Holocaust Memorial Day

With customary rye bread and whipped butter I hope ;-)

 

For anyone who doesn't want to travel too far, there is an Holocaust museum near Newark. It's only an hour away and definitely worth a visit. We really don't know how lucky we are.

 

Saw a t.v. programme last night about two Auschwitz inmates who escaped - and were able to notify the Jewish Council in Switzerland about the Concentration Camps. The Head of the Jewish Council let the US Government know and there was a discussion about whether the camps should be bombed. This was 1944. US Government decided against the bombing - technical problems and all resources needed to attack Nazis. Jewish Council passed details of concentration camps to Newspapers - when details published in papers Nazis abandoned Camps and tried to destroy them.

Surprised that details about the camps were not known to other countries until 1944.

Think I'm right in saying there is no actual Jewish Memorial in this country and there is a presure for one to be made. ??

 

My daughter went to a holocaust museum when she was at secondary school. She remembered placing stones to commemorate those that died.

https://www.google.com/search?q=bri...MSc_JzFTLyc4DypcUlCsmpeSVFqQpFEGUAlntm8owAAAA

 

A

And, believe it or not, line dancing!!

 

Read it.

 

Hi B. I have to correct you hear. Ian and Danny Dragovic were Yugoslavian (nowadays they would be Serbian). I was in the same year as Ian. I saw him at a reunion in 2017. Danny is living and working in the states.

Like you I do not know the back story of their family. There were poles who found their way to South Yorkshire my Dad work with one at Darfield Main. Other families with Eastern European origin lived in Wombwell I was aprimary school with some of their children.

 

Hi mate, thanks for the correction. Ian was in my sister's year and I think Danny was in the year between me and my sister. The last time I saw Danny was in the Halfway Hotel at Highgate, he was sat in the corner of the bar with his mates, smoking a joint...
You might have known my sister Carole Armstrong...

 

Went there in the 80s when I was in a band that played the UK army bases Sgts, corporal, messes NAAFI -dining outs summer balls, Valentine's day, Xmases etc (I think we might have played Soltau) when a large Rhine army contingent existed. Our guitarist had family from Poland who were victims of the Holocaust so it was an emotional visit for him. It was a freezing cold damp winters day, eerily silent with no birdsong and I recall the distant rumble of artillery fire from the range nearby. It had a small museum and all the huts etc had long since been demolished but the striking thing, in spite of it being a transit camp rather than extermination camp, was the sheer number that had died of starvation and disease with mounds scattered around with concrete walls denoting 'here lie x thousand'. Very sobering and depressing and tangible evidence to those deniers of what took place.

I cant remember... all the camps we played after all these years fade in the memory... but did Soltau army camp have a disused railway depot/line attached and a large ornate stone building with external double staircase with the remnants of Swastika emblem at the top having been chiselled off?

 

belsen now has a huge glass fronted visitors centre with a restraunt/snack bar ( ******* ironic) the place you're thinking of was called "the roundhouse" and was the massive camp naafi in hohne, according to legend there are areas in the cellers that are bricked up as thats where the gestapo used to do their thing. there is/was a massive arty/tank range there between hohne, fallingbostal and soltau, at one point in the 70's a new range rd was being built but had to be stopped as more unmarked/unknown mass grave were being dug up. the railhead youre thinking about would be the railway into the camp but was later used by the brit armd regts to move the tanks about the country for different excercise areas, the local "boxheads" used toget a bit p155ed off with 52t of chietain fitted with battle tracks chaveling the roads up and flicking cobbles about like peanuts

 

I do not remember your sister, what forms was she it? I was 1A, 21,30,40,50 L6B, 6B. Did she stay on into the 6th form?

This may be of interest to both you and your sister. There is a Facebook group called "OLD WATHONIANS(WATH GRAMMAR SCHOOL) 1960s.

 

She was in 10, 20, 30 etc, did languages at A level (don't know which form) then went to Liverpool Poly. She taught English in Madrid from 1979 and has been in Spain ever since. Her and her partner now live in Lanjaron which is in the Alpuharas south of Granada. There's a little school clothes shop on her street which was run till recently by a woman who went to Wath Grammar, it's a small world... I've attached a school photo of Carole from the late 60s or early 70s. My profile picture is my 1st year school photo....

I'll have a look at the Facebook page.

 

Ah, not heard that term for a while! Box heads for the Germans, Cloggies for the Dutch. I’m sure they had their own similar names for us, the British “occupying forces”. Plenty these days will be appalled at such “derogatory terms”. All I would say to that is pffffttt!

 

I put a lit candle in the bedroom window at 8pm last night. I will do this every Holocaust Memorial day from now on.

 

Just to say Brush I've read that book you mentioned, 'Ordinary Men - Battalion 101' I think it was.

Chilling because it showed how ordinary people can so easily get caught up in all that.

 

I do not remember your sister. She must have been in the year below me if she started in form 10. I started in 1963 and was in 1A. The numbering system was changed in what was then year 2 ( now called year 8). I was probably the only one in what was the languages form who didn't get a languages "O" level. I blame the teachers who must have been struggling to get enough for the "elite" languages group. I feel fortunate to have come out of it as well as I did.

 

That was it. Ordinary Men - it makes you wonder what you would do in the same circumstances.

 

Now think about it, Ian was 2 years above Carole and Danny was in Carole's year, she would have gone to WGS 2 years before me, I went in 1967 so she started in 1965. I've signed up to the facebook group and I've just spent an hour looking at pictures and leaving comments. One poster was in my class and posted the same picture as I did some time before me. It's the teachers that I remember most, particularly Mr Billington (physics not his brother who taught history). One day at the end of the class he asked "Has anyone got an air rifle?". One lad said yes so Billy Phys says "Bring it in next week and we'll calculate the speed of a pellet." You can't imagine that these days....

 

I see you have joined.