The Power of Words
"The power of words" is the theme for this year's Holocaust Memorial Day, which is today.
Today is the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and on this Holocaust Memorial Day we should remember all those who were murdered by the Nazis, their allies and collaborators in the orgy of genocide and cruelty usually known as the Holocaust.
The list of victims is estimated to include:
5.9 million Jews
2.7 to 3.2 million ethnic Poles
3 million ethnic Ukrainians
2-3 million Soviet Prisoners of War
1.5 million ethnic Belarusians
300,000 to half a million Serbs
270,000 disabled people
90,000 to 220,000 Romani
80,000 to 200,000 Freemasons
20,000 to 25,000 Slovenes
5,000 to 15,000 gay people
7,000 Spanish republicans
2,500 to 5,000 Jehovah's witnesses
Also among the victims were trade unionists, members of all political parties opposed to the Nazis, people whose religious faith led them to criticise or refuse to co-operate with Nazi and fascist regimes, people shot as hostages or in reprisals, and people murdered for just about every twisted reason it is possible to imagine.
Here is a table estimating the deaths by ethnicity - the word "Politicals" appears to have been used as shorthand a number of groups who were murdered for a reason other than their ethnicity including Masons, gays, etc.
The sheer scale of this great evil makes it very difficult to comprehend how terrible it was or how such a vast crime could possible have been perpetrated. But it was, and so the Holocaust, other genocides, and hence the depth of evil to which humans can sink must never be forgotten.
Neither should the victims, or the courage and humanity so many of them showed.
Anne Frank, who died in Belsen concentration camp in early 1945 at the age of 15, wrote in the diary she kept while she and her family were in hiding from the Nazis,
"I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I am so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s in me. When I write I can shake off all my cares; my sorrow disappears; my spirits are revived."
More than seventy three years later Her words do live on, and deservedly so.
Today is the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and on this Holocaust Memorial Day we should remember all those who were murdered by the Nazis, their allies and collaborators in the orgy of genocide and cruelty usually known as the Holocaust.
The list of victims is estimated to include:
5.9 million Jews
2.7 to 3.2 million ethnic Poles
3 million ethnic Ukrainians
2-3 million Soviet Prisoners of War
1.5 million ethnic Belarusians
300,000 to half a million Serbs
270,000 disabled people
90,000 to 220,000 Romani
80,000 to 200,000 Freemasons
20,000 to 25,000 Slovenes
5,000 to 15,000 gay people
7,000 Spanish republicans
2,500 to 5,000 Jehovah's witnesses
Also among the victims were trade unionists, members of all political parties opposed to the Nazis, people whose religious faith led them to criticise or refuse to co-operate with Nazi and fascist regimes, people shot as hostages or in reprisals, and people murdered for just about every twisted reason it is possible to imagine.
Here is a table estimating the deaths by ethnicity - the word "Politicals" appears to have been used as shorthand a number of groups who were murdered for a reason other than their ethnicity including Masons, gays, etc.
The sheer scale of this great evil makes it very difficult to comprehend how terrible it was or how such a vast crime could possible have been perpetrated. But it was, and so the Holocaust, other genocides, and hence the depth of evil to which humans can sink must never be forgotten.
Neither should the victims, or the courage and humanity so many of them showed.
Anne Frank, who died in Belsen concentration camp in early 1945 at the age of 15, wrote in the diary she kept while she and her family were in hiding from the Nazis,
"I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I am so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s in me. When I write I can shake off all my cares; my sorrow disappears; my spirits are revived."
More than seventy three years later Her words do live on, and deservedly so.
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