Holocaust Memorial Day at IC
Listen to an account. Step into his shoes, walk around in them. Don’t forget.
On the evening of this coming Thursday 24th of January we, at Imperial College, will have the honour and the privilege to hear the account of Mr Yisrael Abelesz, a survivor of the Aushwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, to tell us his experiences on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day and answer our questions.
Auschwitz, “has become a symbol of the Holocaust, representing man’s inhumanity to man”, as described by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. It was the largest of the Nazi killing camps, where approximately 1.1 million men, women and children, including Jews, gypsies, the handicapped, homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, were killed, out of a total estimate of 11 million assassinations throughout the Holocaust across Europe at the hands of the Nazis, from 1933 to 1945.
Holocaust Memorial Day is a day of remembrance held annually on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, by Soviet soldiers. Mr Yisrael Abelesz was interned as a teenager in Auschwitz-Birkenau and after the war, he came to England to work and bring up his family. His grandson is a current student at Imperial College.
Over six decades after the end of World War II, two generations have passed and the generation that lived through the Holocaust is dwindling in numbers. Why must we listen to them and tell our children about the atrocities they faced? By listening to a personal account, behind mere figures, we can be led to empathy and therefore to action, in a world that is too often infected by epidemic apathy. Indeed, as Lithuanian researcher Vladimir Orlov, involved with investigations into the Nazi killing camps in his country recently pointed out, it is “insane” that historians remember the names of the murderers, allowing them to live on in history, while the victims remain anonymous.
By listening to a personal account, behind mere figures, we can be led to empathy
Hearing an account first-hand is not the same as reading history that has been watered down. As Professor Dinur, famously said “If we wish to live and bequeath life to our offspring, if we believe that we are to pave the way to the future, then we must first of all not forget”. He suggests that witnesses that survived ensure a certain moral strength and we cannot allow their decreasing numbers to create a moral, cultural and educational vacuum, particularly when genocidal ideologies and Holocaust denial persist.
The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “Communities Together: Build a Bridge”, to remind us that the strongest communities are those that respect difference and create connections, to stop the spread of hate in our own time.
Come and hear an account of a survivor of the Holocaust, while you can.
Thursday 24th January, 6.00pm, Royal School of Mines, Lecture Theatre G20
Please try to RSVP by visiting the facebook page “Holocaust Memorial Day – A Talk and Q&A with Holocaust Survivor Yisrael Abelesz” or contact jsoc@imperial.ac.uk.
