holocaust survivors.
Mrs Golding was one of 900 people in Britain who contributed to the project. It was only then that her daughter learned of her family’s persecution and fear in Germany from 1933 onwards, including her grandfather’s imprisonment in Dachau concentration camp following Kristallnacht in November 1938.
Then, it was only when Mrs Stone’s mother confronted the SS, brandishing her father’s World War One Iron Cross medal, was he released, and the family then fled to England, leaving in the nick of time.
Hearing such accounts inspired Mrs Stone to found Generation 2 Generation, an organisation that trains the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors to tell their family stories.
She said: “I believe I have a responsibility, not only to my family, but also to the Jewish community as a whole, and to the wider community to ensure the continuity of her story so that people can understand both the heights and the depths, the courage and the cruelty of which human beings are capable.
“My responsibility to my family is to represent them, not merely as victims of a dreadful regime, but as survivors whose qualities of bravery and resilience can act as an example in future generations.
“I also have a duty to remember the 70 or so members of my close family who perished, including my grandparents, 12 siblings, their husbands and wives, and most of their children.”
She added: “I want to correct the often held assumption that the children of survivors are invariably traumatised and damaged by the suffering of their parents.
“Generation 2 Generation has 44 speakers, all of whom are proudly telling their family stories throughout the country, not in order to give vent to their own traumas, but to spread the message of combating hatred, prejudice and discrimination in all its forms.
“Far from inheriting trauma, I have seen strength and determination on which to model my own life.”
Mrs Stone also showed the audience a hanukkiyah, a nine-branched candlestick that was found by a young German called Maria among the ashes and rubble of her family’s village synagogue, after it had been torched during Kristallnacht.
Maria hid it during the war and it stayed in her family’s possession. 70 years later, then 81 years old, Maria found out about Mrs Golding, who was 93 at the time, and returned the candlestick back to a member of that long-destroyed synagogue’s congregation.
Mrs Stone said: “That story, I think, has a lot of power, because it shows that no matter how young or how old you are, if you see injustice and cruelty and hatred, you must try and do what you can to stand up against it. And that’s exactly what Maria did.
“I don’t know whether I would have had the courage to do it, or whether you would have. One never knows, unless you’re put in that situation, but one hopes that one would do what you know is the right thing to do.”
After her address, the audience moved outside, where more than 40 wreaths were laid at the Lighthouse Memorial on the New North Quay, placed by dignitaries, students, relatives of Islanders who were deported, imprisoned and interned in Germany and across occupied Europe; relatives of slave and forced workers; representatives of organisations and many other people.
Flowers were also laid in memory of the 21 Islanders who did not return from Nazi prisons, labour and concentration camps, whose names are inscribed on the memorial.
