The first item of business is time for reflection. Our leaders today are William Seaborne and Ruth Laird, who are pupils at Queen Anne high school, Dunfermline.
Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the privilege of delivering time for reflection. My name is Ruth and beside me is William, and we attend Queen Anne high school in Dunfermline.
Last September, we were given the opportunity to visit the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau through the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project. It was a long day, but the history of the camp and the constant reminder that I was walking around a place that had been a scene of mass murder only 70 years ago ensured that I paid attention to every detail.
My most vivid memory from the day is being taken into an almost bare room, with a display of twisted metal and wooden objects in front of me. I stood there, trying to figure out what the objects had once been used for. I noticed a single wooden crutch leaning against the wall and realised that all the objects had once belonged to people with some form of physical disability. At the front of the heap was a prosthetic leg. I tried to form an image of what the person who had used it looked like. Later, as I stood in the gas chambers, I realised that the person who had once needed that leg would have stood there too, awaiting his or her fate, simply because they did not fit in with the Nazis’ idea of a perfect world.
Before our visit, we heard from someone who had made a similar journey to ours 70 years before, but under extremely different circumstances. Kitty Hart-Moxen is one of the most inspirational and impressive people I have ever met. She spent two years in the Lublin ghetto, endured a further two gruelling years in Auschwitz-Birkenau and survived a death march over the Sudeten mountain range. The final terrible journey for Kitty was being loaded on to a cattle cart, the doors of which were sealed shut, and being abandoned outside Salzwedel concentration camp. Kitty survived by breathing through a small hole in the cart until American forces opened the cart hours later. Kitty eventually ended up in Birmingham with her mother and uncle, who were her only surviving relatives.
The LFA project made me more aware of what individuals such as Kitty went through and helped me realise what a relative of mine had been through. Hans Lustig, my great uncle, was a Czechoslovakian who fled to Norway after the Nazi invasion but was captured and sent to Auschwitz. He was one of the few to return. Because of the journey I took to Auschwitz, I was able to relate to and repersonalise a man I never had the privilege of meeting. It opened my eyes to the lives of others: those who died and those who survived.
Next Monday, on Holocaust memorial day, please take a moment to reflect on the Holocaust—the darkest period in our shared history. I hope that you will remember the journeys that people such as Kitty were forced to take and remember those who arrived in Scotland, such as Ernest Levy, who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Henry and Ingrid Wuga, both of whom arrived here as refugees, having suffered persecution at the hands of the Nazis. As Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors, we will do our best to encourage others to learn about and remember the Holocaust, so that we never forget what happened. I hope that you will join us and do the same. Thank you.