Holocaust Memorial Day Wellington 2015

Attending the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Makara (27 January) and reading the booklet “Auschwitz: 70 years later” (courtesy of a number of foreign embassies), left me with very mixed feelings.

It was good to see so many people turn up on this unusually hot Wellington day. Seeing such a mix of people: survivors, 2nd and 3rd generation descendants, dignitaries and other interested people. What leaves the bad taste in my mouth were some of the diplomats and their contributions to the free booklet handed out.

Ambassador Valery Y. Tereschenko of the Russian Federation for example. Tereschenko proudly memorizes the contribution of the Soviet Red Army in liberating Auschwitz and writes (in the Russian Embassy sponsored booklet) that “we should raise our voices against any attempt to turn a blind eye to the falsification of history to suit the political conjuncture”. He did not mention that at the time of Auschwitz’s liberation Stalin’s purges were in full swing; the Chechen, Ingush, Tatar and Balkarian people were ethnically cleansed from their native lands (deported in those familiar cattle wagon death trains to Kazakhstan) and one only has to follow today’s news on the ongoing conflict in Ukraine to laugh at any claim of not falsifying history.

Polish ambassador Zbigniew Gniatkowski writes “many centuries Poland was such a good place, tolerant, benign and rich in its multicultural dimension [until the Nazi invasion]”. True, in the first half of the last millennium, Poland was incredibly tolerant. By the late 1700’s, much of that had gone and anti-Semitism was rife well before the Nazi occupation of Poland. A recent study by Warsaw University shows a big increase in Polish anti-Semitism, including blaming Jews for the murder of Jesus Christ and the belief that Christian blood is used in Jewish rituals. Some 23% were found to hold such traditional, religious-based beliefs about Jews…

It may be hard to imagine a Holocaust memorial without a representative from the State of Israel, but Mr Livne telling us that the Holocaust needs constant reminders –lest we forget- seems an open invitation to think of how Israel treats the Palestinian people.

Mayor Celia Wade-Brown in her speech criticized the US, where in a number of states atheists are, at least in theory, banned from positions in public office. Terrible, indeed, but at the same time a mystery why she chose this example of intolerance, in a world where the freedom to be who you are, is threatened in much more severe ways in many more countries.

To me, all these (politically, historically, nationalistically) self-glorifying statements (of which the samples above are only that, examples), political agendas and hypocrisy have no place on a day like this. We need memorials to learn from what happened and to teach how to prevent; by looking at the facts – not at what politicians and their representatives tell us. Dame Susan Devoy’s speech was exactly that, passionate and from the heart and full of determination to change for the better.

Daan Kolthoff is a Wellington writer with a vast experience of witnessing ethnic cleansing in civil wars, working for medical emergency aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres.

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