Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our leaders today are Lauren Galloway and Brandon Low, who are pupils of Auchmuty high school in Glenrothes.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Brandon and beside me is Lauren. We are students from Auchmuty high school in Fife.
In September last year we participated in the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project with 200 Scottish students. We were honoured to meet survivor Zigi Shipper—the most inspiring man I have ever met. Having survived the Lódz ghetto, Auschwitz and a death march, Zigi came to Britain as a teenager in 1947.
For a man who had experienced such indescribable horrors, he was surprisingly at peace. As he spoke, the room fell silent. I had never felt so moved, yet I was disappointed by my naivety. I did not know about the children who were forced to grow up so quickly and I had not considered the physical suffering that they had endured. I had not thought about what it really meant to have survived the Holocaust.
Zigi’s words became all too real when we visited Auschwitz, which was where he faced some of the hardest times of his life and witnessed the reality of a death camp. I remember seeing someone’s keys on display. Someone had picked up those keys, expecting to return home at the end of their journey—not knowing that they were locking the door to their home for the very last time. They did not know that they were headed to their death. That was the most upsetting realisation that I had during the entire experience. I remembered Zigi’s words: “We cannot forget.”
How do you make sense of what happened when you are standing at Auschwitz, seeing a heartbreaking display of baby clothes? We were able to leave Auschwitz that day. We would make the return journey that 1.1 million people could not. We would use our keys to get back into our homes and we would be greeted by our families. We were there, at Auschwitz, free.
We looked around at birds flying overhead. Foxes could be seen running through the barracks that prisoners slept in. The grass was as green as ever. Life had not stopped because of the Holocaust. We decided then that we wanted our experience to mean something.
The theme of Holocaust memorial day 2016 is “Don’t stand by”. I will not stand by as the Holocaust is forgotten. I will not stand by as people forget the anti-Semitism, intolerance and prejudice that led people such as Zigi to be sent to places such as Auschwitz, and I will not stand by and allow that hatred to repeat itself. I encourage people around Scotland to join me in pledging to do the same. Thank you.