Thought For The Day – Friday 26^th January 2024

Tomorrow, Saturday 27^th January,  is Holocaust Memorial Day.  The theme this year is: “The Fragility of Freedom”.

Freedom is the right to appropriately, and respectfully, act, speak and think and not to be abused, bullied, enslaved, exploited and harmed. Fragility means easily broken, damaged and vulnerable.

The Holocaust was the systematic bullying, persecution and murder of Jewish people by the Nazis.  6.6 million Jewish people were murdered by the Nazis. Members of the black, women’s, LGBTQ+, disabled, traveller, cultural, religious, political, ill, young, elderly communities were also bullied, persecuted and murdered in The Holocaust.

Holocaust Memorial Day also equally remembers all victims of genocide globally, before, and since,  The Holocaust. Genocide is the persecution and murder of a race of people, ethnic group or nation.

All bullying, hate, negative prejudice and discrimination, Racism, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, all cultural and religious prejudice and discrimination, Sexism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Biphobia, Ageism, Ableism and Classism is illegal, immoral and wrong.

We remember all the victims of, and all who suffer and have suffered because, of, and all who stand against, negative prejudice and discrimination, hate and terrible treatment.

Hannah Lewis M.B.E. is a regular visitor to TBSHS.  Her mother, Chaya Szczuryk, sacrificed her life for Hannah when she decided to stay with a poorly Hannah rather than escape in the freezing cold the night before. That night, Hannah’s mother was warned by her husband, Hannah’s father, who was a member of the resistance and opposition to the Nazis, that the Nazis would be arriving the next day. In the hours that followed, Hannah saw her mother shot by the Nazis, after she had kissed Hannah and left the camp where they were being held in Poland, hiding Hannah.   Hannah’s mother died so that Hannah might live.

This week, Hannah, now 86 years of age,  said the following in an interview:

“I’m telling you this because I like you so much and I want you to be vigilant. We shouldn’t be horrible to each other. We shouldn’t want to kill each other. There’s plenty of room for everything and everybody. We need to be kinder to each other. There are no winners in war. There’s the damaged and the less damaged, but there’s no winners.”

Hannah, the epitome of resilience, who will hopefully visit us again this academic year, always says she has “learnt to live alongside the pain”. Hannah settled in the U.K.,  married in 1961 and has four children and eight grandchildren.  Hannah is a truly inspirational citizen, honoured by the U.K. for her work in Holocaust Education, who continues, and is the ultimate credit to,  the legacy of her father and, of course, her mother.