British ex-servicemen join March of the Living in Auschwitz

James Hill and Nick Redshaw each spent 15 years in service with the Royal Marines, before being medically discharged. And last week, because of their subsequent participation in the Veterans’ Games in Israel, the two men took part in the annual March of the Living in Auschwitz — and told Jewish News of the “profound” effect that both Poland and Israel had on them.

Nick, from Telford in Shropshire, left the Marines in 2000 after a series of traumatic brain injuries which led to “a significant brain haemorrhage” and major surgery. He was, he says, “gutted” to realise his career in the military was over: “In 1997 I was training for the Olympics, I was a world-class canoeist.”

His wife Bethan was told to prepare for the worst when he had his brain surgery. But just 12 months after his operation, he represented Great Britain in the Wild Water Racing World Cup in New Zealand, winning a medal and ending the season fifth in the world.

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After leaving the Marines Nick spent nearly 20 years teaching A-level psychology, but he says both he and his wife were throughly drained, physically and emotionally, by the effects of his serious brain injury.

In 2019 he was offered the opportunity to take part in the Veteran Games, a project of Beit Halochem UK, competing against Israeli ex-servicemen and women who had suffered trauma or physical injury. It was an opportunity Nick and Bethan seized with both hands, a “recharge of our batteries” and a “life-changing” experience for the couple.

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“The Jewish people have given us energy”, says Nick, who describes himself as religious. As a graduate of the Veterans’ Games, he, together with other British ex-servicemen, was invited to join the March of the Living in Poland. For Nick it was “humbling” to be with the marchers and “inspiring” to meet the Holocaust survivors. “I joined the Marines so that this sort of thing could never happen again. I was blown away by the sheer scale of what I saw in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the industrial level of it, the football stadiums of people.”

James Hill’s story echoes that of Nick. He is a former Royal Marines commando who was wounded in the legs and head while serving in Afghanistan, again after 15 years of service. Birmingham-born, he and his family now live in Bournemouth. He was injured in 2013 and left the Marines the following year.

James was invited to take part in the 2023 Veterans’ Games in Israel via the Royal Navy’s Hasler rehabilitation centre in Plymouth. “It was a no-brainer that I could take my wife and family with me,” he says, speaking warmly of his week in Israel, soaking up “the culture, the community, the people — it blew me away”.

Though he knew little about Israel before his visit, when he was asked to join the March of the Living in Poland, James set to and began learning about the Holocaust. “I began to understand the pain of the people,” he says, adding that it was the stories of individual lives that affected him the most, and caused “a lump in my throat”.

But, said James, the event also caused him to question how regular military personnel — such as he himself had been — could get up every day and inflict such cruelty on others. He wondered how he would have reacted in such circumstances.

These days, James is still involved in rehabilitation, but this time of animals, inspired by the dog who was injured when he was shot in Afghanistan. Now he runs a dog rehabilitation centre in Bournemouth, called Pawseidon, in a nod to his Marine background.

Of his March of the Living experience, James says that he and the other veterans were “welcomed so warmly. I would recommend this journey, one hundred per cent.”