Attending the national ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day today is, as always, a deeply moving experience. There is a specific, heavy silence that falls when we stop to contemplate the scale of the industrialised cruelty of the Holocaust, and the more recently recognised genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.
Remembrance should be a duty for all of us, not only for those who lived through these atrocities. As this generation of survivors grows smaller, their words provide the vital resources we need to carry that obligation forward. We live through a poignant transition in history as the baton of memory is passed from the witnesses of history to those of us who must make sure its lessons are never eclipsed by time or indifference.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of hearing from Mala Tribich at the UK government commemoration for Holocaust Memorial Day. Her story is one of unimaginable resilience, but it is the human cost of her journey that lingers most in the mind. Born in Poland in 1930, Mala was just a child when the Nazis invaded. She shared the haunting memory of trying to survive as a ‘Christian’ child in hiding and the tragedy of the family members who didn’t make it: her mother and her eight-year-old sister, murdered in a forest; and her cousin Idzia, who vanished into the void of the Holocaust. Yet, even amidst the horrors of Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, Mala’s spirit remained unbroken; she took on the monumental responsibility of caring for her five-year-old cousin, Ann, before being liberated in 1945 by the British army and making a new life for herself in the UK. To hear her voice is to receive a direct command to remain vigilant against the silence of bystanders.
Today, I am honoured to stand alongside religious and community leaders at the national memorial ceremony. For humanists, this day is a core part of our moral calendar. We reflect on the fact that the victims of the Nazis were chosen for their identity – their ethnicity, their sexuality, their disability, or their beliefs.
It is a history that touches our own movement deeply. As I have reflected before, humanists were among the first to be targeted when the Nazis rose to power. In 1933, the German Freethinkers League was banned, its headquarters turned into a torture bureau, and its leaders sent to concentration camps. The regime understood that a worldview based on individual reason, empathy, and the rejection of dogma was a direct threat to their totalising ideology. They sought to destroy not just people, but the very idea that we have a shared human responsibility to one another that transcends the state.
There are those who argue that it was specifically ‘godly values’ that defeated fascism, but history suggests a more inclusive and profound truth. Fascism was defeated by a global coalition of people of all faiths or beliefs – individuals who were moved by a shared horror at the violation of human dignity. It wasn’t the victory of one creed over another; it was the victory of humanity over inhumanity. It is that same universal humanism we need today to confront the rising tides of ‘othering’ and prejudice.
By standing together today, we affirm that our shared values of compassion and reason are stronger than the forces that seek to divide us. We carry the words of Mala and those who did not survive as a sacred trust. We remember because we must, and we act because we remember.
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