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Manchester Evening News, UK
November 19, 2011 Saturday
Unspeakable horror must not be repeated
BY: WFnode
IT is now a week since we all stood around the Cenotaph and remembered
our fallen from the never ending wars that Rochdale's generations have
marched in. But we also need to remember how the horrors of war grow
from the seeds of racism.
The week before this I went to Poland.
I did not want to go to Auschwitz, but I did want to see it with my own eyes
and perhaps tell others about the evil of hate and the risk of
forgetting the victims of war
For most of it I have no words.
Six million people died not for what they had done, but simply for who
they were.
And that has to be a strong reason to see the real danger of racism.
The more people are starved, the more they look the same.
The eyes protrude, the cheeks hollow, the faces become skeletal.
This is true of all of the sites of genocide and war crimes: Rwanda,
Cambodia, Vietnam, Auschwitz, Dresden, Ukraine, Armenia, Namibia.
The photos taken by guards, by prisoners and by journalists hold
millions of faded faces against walls that stretch back decades.
I walked amongst the relics of an industry , buildings that looked
like the crumbling factories of Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and
Rochdale.
But that is where the similarity ended because they had only one output.
It made the death of millions an efficient and soulless process.
I saw mountains of children's shoes from tiny feet, the toys, the tons of hair
cut from the head of mothers murdered long ago.
As dusk fell I felt a pressure build around me in the growing darkness
from millions of shadows, the shades of those dead and burnt and
murdered in the cause of racism.
They were not buried, they have no marker or grave, they were burnt
and scattered on the wind as ash.
I saw how the death and torture of men, women and children stripped
people just like you and I of names and identities.
This was to make hate easier.
If you cannot see someone as somebody's mother, somebody's child then
it makes 'processing' them from life to death easier.
And it starts well before the camps and the prison cells.
It starts with the casual name calling racism of the playground.
The exclusion in the work place and the gangs on the street.
It's not just something we read about in our school history books.
It is here and now and it's going on today, this very minute somewhere
down the street or across a continent.
My walk around felt charged with an overwhelming emotional intensity
as I looked at the bricks and fences that document where inhumanity
has left its trace.
And the sickness I felt looking at what people have done to each other
in the name of belief and fanaticism is still with me because we are
still doing it.
We all have to stand up with all of our ethnic minority and religious
minority friends because in Europe day by day, anti-Semitism is
rising.
And where there is anti-Semitism, its partner Islamophobia is not far
away and so hatred for 'foreigners' follows and war and more armed
forces sacrifice follow.
We have to look at the lessons of history that Auschwitz and Rwanda hold.
But we must also look at our own history and the emerging horrors in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine as the places where hate and
intolerance can fester and infect our own children.
Places that make the gas chambers of tomorrow inevitable, if we do not
learn where racism will lead.
Imagine how many lives we continue to allow to be lost, every time we
hear of a mass injustice somewhere and we do nothing.
I pray that this should never happen again to anybody.
I pray you to believe what I have said. For most of it I have no words.
KEN USMAN-SMITH
Non Executive Director
November 19, 2011 Saturday
Unspeakable horror must not be repeated
BY: WFnode
IT is now a week since we all stood around the Cenotaph and remembered
our fallen from the never ending wars that Rochdale's generations have
marched in. But we also need to remember how the horrors of war grow
from the seeds of racism.
The week before this I went to Poland.
I did not want to go to Auschwitz, but I did want to see it with my own eyes
and perhaps tell others about the evil of hate and the risk of
forgetting the victims of war
For most of it I have no words.
Six million people died not for what they had done, but simply for who
they were.
And that has to be a strong reason to see the real danger of racism.
The more people are starved, the more they look the same.
The eyes protrude, the cheeks hollow, the faces become skeletal.
This is true of all of the sites of genocide and war crimes: Rwanda,
Cambodia, Vietnam, Auschwitz, Dresden, Ukraine, Armenia, Namibia.
The photos taken by guards, by prisoners and by journalists hold
millions of faded faces against walls that stretch back decades.
I walked amongst the relics of an industry , buildings that looked
like the crumbling factories of Manchester, Bradford, Leeds and
Rochdale.
But that is where the similarity ended because they had only one output.
It made the death of millions an efficient and soulless process.
I saw mountains of children's shoes from tiny feet, the toys, the tons of hair
cut from the head of mothers murdered long ago.
As dusk fell I felt a pressure build around me in the growing darkness
from millions of shadows, the shades of those dead and burnt and
murdered in the cause of racism.
They were not buried, they have no marker or grave, they were burnt
and scattered on the wind as ash.
I saw how the death and torture of men, women and children stripped
people just like you and I of names and identities.
This was to make hate easier.
If you cannot see someone as somebody's mother, somebody's child then
it makes 'processing' them from life to death easier.
And it starts well before the camps and the prison cells.
It starts with the casual name calling racism of the playground.
The exclusion in the work place and the gangs on the street.
It's not just something we read about in our school history books.
It is here and now and it's going on today, this very minute somewhere
down the street or across a continent.
My walk around felt charged with an overwhelming emotional intensity
as I looked at the bricks and fences that document where inhumanity
has left its trace.
And the sickness I felt looking at what people have done to each other
in the name of belief and fanaticism is still with me because we are
still doing it.
We all have to stand up with all of our ethnic minority and religious
minority friends because in Europe day by day, anti-Semitism is
rising.
And where there is anti-Semitism, its partner Islamophobia is not far
away and so hatred for 'foreigners' follows and war and more armed
forces sacrifice follow.
We have to look at the lessons of history that Auschwitz and Rwanda hold.
But we must also look at our own history and the emerging horrors in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine as the places where hate and
intolerance can fester and infect our own children.
Places that make the gas chambers of tomorrow inevitable, if we do not
learn where racism will lead.
Imagine how many lives we continue to allow to be lost, every time we
hear of a mass injustice somewhere and we do nothing.
I pray that this should never happen again to anybody.
I pray you to believe what I have said. For most of it I have no words.
KEN USMAN-SMITH
Non Executive Director