My post today will not be about snooker … there’s plenty going on on the green baize and the German Masters is about to start in Berlin but my thoughts today are elsewhere

Today, it’s exactly 80 years since the Russian army “liberated” Auschwitz concentration camp. They didn’t find many prisoners there, only the weak and ill had been left behind to die, the others had been forced to leave, by foot, in the cold and many of them didn’t survive.

It is estimated that around 1.1 million prisoners perished in Auschwitz camps, mainly Jews, but not only Jews. Sinti and Roma were deported too, as were homosexuals and there were criminals sent to the camps as well.

What Hitler and the Nazis did was not a first either. The Ottoman regime and in particular Sultan Abdel Hamid II had done the same to the Armenians at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. Massacres and deportations…

Note that I write “Hitler and the Nazis” not “the Germans”. I have many German friends. Evil is not a “nation’s trait” and those friends I have, most weren’t even born.

All those human persons who suffered and perished … what was their crime? Many were only children, babies even. What did they do to deserve this abomination? Nothing … their only crime was that they were perceived as “different”, hence threatening. Also those in power needed to create a distraction from the awful economical situation¹, something that could “channel” the people’s discontent towards an alleged enemy within rather against those in power. Centuries of antisemitism driven by the Christian powers made the Jews an ideal and easy target.

Still … such horrific crimes by a nation that produced so many wonderful artists, writers and scientists … I don’t understand, I’m not sure there is anything to understand. But …

We MUST remember … so that it never happens again.

… not to anyone, not anywhere, not ever again...

We MUST remember … and learn

Why do I care ? Because it’s part of my own family history, because I remember the tattoo on my dentist arm, because in the early 60th I was still taught at school – a catholic school – that Jews were evil, that they stabbed the wafers in the churches and that the wafers bled, that if ever we entered a Synagogue, God would strike us with thunder … and I knew for fact that it was nonsense, but some other kids bought it.

So if you can spare a bit of time today or in the coming days, here are some suggestions … things to listen to, books to read, films to watch… none of which describes the Shoah in horrific details but are all the more moving for it.

• Maus by Art Spiegelman (book)
• Nigth by Elie Wiesel (book)
• La vita è bella by Roberto Benigni (film)
• The pianist by Roman Polanski (film)
• The Mauthausen Trilogy written by  Iakovos Kambanellis, music by Mikis Theodorakis (songs)

1. That situation was partly created by the aftermaths of WW1. France in particular had made sure the Germany would be humiliated. Hitler’s discourses about the “superior race” was particularly well received under the circumstances, always would be. ↩︎