Message to youth at Glasgow Holocaust memorial
January 26, 2010
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Giant steps: Linda Hooper's pupils swept US with paperclip project. Picture: Stuart Maxwell
Glasgow marked Holocaust Memorial Day with a sobering reflection on the events of the Second World War, an uplifting tribute to a survivor of those terrible times and a message to the city’s youth that they have a legacy of hope to carry on.
This year is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland by the Red Army.
Lord Provost Bob Winter and Leader of Glasgow City Council Steven Purcell were joined at the City Chambers by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, Communities Minister Fergus Ewing and leaders from the city’s many faith groups to tell pupils from the city’s schools that as the Holocaust passes from living memory, young people must keep the lessons learned at such a high price alive.
There was a tribute to the late Rev Ernest Levy, who survived seven Nazi concentration camps and became a cantor at a synagogue in the south of the city.
Rabbi Moshe Rubin, of Giffnock & Newlands Synagogue, reflected upon the tireless work of his friend, who died last year, in spreading his message of tolerance and understanding.
Recounting one of his many conversations with Rev Levy, Rabbi Rubin said Ernest insisted he could not stop with his work. ‘The story must be told, so that we make sure that it is never repeated again,’ he said, quoting the survivor.
‘Recording that in book form, the longest days of his life, was nightmarish. Literally, he would suffer nightmares throughout his life, and especially through those many months when he was writing down his memories. But it was as he told, many times, that it was for his grandchildren to remember.’
Citizens Theatre Young Co performed Voices from the Holocaust, taken from the words of ordinary people who struggled to hold on to their sanity in the camps - places where there was no sanity.
Pupils from Shawlands Academy featured in an educational film – to be distributed throughout Scotland as a DVD – about their trip to Auschwitz and their impressions of the camp with its exhibits of suitcases, hair shorn from inmates, empty canisters that contained poison gas and photo galleries where victims of the mass killings stare down at visitors.
Linda Hooper, Principal of Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee, spoke about her school’s remarkable Paper Clips project, which is the subject of an award-winning 2004 documentary.
The project, which aimed to collect six million clips as part of a voluntary afterschool programme aimed at raising awareness of the Holocaust and teaching tolerance, created huge interest across the US. A global rush to contribute to the project has followed.
Principal Hooper was inspired by the story of anti-Nazi resistance in Norway, who used the paper clip, the invention of a Norwegian Jew, as their symbol.
‘The event of the Holocaust, that horror, happened because people chose hate and intolerance,’ she said.
‘I look out at you and I think how marvellous it is to be a part of this diversity. That’s what we’ve tried to teach our children, that there’s a huge global community out there.
‘I can be anywhere on this globe in 18 hours or less, so when I start thinking in those terms, as I say to the children at our school: you’ve got to think that those people are your neighbours.’
In his address, the Justice Secretary said he hoped that Scotland could create ‘a future that will ensure, for our children and grandchildren, do not suffer the fate that our parents and grandparents suffered before us’.
‘One of the many lessons we’ve learned when confronting the horrors of the Holocaust is an understanding that mobs and movements are made up of individuals, and that each and every one of us has a choice.
‘Each of us has a moral responsibility to ourselves, our society and the world we all share and inhabit. We can all challenge discrimination where it resides.’
Mr MacAskill concluded: ‘It is important to remember that we must never forget … but perhaps the best words I can leave you with, since yesterday it was Burns day, that “for a’ that and a’ that; It’s coming yet, for a’ that; That man to man, the warld o’er; Shall brothers be for a’ that”.’
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