Holocaust and Genocide memorial day event,
(70th anniversary of the liberation of the world war two Auschwitz concentration camp)
Solent theatre, SJR building,
Above bar, Solent University campus.
[Pic courtesy of Dr Tom Plant,Southampton Solent University]
On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Second World War concentration camp ‘Auschwitz’ a Holocaust and Genocide memorial event was held at Southampton Solent University which I decided to attend for multiple reasons. This was my first event experience but I was aware of its occurrence last year which I could not attend due to studies. This year’s event was a joint venture between the Universities of Southampton and Solent. The Solent lecture theatre of the Sir James Matthews building, above bar played host to an incredibly sobering experience on Tuesday night.
The proceedings were a varied content of reflection with guest speakers, acting and even a song performance all narrated by Solent faculty staff Phil Gibson and Sister Catherine Cruz, Chaplain to both Southampton universities. Then followed an opening speech from Southampton mayor Cllr Susan Blatchford. Speakers from both Southampton University institutions were in attendance; Solent student Dominic Coleman gave a touching insightful reflection of the events and SU student Alyssa Champion spoke; sharing the personal reflections of various sixth form college students from around Southampton.
There was a musical performance of ‘Keep the memory alive’ a song performed by Jack Cooke (written for the occasion by Helen Bonney) and a dramatic monologue called ‘The Volunteer’ from Igor Hiszczynski (written by Matt Fletcher based on the life and writings of Witold Pilecki)
The most enlightening part of the evening however was the precious testimony of Warsaw Ghetto survivor Arieh Simonsohn. Arieh gave a brief but thoroughly informative retelling on the history of the Jewish people, defining the ongoing struggle of anti-Semitism throughout the millennia. Arieh continued with his personal testimony, telling us of the torment he was subjected to as a young Polish child with German-Jewish heritage. He faced almost daily abuse simply because of his beliefs and even just DNA. He recalled social injustice on a scale seldom seen before, ongoing in the forms of physical and mental violence that breaks even the most basic human rights. Arieh told of his experience within the infamous Warsaw ghetto and its atrocious living standards even before the height of the Nazi persecution. Arieh told of the examples of violent anti-semitism that was alive within Polish society, making todays examples of racial hate crimes tame in comparison.Even describing these primitive events as a popular sporting past time amongst the Polish. His story continued after escaping the Warsaw ghetto and was never truly destined for improvement. It was an extremely powerful and stirring experience to listen to this man’s tale. Some of which too sordid to be repeated in this article.
[Pic courtesy of Dr Tom Plant,Southampton Solent University]
Arieh gave a vivid, verbally cinematic narrative of his life history, his eyewitness account cutting through the myth of any TV documentary or Hollywood film spectacle. A real story of someone’s real suffering in the darkest chapter of Europe’s history was brought in person, to Southampton Solent University this night. Mr Simonsohn’s experience was a culmination of many ordinary people’s worst life event, multiplied and combined and repeated, all before he himself had even reached puberty. The continent of Europe has many physical shrines and testimonies to genocide atrocities with one village in France still left exactly as the event happened.
(Oradour Sur Glane was a quiet French town decimated, crushed and the population entirely exterminated in an act of revenge that simply turned out to be a case of mistaken identity)
Harrowing accounts of fear, violence, suppression, pure unadulterated racial hatred all coated in the underlying narrative of death and persecution on a daily basis brought Europe’s darkest chapter into the reality of our university campus. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard said that the Holocaust victims were ‘robbed of the control…the power of their own deaths’. The same can be said for genocides all over the world when civilians of any culture are facing cruel, calculated terror in unfair, uneven, military executions.
We should remember them all.
Much personal reflection took place this evening I am sure and the thick, mourningful silence that accompanied Arieh’s story was evidence of this but I personally couldn’t help but go through a whole cycle of emotions from shock, to sorrow to eventual anger. I experienced Arieh’s talk tonight as only one hour of my life but I had to remember that this is the length of Arieh’s entire lifetime. The emotions I felt were volatile yet his retelling was respectful and almost emotionally stifled. We are aware that the persecutors of his people are no longer a nation, they are a faded whisper of Europe’s past. The Nazi regime have become a remote psychical entity, distanced in the past, an almost fairy tale villain preserved only in the history of 20th century cinema and storytelling.
In the modern world though, we are heavily desensitised by endless streams of filtered media littered with vivid iconic symbols. Due to infectious social media we sometimes forget that such an evil ever physically existed on that form, even if we witness its retelling, we never FELT it. We have become desensitised to the true horror of what actually happened.
We occasionally see elements of the Nazi ideology rear its ugly head in the world arena, recently as far wide in Greece and even echoes in the clumsy rhetoric of British nationalism today but it’s not the same experience. Arieh said he decides to keep telling this story, as the nature of anti-Semitism; envy, hatred, contempt is still present, with many choosing to ignore it or dressing it up as something different and justified. These qualities are also found in prejudice of all kinds in our very society today. The results of selfish, depraved ambition.
How can we shape the future without truly recognising the past?
One of Southampton Solent University’s own students Dominic said it best:
’Borders are not more sacred than human life’
The contemptible issues of genocide is sadly still with us the world over and even those that were victims can lash out from fear and trauma, the very evil nature of aggression is that it manifests in victims and transpires to victor in an endless cycle of violence.
Mr Simonsohn stayed and talked with a crowd of questioners and patrons at the end of the evening. I was fortunate enough to listen to him further. I saw he held a modest collection of creased papers. He pulled out a printed picture of his mother on it, a printed photographic representation of a lady that created him. The lady who sacrificed so much for him. A lady that was torn from him, like so many victims Arieh was denied the basic circumstances of a human life. It was then that the realisation of the cruelty of such atrocity hit home. This polite, kind and modestly shy senior citizen stood in front of me with a picture of his mum, whom had not seen since before he reached puberty, memories that should contain Birthdays, early mornings walking to school or even cuddles were full of the barbaric vioence in its place.
This was not a film, this was not on TV, this all happened to the person stood in front of me and as Arieh himself said, he was one of the “lucky” ones.
“The Silence imposed on knowledge does not impose the silence of forgetting, it imposes a feeling” Lyotard (1983)**
*Baudrillard(1988), America P.43, Verso,London
** The differend (1983), 56a-7,Univeristy of Minnnesota press,USA
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