Holocaust message still relevant

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Remembering the lessons of the holocaust is the key to ensuring similar atrocities can't happen again, says the Head of Jersey’s Jewish Congregation.

Stephen Regal was speaking at the annual ceremony at Holocaust Memorial Day, and laid a wreath on behalf of the congregation. Mr Regal – whose grandparents fled Poland to escape the holocaust – said that decades on, the messages resonated for humanity. He said: “If we do not memorialise the holocaust we are doomed to repeat history. The fact is that the holocaust is being repeated. If you look at what has happened in Darfur, or what has happened in the Central African Republic or in Syria – those people are our fellow human beings.

“We could easily have been born there instead of this beautiful Island, but there for the grace of God go you or I. If we turn away from the problems that exist, then we are complicit in their continuance.”

The deaths of 21 Islanders who died during the Holocaust were commemorated at the annual ceremony yesterday, when wreaths were laid at the Occupation Tapestry Gallery at the Maritime Museum on the New North Quay. The wreath-layers were led by Lieutenant-Governor, General Sir John McColl, and included Deputy Bailiff William Bailhache and Chief Minister Ian Gorst, as well as representatives of the families of the Spanish Republican Forced Workers, Jersey’s Jewish Congregation, the Island’s gay and lesbian community, St John Ambulance, ex-internees and for the first time, Jersey Mencap.

The wreath-layers were joined by the grandson of a Jerseyman who was deported to a prison camp by the Nazis for “failing to surrender a wireless”. Frederick Page died on 5 January 1945, and his grandson Dr Kevin White was attending the ceremony for the first time.