Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Official Report 889KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leaders are Beth Nicoll and Stevie Low, who are both pupils at St Machar academy in Aberdeen.

Presiding Officer, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the privilege of delivering time for reflection. We are Beth Nicoll and Stevie Low and we are both from St Machar academy in Aberdeen.

Communities around the United Kingdom commemorate Holocaust memorial day annually on 27 January, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Holocaust memorial day aims to remember the victims of the Holocaust and encourage people to reflect on its contemporary relevance.

In November, with 200 other pupils from around Scotland, we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz project. Before the visit, I had many expectations; however, none of them compared to what I witnessed and felt that day. We have all been told about the 6 million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust, but you cannot truly comprehend the scale of that until you see the faces of those individuals on the walls at Auschwitz. That was the most difficult part of the visit because, when I saw those pictures, each victim became an individual instead of just a number in a textbook. Each person affected by the Holocaust was an ordinary person like us and I will never forget the first face that I saw among those photographs.

The lessons from Auschwitz project gives two sixth-form students in Scotland the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. Prior to the visit, we had listened to Holocaust survivor Zigi Shipper’s incredibly moving story. He said that, despite everything that he faced in the Holocaust, he never hated. Having heard what he had been through, I found that difficult to grasp but, when I reflected on his testimony, I felt that it was the most important message that he imparted that day.

Twelve years ago, Holocaust survivor Ernest Levy stood before Parliament for time for reflection and said:

“Mankind has made great steps towards international peace, but more must be done.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2001; c 731.]

As Scotland becomes more diverse, more effort must be made to celebrate difference. The theme for Holocaust memorial day 2013 is “Communities Together: Build a Bridge”, which encourages us to reflect on the communities that were destroyed under Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides and to challenge antisemitism and prejudice. As a Holocaust Educational Trust ambassador, I will do my utmost to encourage young people in Scotland to remember the communities that were lost during the Holocaust and encourage my peers to challenge prejudice, no matter how inconvenient it may seem.

George Santayana wrote:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

I remain committed to remembering the past and sharing my experiences with as many people as possible in an effort to encourage more people to embrace diversity and oppose intolerance.

Thank you. [Applause.]