Wyre Forest Holocaust Memorial Day

Statement of Commitment...

Read by Walter Delin, Chief Executive of Wyre Forest District Council...

1. We recognise that the Holocaust shook the foundations of modern civilisation. Its unprecedented character and horror will always hold universal meaning.

2. We believe the Holocaust must have a permanent place in our nation's collective memory. We honour the survivors still with us, and reaffirm our shared goals of mutual understanding and justice.

3. We must make sure that future generations understand the causes of the Holocaust and reflect upon its consequences. We vow to remember the victims of Nazi persecution and of all genocide.

4. We value the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives to protect or rescue victims, as a touchstone of the human capacity for good in the face of evil.

5. We recognise that humanity is still scarred by the belief that race, religion, disability or sexuality make some people's lives worth less than others'. Genocide, antisemitism, racism, xenophobia and discrimination still continue. We have a shared responsibility to fight these evils.

6. We pledge to strengthen our efforts to promote education and research about the Holocaust and other genocide. We will do our utmost to make sure that the lessons of such events are fully learnt.

7. We will continue to encourage Holocaust remembrance by holding an annual UK Holocaust Memorial Day. We condemn the evils of prejudice, discrimination and racism. We value a free, tolerant, and democratic society.

The First Envelope

Everyone attending had been given two envelopes. They were now asked to open envelope number one and to read the content. Here is the content of just one of those many envelopes...

Assia Levinski

Assia, the daughter of Leon and Chaja Levinski, lived with her parents and younger brother Monia in a small village in Lithuania. Assia's father was a lumber dealer. Assia was a member of a large, loving, close-knit extended family. Her grandparents lived on a large farm a few miles outside of town. Both of her parents had attended high school in Marijampole, the closest city. Marijampole's 2,545 Jews earned their livelihood from trading in agricultural produce and from small industry. The Jews of Marijampole established the first Hebrew high school in Lithuania. A small farm which trained youth interested in pioneering in Palestine was established outside the city.

Assia was a thirteen year-old schoolgirl in the summer of 1941, when the Germans invaded Lithuania. Assia and her family were forced to leave their home. Along with all the Jews of the surrounding area, they were confined to an overcrowded, sealed-off ghetto in Marijampole. Over 7,000 people endured great hardship. There was inadequate food, medicine, and sanitation.

Children of the Bullenhuser Massacre...

Read by Cllr Mike Oborski, Consul of the Republic of Poland for the West Midlands...

There is a small rose garden in an industrial area of Hamburg, not far from one of the city's many canals. The garden's wooden fence separates it on one side from a busy highway, on the other from the play yard of a nursery school where on a wintry morning brightly dressed toddlers splash in frigid puddles until a teacher shepherds them toward healthier play.

On the far side of the playground is the Bullenhuser Damm School, in Nazi time a subcamp of Neuengamme, the concentration camp near Hamburg. It is now renamed the Janusz Korczak School, for the head of the Warsaw Orphanage who died with his children in the Treblinka gas chamber.

A few days before the end of the war twenty Jewish children were taken by the SS to the Bullenhuser Damm School, together with two French doctors and two Dutch men, their caretakers - all prisoners. In November 1944 these children, ten boys and ten girls (the Nazis were ever methodical), had been brought from Auschwitz to Neuengamme, where they were subjected to medical experiments by the SS doctor Kurt Heissmeyer. The children were injected with TB bacillus, making them very ill; then their lymph glands were removed for analysis.

On the night of April 20, 1945, with British troops not far from Hamburg, the SS took these children and the four men to the furnace room in the cellar of the school, where they were hanged. Hanged. The youngest were five years old.

There were millions of victims at Auschwitz; one struggles to imagine even one million. Yet the imagination seizes vividly upon the atrocity of hanging twenty children. Some of them were perhaps as young as three when they were taken from their homes in Italy, France, Poland, Holland, Yugoslavia; transported hundreds of miles in filthy railroad cars; separated from their families; transported again; tortured methodically and lengthily; and then destroyed.

This, one can imagine. These innocents can stand for the millions:

The Children who died there...

Names read by Cllr Tony Hinton, Chairman of the Wyre Forest District Council...

Marek James, six years old, from Radom, Poland.
H. Wasserman, an eight-year-old girl from Poland.
Roman Witonski, six years old, and his five-year-old sister, Eleanora, from Radom, Poland
R. Zeller, a twelve-year-old boy from Poland.
Eduard Hornemann, twelve years old, and his brother Alexander, nine years old, from Eindhoven, Holland.
Riwka Herzberg, a seven-year-old girl from Zdunska Wola, Poland.
Georges André Kohn, twelve years old, from Paris.
Jacqueline Morgenstern, twelve years old, from Paris.
Ruchla Zylberberg, an eight-year-old girl.
Edouard Reichenbaum, ten years old.
Mania Altman, five years old, from Radom, Poland.
Sergio de Simone, seven years old, from Naples.
Marek Steinbaum, ten years old.
W. Junglieb, a twelve-year-old boy.
S. Goldinger, an eleven-year-old girl.
Lelka Birnbaum, a twelve-year-old girl.
Lola Kugerman, twelve years old.
B. Melker, an eleven-year-old girl.

Reflections...

Dr. Richard Taylor, Member of Parliament for Wyre Forest concludes the reading...

Faced with the abominations of Treblinka, of Sobibor and Belzec, of Dachau, Birkenau, Chelmno, and all the rest, one can feel anger, sorrow, pity, rage, nausea, and anxiety for the human race. But in the rose garden behind the Bullenhuser Damm School, one can only weep.

The weak winter sunshine picked out the bright green early shoots of spring flowers among sleeping rosebushes. Then a black cloud came over. Freezing rain poured upon the garden as I stood reading the names on the memorial plaques that line the fence.

Just as the murders of these children can stand for the murders of millions, so can the inscription in their memorial garden speak for all the places of terror and death.

Seen on the right of the picture Cllr Bob Bullock, Chairman of Worcestershire County Council, who travelled to Kidderminster for the event.

Dr. Mendes Da Costa read from a new translation of The Psalms into English.

The Second Envelope...

Everyone then opened their second envelope and discovered the eventual fate of their child. Here is what happened to Assia...

At the beginning of September 1941,Jews were forced to leave the ghetto. In groups of 500, they were marched by members the Einsatzgruppen, special mobile killing squads, and their Lithuanian collaborators, a few miles outside the city. Anyone trying to escape was immediately shot. Forced to stand along already prepared ditches, they were massacred.

Assia was thirteen years old.

Revd. Alice Goodman, Curate at St. Mary's saying prayers. We hope to add the text shortly.

Father Edward Stucharski, of the Polish Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Ostra Brama read from the Psalms in Polish.

Everybody laid a flower at the Memorial.

Flowers at the Holocaust Memorial. The girl in the photograph is Jacqueline Morgenstern one of the twenty murdered children. The wreath is from the pupils of Kidderminster's Sladen Middle School.

The Past Mayor of Bewdley and the current Mayor of Stourport deep in conversation at the Polish Ex-Servicemens Club in St. George's Terrace, Kidderminster after the ceremony.

Cllr Tony Hinton Chairman of the Wyre Forest District Council and Cllr Ken Stokes Mayor of Kidderminster at the Polish Club.

Christine Taylor and her husband Wyre Forest Member of Parliament Dr. Richard Taylor at the Polish Club.

Thanks!

We are grateful to the Polish Ex-Servicemens Club, especially the "team" (Maria Lee, Danuta Marszalek, Emilia Chrin, Julia Lukasiewicz) for their hospitality (and the coffee!) and to Cllrs Mary Friend, Fran Oborski, Marion Spragg, Vera Tomlinson who donated and prepared a very welcome and delicious light buffet.

Thanks to Nick Lewis and Wyre Forest District Council for organisation support (sound system etc.), the Consulate of the Republic of Poland in Kidderminster who donate administrative support and expenses, Fran Oborski for the photos, and of course the Wyre Forest Holocaust Memorial Day Committee for all their efforts and support.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who came along and in particular Peter Ingham whose wife Bronwen, an ex-Mayor of the town well known and well loved and respected in Kidderminster, died only a few short days ago.

This candle is in memory of Bronwen...

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