Review of a year with Interfaith Scotland Part 2

Last week I looked back onto the first half of my internship with Interfaith Scotland and Interfaith Glasgow. Today I’m looking back on the second half.

January 2018:

After a well deserved Christmas break I came back to Glasgow in the beginning of January. In this month the main event for me and Interfaith Scotland was Holocaust Memorial Day. I participated in a couple of planning meetings, helped to build the exhibition about German massacres in Glasgow’s twin city of Rostov-on-Don, met the International guests at a welcome dinner and was responsible for registration (with some of my colleagues)  and the running of several powerpoint presentations/videos at the event. How impressive this work with the remembering of the Holocaust was for me, can be read in several blog articles I wrote in this time. In January I also travelled to Dundee to witness the re-establishment process of Dundee Inter Faith Association.

With Interfaith Glasgow I was part of a group of Weekend Club volunteers, who met volunteers from the Edinburgh Weekend Club for an exchange of thoughts and ideas about our practise. I helped at a Faith-to-Faith event at St Mungo Museum about Glasgow’s history as a welcoming city (connected with the story of St Mungo) and with the Weekend Club we celebrated a Burn’s afternoon for refugees and asylum seekers.

I also visited Glasgow’s reform synagogue for their Holocaust Memorial Service and the blog article about this experience was one of those with the most positive reactions during my whole year.

February 2018:

The big highlight in February was one with Interfaith Glasgow. We participated in World Interfaith Harmony Week with a series of three events: A Weekend Club team meeting with a lot of reflection about the value of interfaith cooperation, a Scriptural Reasoning Dialogue about why Christians, Muslims and Jews are engaging in Interfaith Dialogue and a Community Meal event to built better Friendship between people of different religious backgrounds. We documented all this with a lot of photos, videos and reports, which we sent in at the end of the month and in April Interfaith Glasgow received the third prize in the competition. Additional to this World Interfaith Harmony Week programme I also attended the next Faith-to-Faith event about “Faith and Activism” and helped to deliver it.

But also Interfaith Scotland did not become lazy after the two major events of every year (Scottish Interfaith Week and Holocaust Memorial Day). We continued to plan the youth conference in St Andrews and we organised our AGM with an interesting talk about Gender Equality in the different faith traditions. The next advisory group meeting for youth engagement with the Inter Faith Network for the UK took place, but this time I stayed in Scotland and attended it via skype. Anyway I did travel south this month, because I attended the first Focus Group meeting in Birmingham. At those meetings members of the advisory group were meeting young people from the local area to talk with them about their interfaith experiences and which kind of supporting material they would like to have for their interfaith engagement. In February I also started to visit local interfaith groups again and travelled to Inverness and Stirling (Central Scotland Interfaith Group). Those were still not my only journeys, because I also went to Oban with a group of interfaith volunteers to deliver workshops at the local High School. On behalf of Interfaith Scotland I also attended an Interfaith New Years Dinner hosted by the Ahmadiya community in Glasgow and attended a reception organised by the Moderator of the Church of Scotland at the Scottish Parliament.

March 2018:

The march started with the “Beast from the East”, but as soon as it was possible to travel I was on the road again. Together with Frances I attended the first planning meeting for the Launch of Scottish Interfaith Week 2018, which will be held in Aberdeen. We met people from the local interfaith group, local authorities and faith communities and visited some possible venues for the launch event. I also travelled to London again for the next meeting of the youth engagement advisory group. The work with young people was a general important theme for me this spring, because besides continue to plan and advertise the youth conference I also organised (together with some colleagues from Interfaith Scotland and the Inter Faith network for the UK) a Focus group meeting in Glasgow, so that also the voices of young Scots could be heard in the UK project. I also travelled to Dundee again to join a dialogue meeting there, which also should help the local interfaith group to become re-established again. Shortly before Easter I visited the Moray interfaith group in Elgin, before I had a nice Easter holiday on Iona.

For Interfaith Glasgow I functioned as the Christian speaker at a Faith-to-Faith event about the Feminine in God.

April 2018:

The major event in April and the last real big event that I helped to plan and facilitate was the National Interfaith Youth Conference in St Andrews, where about 80 young people from all over Scotland and very interesting speakers talked about “Radicalisation and Reconcilitation” from different perspectives- definitely one of many highlights during the year. Otherwise the month was rather calm, compared with others. I visited the Renfrewshire interfaith group and attended a training about “Tackling Hatespeech in youth work” (a result of the two Erasmus+ projects Interfaith Scotland is involved with at the moment). At the end of April I visited the Ayrshire Interfaith group in Kilmarnock.

With Interfaith Glasgow I helped at the Faith-to-Faith event which was part of the celebration about 25 years of St Mungo Museum with a lot of interesting stories from the history of Interfaith in Glasgow and Scotland. I also joined the Weekend Club for my last event with them, which was held at the beautiful “Hidden Gardens” on the southside of Glasgow.

I also joined the Jewish community in Glasgow for their YomHaShoa event.

In April I also preached in a Sunday service at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow and was interviewed about my interfaith experience at a Forum afterwards.

May 2018:

In May there weren’t any big projects to plan or facilitate for me, but a lot of nice smaller events. I gave a speech at the German Speaking congregation in Edinburgh, I attended a meeting of the Religious Leaders (as notetaker), I met the planning committee of the youth conference in St Andrews for an evaluation meeting, I went to Aberdeen for another planning meeting for Launch of SIFW 2018, I visited the Fife interfaith group another time and told them about my experience in Scotland, I attended a meeting for the prevention of Genocide and a conference of Scottish Faiths in Action for Refugees and I visited the Skye interfaith group and joined the Quaker community on Skye for one of their meetings.

I missed the Interfaith Glasgow event “One Big Picnic” due to a private journey, as well as the May Faith-to-Faith event, but I functioned as the Christian speaker at a really nice Scriptural Reasoning dialogue event about Joseph/Yusuf.

June 2018:

June has only started a week ago, but I already have travelled to Shetland to visit the local interfaith group there and also joined the local Baha’i community for a devotional. On Shetland I also delivered school workshops to students at the secondary school on Whalsay and at Lunnasting Primary School.

Yesterday I celebrated my farewell from my colleagues from Interfaith Scotland and Interfaith Glasgow.

Later today I will shortly be interviewed at the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church. I am going to tell them about the amazing interfaith work which is going on in Scotland and the great time I had here and try to encourage them to get involved in interfaith – if they not already are. A live stream of the synod is available on facebook, the time will be in the afternoon, probably some time between 3 and 5 pm.

On Sunday I’m going to be the official facilitator at my last Faith-to-Faith event. The theme will be “Heaven and Hell” and curators from Glasgow Museums will talk about ideas of Heaven and Hell in Islam and Christianity with the help of pictures of different museum objects. If you want to join the event, come along at 2pm to St Mungo Museum.

On Monday I then will travel back to Germany for good and on the 1^st of July a new exciting chapter begins when I’m starting my ministry in the village of Eschollbrücken, near Darmstadt (where I grew up), about 30 kilometers (about 18.6 miles for everyone who is not familiar with the metric system) south of Frankfurt.

I want to thank everyone who I met during the year and all my journeys across Scotland and the UK! It was a very special time for me and I hope that Interfaith continues to flourish in Glasgow, Scotland, the UK and the rest of the world – it’s so important and enriching!

If anyone would like to have similar experiences as I had during my time here or if you want to know more about the work of Interfaith Scotland and Interfaith Glasgow feel free to contact them and to ask for volunteering or internship opportunities!

What does a national Interfaith Organisation do?

Two weeks ago I blogged about what local interfaith groups in Scotland are doing. Today I’m telling a bit more about what Interfaith Scotland as a national interfaith organisation is doing.

The obvious differences between the local interfaith groups and Interfaith Scotland is the area they are working in (Interfaith Scotland in the whole of Scotland and during cooperations even abroad) and also that Interfaith Scotland as a charity has some paid staff, while the local interfaith groups are run on a complete voluntary basis.

Structure of Interfaith Scotland

Interfaith Scotland is a member organisation. Faith Communities can become members or associated members of Interfaith Scotland. A list of all actual members can be found here.

Interfaith Scotland is a charity, which gets it’s funding through membership fees and applying for funding from different authorities, mainly the Scottish government. Interfaith Scotland got a board of trustees, where the major faith communities of Scotland (Buddhism, Baha’i, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism) as well as the women interfaith groups and the local interfaith groups are represented. For the year of young people the board also co-opted a young person. A list of the members of the board can be found at:

http://www.interfaithscotland.org/about-us/ 

But what is actually Interfaith Scotland doing?

Scottish Interfaith Week

Interfaith Week is an invention by Interfaith Scotland. Some years ago the other parts of the UK joined in in celebrating Interfaith Week. Thanks to the local interfaith groups and the different faith communities there are events happening during Scottish Interfaith Week in every region of the country. Scottish Interfaith Week always has a theme. Last year’s theme was “Creativity and the Arts” and this year’s theme will be “Connecting Generations”. If you are interested in organising an event for Scottish Interfaith Week you can already start thinking about what you would like to do about this theme. There is also an art competition for schools every year during Scottish Interfaith Week.

Interfaith Week takes always place in November and more can be found at:

http://scottishinterfaithweek.org

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD)

Since quite a while Interfaith Scotland is organising the national Holocaust Memorial Day event for Scotland in January. The event is always in a different council area of Scotland. This year’s event was in Glasgow. The event remembers the victims of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides. Usually high representatives from politics, faith communities and other parts of the society are present and survivors or relatives of survivors are speaking. Around HMD there is an intense programme for schools going on and the younger generation is also involved in the official HMD programme. Especially in times when minorities are still suffering from Hate Crimes it’s important to remember the Holocaust and work together so that horrors like the Holocaust can’t never happen again.

Supporting local interfaith groups

One main task of Interfaith Scotland is to support the local interfaith groups. Those voluntary run groups with members of different faith communities are support by Interfaith Scotland through different ways. For activities during Scottish Interfaith Week they can get a small financial support as well as materials about the theme (like information, presentations, dialogue questions, event ideas), which can be used for events. From time to time staff members of Interfaith Scotland are travelling around the country to visit some of the interfaith groups, to see if they need any special support, if there are certain problems on the local level and also to learn from them about their activities. Local Interfaith Groups get also invited to an Annual Networking Seminar, where they can meet members of other interfaith groups. The groups also get a platform on Interfaith Scotland’s website and in the annual newsletter. If people want to found a new group in a region where no local interfaith group exists (so for example last year in the Scottish Borders) Interfaith Scotland helps with this by for example organising the first meetings of the new group and contacting the different faith communities in the region.

Religious Leaders meetings

As part of the work with the Scottish faith communities Interfaith Scotland is the secretary for the regular meetings of the religious leaders two times a year (one in spring and one in autumn). Usually one of the faith communities hosts the events. To witness one of their meetings was one of the most interesting experience during my time here and it was really good to see how the religious leaders were treating each other very open and respectful.

Summit with First Minister

In addition to the two meetings of the religious leaders, Interfaith Scotland also brings together the religious leaders and the First Minister for a summit once a year. I think it is really important that the government connects with all the different faith communities and this meeting is an important part of this.

School workshops

Interfaith Scotland offers different kinds of workshops for schools of all levels. For example it is possible to bring representatives from different faith communities to schools so the students have the possibility to talk to people of different faiths rather than just reading about their religion. Especially (but not only) for schools in less diverse areas, this is a great opportunity. Another possible workshop is to bring boxes with religious objects to the schools, so the children can explore the religions by exploring typical objects. The third option is that a staff member of Interfaith Scotland is coming to a school and giving a presentation at a school assembly or in a class and to have activities for example about “why interfaith dialogue is important”.

Youth programme

Not only during the Year of Young People, but especially now, the work with young people is important for Interfaith Scotland. Examples for this kind of work are the Youth Conference, which is taking place tomorrow in St Andrews or the Christian-Muslim Scotland-Rwanda exchange programme, which was taking place last September. For the coming time Interfaith Scotland has even employed a youth worker, who is going run some activities for young people such as an interfaith youth retreat.

SAFE (Scotland Abroad Faith Exchange)

Even with the main focus of it’s work on Scotland Interfaith Scotland is also doing some international work. This year Interfaith Scotland is participating in two Erasmus+ projects, funded by the European Comission, working together with charities from several other European countries. Last month the director of Interfaith Scotland was in New Zealand and visited different interfaith organisations there and even spoke in the parliament about the interfaith work in Scotland.

In very little countries in the world interfaith work is as good organised and well supported as in Scotland and so it is good to let other’s learn from the Scottish experiences and to learn from the experiences similar organisations gain in their countries in an often more difficult surrounding.

Dialogue for Members

Interfaith Scotland is organising special dialogue session for it’s members. One example can be the dialogue event about “Identity and Belonging” last autumn.

Cooperation with Police Scotland and other authorities

There is a very close cooperation between Interfaith Scotland and authorities like Police Scotland. This results on the one hand in training session in religious awareness, which Interfaith Scotland is delivering and on the other hand in intense dialogue in the prevention of conflicts as well in how to respond for example on religious motivated hate crimes or potential terror attacks from any kind of extremists.  

Cooperation with other Interfaith bodies

Interfaith Scotland also cooperates also with other interfaith organisations. This can be on the regional level, for example the cooperation with Edinburgh Interfaith Association and Interfaith Glasgow, or on the Scottish national level, for example with the Interreligious Council of the Roman-Catholic bishops conference, or on the wider level, eg with the Inter Faith Network for the UK.

Training Sessions

Interfaith Scotland is providing training sessions for different groups. Often those sessions are about how to deal with the needs of different religious groups or how to prevent discrimination against people because of their religion. Last week I had the opportunity to participate in one very interesting training day about how to tackle (religious) hate speech in youth group settings.

Publications

Interfaith Scotland also publicises materials, which can be found on its website.

Every year Interfaith Scotland publicises a Newsletter where stories about the last year’s activities are shared. The actual Newsletter was just published this month and can be downloaded here.

Interfaith Scotland has also accounts on facebook and twitter, so people can follow the different activities.

I hope this article could give you a good insight into the widespread work of Interfaith Scotland as a national interfaith organisation.

“Hine mah tov…”

When you are studying protestant theology in Germany you have to learn Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. Fortunately for me I had learned Latin and Ancient Greek in school, so I had to learn “only” Hebrew when I started my studies. It was definitely not very easy to learn the language of the Hebrew Bible but in the second attempt I managed to pass the exam. When we learned the language, we not only learned how to read the alphabet and from the right to the left and not only vocabulary and grammar, but we also learned some traditional Hebrew songs. One of those songs has the text

“Hine mah tov uMah-Nayim shevet achim gam yachad“ and it quotes the beginning of Psalm 133. The verse means “Behold how good and how pleasing if brothers (people) could sit together in unity“. The song was also sung at the National Holocaust Memorial Day event, which I reflected about last week.

But it came much more to my mind after I visited a Shabbat service at Glasgow Reform Synagogue last Saturday. To be guest in this service was a very special experience for me. Not only because it was a remembrance service for Holocaust Memorial Day and not only because of the difficult history between Christians and Jews – especially in Germany. The experience was special because I felt welcomed and in a way “at home” that is unusual for visits in places of worship of other faith tradition than my own. Of course it helped a lot, that I was able to follow the Hebrew texts of the liturgy but also the texts itself and the setting of the service felt very familiar. That was of course because Christians and Jews share not only a lot of history, but also a large part of their Holy Scriptures. Probably because of that I had the feeling, that I could truly participate in the prayers say “Amen” to what was said in the service. The differences to my own tradition, which I definitely experienced as well, did not feel larger than when visiting a service in a different Christian denomination. Of course that does not mean that Jews should be seen as just another Christian denomination – that would be wrong and dangerous, but it shows the brother- and sisterhood between Christians and Jews.

Up till now I had the feeling that people stressing the “Christian-Jewish heritage of the Western World” do this mainly to support Anti-Muslim tunes in society, and I think very often this is the case. But during this service, listening together the story how god saved the Israelites on their way through the dessert, singing psalms, praying and remembering the Holocaust I really had the feeling: “Yes we are brothers and sisters. And there is a deep understanding between us. And besides all the differences that should not be denied, we share much more than we ourselves might think.”

If I could have a wish, I would wish that this deep understanding I experienced in this Shabbat Service is possible between believers of all the different religions. I would wish that Jews can pray with Muslims and Muslims with Christians and Buddhists with Hindus and Hindus with Sikhs and Skihs with Baha’I and Baha’I with Jews and so on. That would really be “good and pleasing”!

“Hine mah tov uMah-Nayim shevet achim gam yachad“

Holocaust Memorial Day 2018

Tomorrow is Holocaust Memorial Day. Because of that a lot of HMD events are organized these days all over the world. The National Scottish Memorial event was organized by Interfaith Scotland on Wednesday. It was a successful, moving and dignified event. In the centre of the evening we heard two stories about the Russian city Rostov-on-Don. We heard about how the Nazis massacred the Jewish population with mobile gas chambers. We heard also how Feodor Michalichenko a young man, saved and protected a young boy (7 years old), who later became the chief-rabbi of Israel, in the Concentration Camp of Buchenwald. We saw a drama and listened to music performed by Glaswegian school children. We heard from young people about their trips to Auschwitz and Rwanda. The First Minister of Scotland, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, the chair of the national Holocaust Memorial Day Trust were involved in the programme as well as Holocaust survivers, guests from Rostov-on-Don, representatives of the different victim groups in the Holocaust and representatives of Scottish Jewish communities and other faith communities.

I have to admit before the event, especially in the beginning of the planning from September onwards, I was a bit sceptical, if it was possible to have this kind of event with so many involved groups in a dignified way. My fear was that I, as someone who was raised in a country where remembering the Holocaust is very present in the political and social discussions, might have different expectations about a Holocaust Memorial Day event, than people outside of Germany. About some of my thoughts I wrote in this blog in my article from 8^th September 2017. In the end I was satisfied with the way how the event went.

There is only one question I have very ambivalent feeling about: Is it right to remember “subsequent” genocides together with the Holocaust?

On the one hand I totally agree that every genocide is horrible and worth remembering. For the person who is shot to death I might not make a huge difference if they were killed by a German, a Cambodian or a Serbian soldier or if they were killed by their neighbour in Germany, Dafur or Rwanda. Everyone in the world should know about this genocides and everyone should work hard so that this list doesn’t become longer and longer. So again it is definitely worth and important to remember all the different genocides and maybe it is an mistake (but even understandable) that German remembering culture is so concentrated on remembering the Holocaust.

But there are three questions that make me doubt about combining the remembering of the Holocaust with the remembering of the “subsequent genocides”.

1. Isn’t the Holocaust a singularity?

From my point of view this question must be answered yes. Not only is the total number of victims higher than in the other remembered genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Dafur. From everything I know the other genocides (and that might be much to little in the end) the highly industrialised way of organising and conduction of the killing in Nazi Germany is a significant difference to the other genocides. Where else did such a bureaucratical way of killing millions of people exist?

2. Does remembering the Holocaust together with other genocides relativize the Holocaust (and the other genocides)?

In Germany the persons who say “Well there were horrible genocides in other places in the world as well” have usually a right wing (extremist)/neo nazi background. Those voices come often together with appeals to change the remembering culture away from a focus on the German guilt towards a more patriotic/nationalist view onto German history. This relativistic attitude is very dangerous and even, when I don’t believe anyone at the official Holocaust Memorial Day event in Scotland or somewhere else in the UK has this attitude, there is the danger of seeing the Holocaust as “just one of many bad events in history”. And even if the remembering is done in a way that doesn’t relativize the Holocaust I see the danger of relativizing the other genocides. The Holocaust with it’s millions of deaths and the different groups of victims (besides the genocide of the Jewish population, there were persons with disabilities, LGBT, Roma and political opponents of the regime killed) looks always larger than the other genocides and it could make people think about Bosnia, Cambodia, Dafur or Rwanda: “Well at least it was not as worse as the Holcoaust”.

3. When remembering genocides why only “subsequent” genocides?

Of course not every killing of people fits the official criteria of a genocide and not always is it easy to draw the exact line between a genocide and other crimes of mass murder. But there other, at least “genocide-like”, events which happened before the Holocaust. One example are the crimes of the Germans against the Ovaherero and Nama in Namibia between 1904-1908 – already with Concentration Camps and the death of half of the population of those two people. Another example would be the crimes against the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1918. Other examples could be the killing of large parts of native populations in the Americas and other parts of the world during the age of colonization.

Because of those three questions I still have my doubts whether it is good or not to combine the remembrance of the Holocaust with the remembering of the different genocides. But in the end it might be much more important that those events are remembered than the question if they should be remembered separately or all together.

Remember, Remember …

When I wander through Glasgow I see places of remembrance all over the city. Especially soldiers from the World Wars have their monuments on many places – often marked with the symbol of the poppy. There are a lot of War monuments in Germany too, with long lists of names. Maybe I’m wrong but when I see the monuments here I have the feeling that people here have a more positive attitude towards their fallen soldiers, than in Germany. The monuments speak about them as heroes, who served their country bravely. This experience makes me thinking about remembering and remembrance culture today.

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On Monday people in the United States but also in Europe and in many other countries will remember the terror attack of 9/11. I assume everyone – at least in the Western countries – who was old enough in 2001 is remembering what he or she did the day when the planes hit in into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. People will remember the victims with religious services, with silence and tears. The terror attack on 9/11 and all terror attacks before and after this date are awful and turned innocent people to victims of violence.  It is good to remember them – especially for all the people who lost people they loved. But I’m also afraid of this remembering culture, especially if the actual US president is going ta talk at this day. Will he use the victims to produce more hate and violence? And who is remembering all the (innocent) victims of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which followed 9/11? How can people or states remember without producing more enemies?

Von UA_Flight_175_hits_WTC_south_tower_9-11.jpeg: Flickr user TheMachineStops (Robert J. Fisch)derivative work: upstateNYer – UA_Flight_175_hits_WTC_south_tower_9-11.jpeg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11786300

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About one week ago I participated at the first planning meeting for Holocaust Memorial Day 2018. The official Scottish event for this Day is going to be held in Glasgow this time. The planning was good and I’m sure it will be a good event. Some days later two friends from Germany visited me in Glasgow. I told them about Holocaust Memorial Day and they were very surprised that this day is not only about remembering the Holocaust but also about remembering different other genocides, eg. in Rwanda or Bosnia. Our shared feeling was that it is very difficult to do so, because from our (German) perspective the Holocaust is different. We could not imagine that Jews would accept that the Holocaust is compared or put on the same level as other historical occasions. For me and presumably the most Germans remembering the Holocaust means remembering it as a singularity, it means remembering the German guilt, it means especially remembering the suffering of Jews, even if also Disabled, LGBT, Roma and Communists were killed in the Konzentration Camps. It means that no other occasion in history is comparable with it and it means to do everything to prevent that such things are happening again.

For me it’s interesting that people in Scotland can have a more general look at the Holocaust. I’m completely convinced that the victims of Screbrenica and Rwanda must also be remembered. But it’s difficult for me to compare their dying to Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin Von K. Weisser – Selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 2.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12313104

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The 11^th September is a special day of remembrance in my hometown Darmstadt. At night time of this day all church bells in the town are ringing. Not because of the terror attacks in the United States in 2001, but because of the bombing of Darmstadt by the Royal Airforce in 1944. 99% of the city centre were destroyed. According to official numbers about 12.000 people were killed and about 66.000 people became homeless. Remembering this attack is very difficult, because people are aware that without the bombing of Germany cities and towns it would be harder to stop Hitler and the Nazis, but it also might have killed much more people, especially women and children, than might be necessary to win the war. From my point of view a remembrance culture which cries about the victims but is also aware about the responsibility to prevent the world from another World War, another Holocaust or another 9/11 is the only appropriate way of remembering.

Remembering is never unpolitical and we all are responsible for the remembrance culture in our town, country and our world.

What do you think? How do you remember?

Saskia and her mother Brigitte’s story

Saskia Tepe is travelling to Scotland as Interfaith Scotland’s guest to join speakers at various Holocaust Memorial Day events – read her story in her own words…

When Interfaith Scotland invited me to speak as part of the 2017 National Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) events they are organising over the week beginning 22^nd January, I was absolutely delighted.

I have been talking about my mother Brigitte’s remarkable survival of the Holocaust and the aftermath of war ever since I can remember.  I try to bear witness and in paying tribute to her experiences and the choices she was forced to make, I also hope that what I tell my unsuspecting victims will make them reconsider their preconceptions!

Which is also the point of HMD.

HMD is a time when we seek to learn the lessons of the past and to recognise that genocide does not just take place on its own, it’s a steady process which can begin if discrimination, racism and hatred are not checked and prevented. The aim of Interfaith Scotland to promote peace through dialogue between people of all faiths, is part of the process that should prevent a genocide from taking place on these shores.  The United Nations is trying to ensure that this same process of dialogue takes place across the world, and has designated the 27^th January a worldwide time of remembrance, bearing witness, and education.  Most of my week long schedule of bearing witness will be held in schools. I believe, hearing a first hand testimony from a live witness makes all the difference to young people with little life experience. And given that most actual Holocaust survivors are now in the autumn of their lives, it behoves the children of survivors to carry on bearing that witness.

My mum was a Catholic Sudeten German, whom the Nazis labelled “Mischling” (mixed race Jew) because of her Jewish heritage.  As such, she experienced the tribulations of WWII during the Holocaust and again during the ethnic cleansing of German Nationals that occurred in the former Sudetenland between 1945 and 1947. She told me some of her experiences – but most of her story I had to learn from documents she left after she died, and research.  Which of course would make my story simply a second hand account.

But the HMD theme this year – “how can life go on” allows me to talk a little more about how her life continued after the war, and how the legacy of a war ravaged Europe directly affected me…

Born in 1954, I spent my early childhood in a Refugee (DP) Camp in Nurnberg, Germany.  After being fostered by families in Switzerland and Belgium, I emigrated with my mother and stepfather to the UK when I was 7 years old, as part of the 1959 UN’s World Refugee Year initiative. Contrary to common belief, many displaced people continue to languish in camps across Germany and other European countries until well into the 1960’s.  Life did not suddenly improve for those caught up in war because the bombs stopped falling.  How can life go on, when you cannot return to your home because it no longer exists or has been appropriated by strangers or an aggressive regime?  How can you build up a new life in a country that is still struggling to rebuild itself?

We spent much of our lives being aided by charities… the Red Cross, the British Refugee Council, the Catholic Church,  a teacher’s Association, and countless individuals who offered my family friendship and understanding as we struggled with ill health, low paid work, hindered by a lack of language skills.  In those days, adoptive countries took no account of foreign based qualifications.  War is a great equaliser.  However,  it also makes you realise that kindness exists in abundance and is not to be taken for granted.

Then of course, there is the not so small matter of the mental scars that are left.  Painful memories deliberately buried deep so that you don’t give up hope, and can face looking forward and plan for a new life.  And to do that, you must come to terms with the worst in mankind, your personal losses, choose whether to forgive or blame, and learn to trust again.

My mother was able to do all of those things. It was me, the second generation survivor, as we are sometimes called, that found things more difficult.  Because the children of survivors of genocide have their own cross to bear.  They carry their parents’ pain, whilst trying to assuage it and protect them from more.  They try extra hard to fulfill their parents’ ambitions for their futures, whilst being the go between with strangers and the sometimes incomprehensible cultural norms and traditions and expectations of their new foreign homes.

And the children become the voice that their parents – the survivors – lost.  They are the ones left with a specific burden.  Angry at the injustice their parents encountered, they encourage their parents to tell their stories if they can, or else they take on the responsibility themselves to shout out the message, that a great sin against humanity was committed.  And that those stories of survival, during the genocide and afterwards, must become a lesson for new generations to learn.

Read more about Holocaust Memorial Day 2017

Follow Saskia’s journey via her Twitter account.

Are Genocides Worth Remembering?

A shortened version of this originally appeared in Scotland on Sunday on 23rd January 2016.

On 27^th January Scotland, and the UK, remembers the Holocaust and other genocides.  Given the challenging financial situation in the UK, is the hosting of memorial meetings across the country a good use of Scottish or UK Government resources?  Isn’t life depressing enough without having to remember that the last 100 years has witnessed many states sponsoring the planned, systematic mass murder of their own populations including Turkey, Germany, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and in the Darfur region of the Sudan?

Millions die every year from hunger, disease and war so why pause on 27^th January and remember the Holocaust and other genocides?

In his book ‘Rwanda and Genocide in the 20th Century’, former secretary-general of Medecins Sans Frontieres, Alain Destexhe, says: “Genocide is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it. Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group.  Genocide is therefore both the gravest and greatest of the crimes against humanity.”

The UN Convention on Genocide came into effect in January 1951 and it is estimated that 20 million men, women and children have died as a result of the Holocaust and other genocides in just over 100 years.  Despite a UN Convention; such shocking figures; and the now overused and under implemented words ‘never again’ the genocidal process is still allowed to develop.

So what is the point of remembering?  Is remembrance enough?   Remembering without understanding the process of genocide might well make us feel marginally better but will it prevent further genocides happening?  Surely we must find better ways of learning from remembrance and from challenging the processes of genocide whenever and wherever we see them beginning to take root.

Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide watch has identified ‘ten stages of genocide’; classification; symoblization; discrimination; dehumanization; organisation; polarization; preparation; persecution; extermination and denial. In each of these stages he has outlined what can be done to stop the advancement of the process and has stated that ‘ultimately the best antidote to genocide is popular education and the development of social and cultural tolerance for diversity’. He has further identified that ‘the movement that will end genocide must come not from international armed interventions, but rather from popular resistance to every form of discrimination; dehumanization, hate speech, and formation of hate groups…. it must rise from each of us who have the courage to challenge discrimination, hatred, and tyranny’.

Education is often put forward as a tool for building a fairer, better society and I would be the first to agree that education is crucial – but I would ask the question ‘education for what?’  The Nazi’s were extremely well educated; educational games were developed for children that encouraged hatred of the Jews; scientists developed the equipment of the death camps; social scientists developed the racist theories that underpinned the Holocaust; even the cultural education of classical music, literature and the arts were used as tools of propaganda against the Jews.  So the question again has to be asked ‘education for what’?   Do we need to have, right at the heart of our education system, the ‘social and cultural tolerance for diversity’ that is identified by Gregory Stanton as the ‘best antidote’ for genocide?

Children spend much of their lives in educational environments but just how much of that time is actually spent exploring tolerance for diversity?  Are the children of Scotland learning about cultural and religious diversity and its positive impact on society?  Are examples of best practice shared throughout the country?  Are programmes being developed for schools that really celebrate global citizenship?  As Director of a National Interfaith Dialogue organisation, Interfaith Scotland, I could ask are children learning the tools needed to successfully talk about difference and to do so with respect and openness.   Hopefully the answer to all of the above is yes but educators and Governments need to be constantly vigilant to the voices that would sow distrust and fear in society.

And what of the environment outside the classroom; what of our adult world and our ‘tolerance for diversity’?  How influenced are all of us by what we read, hear and see in the media? The media has always had a powerful role to play in the process of genocide. Historically it has been a tool used effectively in the dehumanizing stage of genocide.   So are we constantly vigilant and questioning of the stories told in our national newspapers, on TV and on the radio?   If we think of some of the recent reporting on the current refugee crisis it would be hard not to identify shocking negativity towards refugees in some national newspapers.  As far back as 2010 a Red Cross report stated that 72% of respondents in a poll said newspaper reporting about asylum seekers and refugees was negative and the public most readily associated the word scroungers with refugees.  No one can have missed the extreme language used by Katie Hopkins, columnist for the Sun Newspaper, when she described migrants as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘feral’ – similar language used in the Rwandan genocide!  Thank God the decent British public rose up and condemned her, demanding an apology.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, this Wednesday, Scotland will remember the Holocaust and other genocides.  It will embrace the theme for 2016 – ‘don’t stand by’ and will welcome to Scotland Mukesh Kapila, the former UN Ambassador to the Sudan who had the courage to blow the whistle on the genocide taking place in Darfur.  Scotland will also welcome Inge Auerbacher, who as a child survived Terezin a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.  Of the 15,000 children who entered only 1% survived.  Mukesh and Inge, both know only too well that doing nothing to prevent discrimination, hatred and intolerance has terrible, unthinkable consequences.  Inge was a child in November 1938 when she witnessed first had ‘Kristallnacht’. She saw how Nazis torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, killed close to 100 Jews and in the aftermath sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.

Mukesh witnessed first-hand the atrocities committed in Darfur.  In his book ‘Against a Tide of Evil’ he tells the moving story of how in March 2004 he was sitting in his office in Khartoum writing a report for the UN about the situation unfolding in Darfur when he heard a commotion outside his office. A tall woman in torn, dirty clothes fought her way in to speak with him. Her name was Aisha. He offered her a chair but, fearing she would spoil it, she sat cross-legged on the floor. She had travelled from North Darfur, from a village near the town of Tawila, and now she told him her story. She had been in Tawila with her family on market day when Arab militia – the Janjaweed – on horseback and in vehicles stormed the marketplace. They rounded up the women and girls and raped them systematically “like it was a production line in a factory”.  Her father, husband and two sons were in the crowd as she was raped repeatedly until she passed out. Huts and trees were set alight. In the aftermath, she couldn’t find her family and fled 1,000km to Khartoum.  This was a testimony from one brave victim, sitting on the floor of his office and it was the catalyst he needed to blow the whistle, to defy his superiors and throw the story open, telling the world that “the first genocide of the 21st century” was taking place in Sudan.

In an interview with Alice Wyllie of the Scotsman Mukesh said that ‘the higher you climb in office, the more distant you become- the numbers are there but in a way the bigger the numbers, the more abstract they become. In Darfur, meeting the individual victims and perpetrators, I began to realise that each little mini situation in the big drama was utterly unique. This really came home to me when I returned to Rwanda … for the first time in 18 years. I looked at a room full of skulls and bones and, with my medical knowledge I could tell how each individual had died; a blow on the head, a machete in the back of the neck. And I realised that amidst the hundreds of thousands, each death was unique and hence each survival was unique. From that grew the idea that I wasn’t interested in speaking to the intellectuals or the policy makers. I was interested in speaking to ordinary people’.

It will be the ordinary people of Scotland that Mukesh and Inge will talk – so yes Scotland will remember but it will do so much more.  In the coming week a befitting national memorial event will be held in Falkirk; hundreds of local memorial events will take place across Scotland; thousands of school children will learn about the Holocaust and other genocides; films will be shown; dialogue events will take place; public lectures at Universities across the country will be held – and we will not forget; we will honour the victims; and we will do what we can to understand, to learn, to speak out, and to say very loudly and very clearly that yes the Holocaust and other genocides are worth remembering.

Dr. Maureen Sier, Director, Interfaith Scotland