Holocaust Memorial Day - Lowestoft 2012

This is the text of my words at Lowestoft Train Station for HMD 2012. Lowestoft played a small but wonderful role in helping refugee children:


I wonder how many times each day, each week we shake hands with people. I wonder how often we find shaking hands a meaningful experience, it can become very much part of an instinctive routine for us. But a hand shake is both symbolic and meaningful; it shows warmth, unity and equality, trust agreement and respect. A hand shake means something.

Imagine, then, how 200 child refugees must have felt when, on a cold December day in 1938, Dr Harrold Barraclough – the then mayor of Lowestoft ensured that he shook the hand of each and every child as they disembarked trains before making their way to Pakefield and Southwold. Those children, I suspect, found every meaning in that simple gesture and I feel privileged to now hold the office that represents those actions many years ago.

We should remain proud today that Lowestoft played a part in offering refuge and safety to those Jewish youngsters so that they did not perish with over one million other Jewish Children and five million Jewish adults who died alongside gay people, Romani’s, the disabled and other religious and minority groups during the second world war.
Often we may say ‘it must never happen again’ but sadly it already has in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and in other places and still today around the world. Having offered refuge to those 200 children we must now make sure that we do not allow Lowestoft to be refuge to hatred and discrimination in any form.

We may not, on our own, be able to stop atrocities from occurring but we can refuse to accept behaviour that perpetuates division and difference, we can reject racism and discrimination of other kinds in our day to day lives and we can treat all those we meet with respect and dignity.

Remember the power of Dr Barraclough’s actions and perhaps we can try to extend a literal or a actual hand shake to people who we encounter day to day – we remember the fallen of this Holocaust Memorial Day best by our actions in the future, speak up, speak out do not forget them and do not fail them.

Thank you
Location: Lowestoft, Suffolk, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day One - Done!

Image
Well... I arrived at my lodgings in Boston at around midnight and then around 7am I got myself on the MBTA train into Boston itself to have time to see some of the city before I headed to my meeting with the Center Clubhouse . I managed to find a really great community cafe just outside the station, Panera Cares  have great food and coffee, patrons pay what they can afford (there is a recommended price) and this supplements the aim of supporting people who are less fortunate. There are of course similar projects in the UK, but to find it right outside a major metro stop on my first morning felt quite precipitous! From there I managed to see some of the city, I was keen to see Faneuil Hall and the marketplace - I saw enough to be sure I wanted to visit Boston for longer one day. Now... I had arranged to meet my hosts from Center Club outside the station, I was confident they would find me as I had a green bag, blue shoes, and a bright blue shirt... my host was Anthony who won't ...
Read more

The Final Countdown

In three weeks time I will have landed in Boston to embark upon my Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship in the United States. I can barely believe that it is here, but I am really excited to be making the final arrangements for my travels. Even this week I have managed to find one or two more contacts, engaged with them and agreed to meet and the people I had already been in contact with have been so amazing, so lovely, and so helpful to me. In truth I am also learning more about myself and the crucial things that I need to be better at, I am hopeful that I will bring a lot of practical learning back to the UK but also personal development. I am a middle aged white man living in Suffolk, as much as I try to be aware of and respond to the fact that I experience privilege on a daily basis I am reminded that I do not work hard enough to live up to what should be expected of me. What should be expected of me is to use my role to give a platform to people who don't usually ge...
Read more

The Lowestoft Conference - Thoughts

Image
Reading and viewing responses to The Lowestoft Conference has been an amazing experience, for someone who by nature fears rejection and disapproval it is an intoxicating and terrifying time. My #coa inner child needs to hear that people like me, that I haven't disappointed or upset them, that the response my actions create is the only measure of whether I am good enough. My slightly more developed self still fears that I may not be good enough, but from the perspective of wanting my intentions to mean as much as my actions, for people to see that it is not my childlike grasping for approval that is important but my hope that other people will benefit from what I hoped to achieve. For most of my life the feeling of not being good enough pervaded every aspect of my external persona - my absolute conviction was that I was indeed not good enough, that I was a bad person and that if people got to know my fears and vulnerabilities they would re...
Read more