Good afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leaders today are Lucy Paterson and Kieran Smyth, pupils of St Andrew’s RC secondary school in Glasgow.
Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to deliver today’s time for reflection.
I am Lucy Paterson and this is Kieran Smyth. We attend St Andrew’s RC secondary school in Glasgow.
Last October, Kieran and I joined hundreds of other students from Scotland to visit the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project.
I will never forget seeing the belongings of children and babies on display. The clothes and shoes were tiny. There was a broken doll in a cabinet that had been taken from its owner before she was murdered. The doll in the cabinet that had been taken from its owner represented the broken lives of babies and children who had been torn from their parents. It is hard to believe that anybody could harm a tiny child in that way. These children did not know what was going on. Their innocence and vulnerability made it hard to look at the cabinet.
I wonder to this day what the children murdered at Auschwitz could have grown up to do and become had they lived.
The theme for Holocaust memorial day 2015 is “keep the memory alive”—something we must all strive to do.
Lucy and I heard the testimony of Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper as part of the project. Zigi told us that at Auschwitz he was stripped of his belongings. His clothes were taken, his head was shaved and valuables such as family photos were taken away from him. It is hard to imagine that Zigi and so many others who went through this tragedy were stripped of their identity.
When I tell people about my experience of the project and ask them to remember the victims, I am sometimes asked, “Why? Why should we remember something that happened so long ago?” I tell them this. Six million Jewish men, women and children were once murdered. Each one of them deserves to be remembered. We must also remember the stories of those who survived. I want survivors like Zigi to know that their stories will live on because I will retell them as an ambassador for the trust.
The Holocaust also holds particular relevance here in Scotland. The Nazis targeted the Jews of Europe for complete destruction. They persecuted other groups, such as homosexuals, people with disabilities and Roma Gypsies. We know that sectarianism is well documented here in Scotland. There is on-going tension in our communities. The trust’s ambassadors around Scotland have seen first hand what happened when persecution was allowed to reach its most extreme form under the Nazi regime. Together we can work to highlight to people here in our communities why we must never again let such a disgraceful crime happen.
I will tell people what I saw and learned at Auschwitz. I want my children and my grandchildren to know why we must never allow the past to repeat itself.
Thank you for your time.