The Presiding Officer (Ken Macintosh): Good
afternoon. The first item of business is time for reflection. Our
time for reflection leaders are Ben Petrie and Catherine Bough
from the Royal high school in Edinburgh.
Catherine Bough (Royal High School, Edinburgh):
Good afternoon. Thank you for welcoming us today. We are
Catherine and Ben from the Royal high school.
Last year we took part in the Holocaust Educational
Trust's lessons from Auschwitz project with 200 students from
across Scotland. As part of the project we visited
Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1.1 million Jews were
murdered.
I still struggle to put into words my feelings from that
visit. We saw children's shoes and a jumble of prosthetic
limbs, taken from the most vulnerable upon their arrival at the
camp, and the small concrete path alongside the tracks, marking
the spot where families were torn apart.
At the end of the day, we gathered at the end of those
tracks. Rabbi Garson, who had been with us all day, led a
commemorative service, at which he sang a Jewish prayer for the
dead. Here was a Jewish Rabbi singing in Hebrew in a place
where more than 1 million of his people had been murdered. I
felt so empowered by the beauty of his ultimate act of
defiance. It felt like a statement to say that there are still
Jewish communities in Europe and that we should remember them.
Our final action that day was each to light a candle to
commemorate those whose lives were lost. It was
beautiful.
Ben Petrie (Royal High School, Edinburgh): One
of the main things that I took from the visit was the importance
of not viewing the perpetrators simply as monsters. What the
Nazis did was incomprehensible in many ways, but we must remember
that the Holocaust was committed by ordinary people. Failing to
acknowledge their humanity is too easy. The perpetrators had the
power to choose.
This year's theme for Holocaust memorial day is the power
of words. Today I ask everyone to consider what happens when we
stand by, not using our words, and when we do not call out
anti-Semitism, racism and hatred. I have learned about the
Holocaust and what happened when people failed to use their
voice. When people stay silent, hate can flourish.
We have had a unique opportunity through the lessons from
Auschwitz project and, in turn, we have had our perspective
changed forever. As Holocaust survivors become less able to
share their testimony, it is the duty of the trust's
ambassadors around Scotland to ensure that the Holocaust is
remembered and to spread the invaluable lessons that we have
learned. If we can encourage people to speak out, perhaps we
will see a future where anti-semitism and prejudice will never
again lead to such atrocities.
