Speak Up, Speak Out

Holocaust Memorial Day [HMD] takes place on 27 January each year. It’s a time to pause to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi persecution and in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. On HMD you are asked to honour the survivors of these regimes of hatred and issue a challenge for us all to use the lessons of their experience to inform your lives today.

HMD is not simply about remembering. It is a time when we seek to learn the lessons of the past and to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own, it’s a steady process which can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked and prevented. Here in the UK we are not at risk of genocide - leastways, not yet.  We cannot ever be sure, be safe, rest easy.


In many of our communities and neighbourhoods hatred exists.  Stephen Lawrence and Simon San are just two young people who are now dead simply because some other people hated them for their difference.  Discrimination has not ended, nor has the use of the language of hatred or exclusion. There is still much to do to create a safer future and HMD is an opportunity to start this process.

It’s impossible for anyone who was not there to fully imagine what took place during the Holocaust or in subsequent genocides. HMD does not aim to compare our society to a genocidal regime, it aims to show how easy it is for the path to genocide to begin if we are not mindful of what can happen.

Some will be too busy to remember, to honour the murdered, to protest at the abuse of those who are different on the buses and trains we use every day.  For those people I can only remind them of Pastor Friedrich Niemöller.  His legacy to us is a piece of verse which is as relevant today as it was then:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Stephen Lawrence

 As someone who identifies as a 'mongrel European' and who is only here now as a direct consequence of events in the lead up to the Holocaust, I have a deep sense of why HMD is so important in using the past to build a future where diversity and difference is embraced and not casually thrown into the only too easily lit gas ovens of intolerance, prejudice, fear and bigotry. 

Simon San

Get it in your diary.  Friday 27th January 2012.  Have a think about how you can help keep the HMD candle lit and shining a light on the darkness in which so many acts of hatred take place and which diminish us all.  Having thought about it, do speak up and do speak out.  Stephen Lawrence, Simon San and millions of others will have died for nothing otherwise.  If you do nothing else, simply say their names out loud next Friday - Stephen Lawrence and Simon San.