The time for us and our generation...

James Breslin, minister of St James's Newcastle and St Andrew's Kenton,
reflects on Holocaust Memorial Day

In the course of the year there are several occasions when the tragedy of the Holocaust is remembered. In November and in April the Jewish Community remembers Kristalnacht and Yom ha Shoah, but the principal secular commemoration falls on January 27th, Holocaust Memorial Day, an annual commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust and other acts of genocide, chosen because it is the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp.

In that camp over a million men women and children died, including Jane Haining, a Church of Scotland worker in Budapest. Here in the North East  he name of Margaret Dryburgh, the English Presbyterian Missionary who died in a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp in Sumatra, is perhaps better known, not least because of her strong connections with Sunderland and Newcastle, and because part of her story is told in the film Paradise Road.

But Jane Haining should not be forgotten. She ran the Church of Scotland Girls’ Home in Budapest where most of the children were of Jewish descent. In 1944 when Hungary was occupied by the Germans she was accused of espionage, arrested and sent to Auschwitz where she died. As with so many of the camp victims her date of death is uncertain. The official records said she died of Cachexia (uncontrollable weight loss) in July, eye witness accounts say she was gassed in August.

After the war it became clear that she had been arrested because someone had reported that she had been weeping while sewing the Jewish yellow stars on to the dresses of her girls.

So why should we today be remembering sad stories of  fellow Reformed Christians who died over 60 years ago. Partly because those who are available to tell these stories from first hand experience and now very few but more because these stories and particularly Jane Haining’s story remind us of something that can so easily be forgotten.

Abraham Foxman, since 1987 the head of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States who as a small child in Poland had been hidden from the Nazis sums it up in a couple of sentences when he writes:

“For the first fifty years after the Holocaust, survivors bore witness to brutality, evil and bestiality. Now is the time for us and our generation, to bear witness to goodness. For each one of us is a living proof that even in hell, in the hell called the Holocaust, there was goodness, there was kindness, and there was love and compassion.”

There will always be disagreements about how to remember tragedies and whether  commemorating acts of great evil makes them more or less likely to be repeated, but surely there can be no disagreement about the value of commemorating those who like Margaret Dryburgh tried to improve life for others or those who like Jane Haining loved and cared for others at great personal cost. We should not need a day to celebrate goodness, kindness, love and compassion but if we do Holocaust Memorial Day isn’t a bad choice.