Seventy five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Unite, the UK
and Ireland’s largest trade union, has released a powerful short
film with members who were recently part of a delegation of trade
unionists and others to visit the former concentration camp in
Poland. In the film, which has been produced to mark Holocaust
Memorial Day on 27 January, Unite members talk frankly and
emotionally about their feelings and reactions to what they saw and
heard at the largest of the Nazi...Request free trial
Seventy five years after the liberation of Auschwitz,
Unite, the UK and Ireland’s largest trade union, has released a
powerful short film with members who were recently part of a
delegation of trade unionists and others to visit the former
concentration camp in Poland.
In the film, which has been produced to mark
Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January, Unite members talk frankly
and emotionally about their feelings and reactions to what they saw
and heard at the largest of the Nazi
camps.
Katie talks of learning how experiments were
carried out on twins: “I’ve got twins, I have
identical twin sisters…they wanted to wipe out so many
people.
“I don’t think you can prepare anyone
for walking around on what is basically a mass graveyard. That so
many people survived is a testimony to hope, but the brutality of
it all… I’ll never comprehend
that.”
Terri describes the visit to Auschwitz
as “one of the most harrowing and emotional
experiences of my life”.
“I think that everyone should have to
see this, to see what hatred, inequality and discrimination can
lead to.”
Steve Turner, Unite assistant general secretary
who leads the union’s Unity Over Division campaign against those
who spread a dangerous narrative of hate and division within our
communities, said the film would play an important role in ensuring
that we never forget the murderous atrocities committed by the
Nazis.
He said: “If we are going to
defeat a dangerous and growing narrative of hate, intolerance and
division finding a home in our communities, we have a
responsibility, a duty, as trade unionists to challenge and engage
at every level both with those who preach it and those attracted to
its opportunist and populist
messaging.
“That means leaving no section of our
community abandoned, or street hijacked, as well as sometimes
having difficult conversations in our workplaces, on the bus, down
the pub, in our homes and
communities.
“This haunting and very moving film
reminds us that, as well as the mass murder of six million Jews,
thousands of trade unionists, gypsies, homosexuals and disabled
people were also incarcerated, tortured and murdered by the
Nazis.
“The theme of this year’s Holocaust
Memorial Day is Stand Together. Genocide didn’t stop with the
Nazis. Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda serve as dangerous reminders of
what hate, intolerance and division can and has led to in living
memory.
“The need to ‘stand together’ has
rarely been greater than now.”
ENDS
Notes to editors:
Unite’s
Holocaust Memorial Day film
The visit to Auschwitz by members of Unite was
organised by Unite Against Fascism.
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