‘And as a five year old, I could stand at the edge of the clearing where the trains were being loaded. People like sardines in those wooden trucks.
And the people loading them in – they were railway men, they didn’t look terribly different from the railway men who check my tickets these days – they looked like ordinary people.’

Dr Martin Stern MBE, Holocaust survivor

 

In our Spiritual Assembly this week, we marked Holocaust Memorial Day and remembered the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust, under Nazi Persecution and in the genocides which followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Mr Leigh led the assembly on the HMD theme this year, which highlights the ordinary people who let genocide happen; those who actively perpetrated genocide; and those people who were persecuted.  He encouraged us to consider how ordinary people, such as ourselves, can perhaps play a bigger part than we might imagine in challenging prejudice today.  To help us explore the theme of ordinary people, our students read accounts from people who were perpetrators, bystanders, rescuers and victims of genocide.   Mr Leigh introduced Ben N, Year 11, who shared with the school a personal account of how his family had survived the holocaust.  Here is the story of Ben’s great grandmother, Genia, in his words.

‘My great grandmother Genia was born in a small town in southern Poland called Wadowice (pron: Vadovitz) about 50 miles from the city of Krakow. She was the daughter of ordinary people, her mother was a stay at home mum, and her father a religious scholar. She loved to play volleyball, idolised her older brother Samek and sister Hella and dreamed of becoming a PE teacher.’

‘Soon after the German occupation of Poland in 1941, all 1500 of the Jews in the town were taken from their homes and forced to live in a ghetto. During an uprising Samek and Hella managed to escape, Samek to France to fight in the resistance, and Hella with her husband to Shanghai in China. Genia, and her Mum and Dad were not so lucky.’

‘In August 1943 the Nazis came and along with all the other Jewish residents, Genia and her parents were herded onto cattle trains and transported to the nearby Auschwitz Concentration Camp.’

‘As soon as they arrived, they were stripped of all their clothing and belongings and made to walk naked in front of Dr Joseph Mengele (later known as the Nazi Angel of Death) and were categorised into groups. The healthy and strong group were sent to the right to have their heads shaved, be tattooed with identification numbers, and sent into slave labour, and those who were old, unhealthy, disabled or not strong enough were sent to the left, to the gas chambers to be murdered. Genia was sent right, her mother and father were torn from her arms and sent to the left. She never saw them again. She was tattooed with the number 54365.’

‘Through amazingly tough resolve and a number of lucky co-incidences, Genia managed to survive the twice daily naked walk in front of Dr Menegele, the starvation, disease, beatings and all the other unthinkable horrors of the death camp, until on the 18th January 1945 with Allied and Russian Red Army troops advancing on the Nazis on all fronts, 66,000 of the remaining heavily malnourished prisoners from Auschwitz were forced on a death march, walking barefoot in the snow hundred of miles, to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Central Germany. Thousands of people died during the marches. Those who were unable to travel were murdered. Thousands more froze to death, starved, or were shot on the way.’

‘Genia somehow survived the death march and the next concentration camp, and was finally liberated by the Russian army on the 18th May 1945. Of the 1500 Jewish people taken from Wadowice, only 4 managed to survive the Holocaust.’

‘Amazingly, soon after her return to her home town to look for survivors, Genia was found by her pre-war boyfriend Izeck, who had been held as a Polish prisoner of war in Siberia. After being transferred to and treated in a refugee camp in Germany they later married (Genia pictured in the centre in borrowed clothing, and Izeck in his army uniform) Here they also had a baby Girl, Pola, my grandmother, and after finding Samek in Paris, travelled to Melbourne in Australia to make a new life where Hella had moved to from China. Understandably they wanted to be as far away from Europe as they could go.’

‘She was able to rebuild her life in Australia, however suffered from severe trauma and PTSD. She was never able to sleep through an entire night without waking up from fear. She very sadly died in 2007, however her story will be remembered for generations and her relentless fighting to allow me to be here and talk to you all today will never be forgotten. This photo shows my late great grandmother and I when I was only 8 weeks old. This photo is not only special because it shows us together and the generations that follow her, but it is one of the only photos showing her tattoo. She always wore long sleeves to hide it as she wanted to forget all of the atrocities that happened.’

‘The Holocaust was not a single event. It did not happen all at once or on its own. It was the result of mixed circumstances and events, as well as individual decisions, played out over years. Key political and moral lines were crossed until the Nazi leadership eventually set in motion the unimaginable, the Final Solution.’

‘The Holocaust threatened the very fabric of civilisation and hatred must be resisted every day. We cannot be complacent. We have choices. Ordinary people have choices. We are all ordinary people who can be extraordinary in our actions. We can all make decisions to challenge prejudice, stand up to hatred and speak out against identity-based persecution. Prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all until we can truly say, Never Again.’

Mr Leigh encouraged us to reflect on the stories and accounts we had heard.

‘We are all ordinary people who can be extraordinary in our actions. We can all make decisions to challenge prejudice, stand up to hatred, and to speak out against identity-based persecution. We can all be aware of what we listen to, what we interact with, and what we challenge when it goes against our shared beliefs – both in real life, and online.’

‘Remember our RBC values. We should have courage, to stand up for what is right, calling out discrimination. We should show compassion to others, and recognise their struggles. We should have integrity, putting our principles first. And through committing to all of these, we will perform a service – by making society a better place.’

 

We would like to thank Ben and his family for sharing their history and the story of Genia.