OPINION: I owe it to Philip and the six million to redouble my efforts
Writes Paul Giannasi, trustee at the Holocaust Memorial Trust, reflects on the reasons behind his visit this week to Auschwitz and the Polish town of Tarnów.
In 2013, I was presented with a challenge by a Holocaust survivor – to join him in his life’s mission.
I was in Warsaw, representing the UK at an international event to combat contemporary forms of antisemitism. I accompanied a friend, Jardena, to visit the memorial for the Warsaw Ghetto. She wanted to pay respects to her relatives who were murdered during the Holocaust.
We were approached by Philip Bialowitz, a jeweller from New York. I took this photograph as he engaged us in conversation, asking why we were visiting the memorial.
Philip then told us his remarkable story, filled with tragedy.
At the age of just 17, he and his brother were part of the uprising at the Sobibor extermination camp, which overcame the Nazi guards and helped 300 prisoners to escape. On the night of the uprising, their leader stood on a table and demanded that, should they escape, they dedicate their life to giving witness to the atrocities.
It suddenly dawned on me that here was Philip still carrying out his mission, some 70 years later. That crystallising moment still brings a tear to my eye as I sit in Kraków writing this.
I’m currently here, at the end of a trip with a wonderful group of staff and fellow trustees of The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
This charity is dedicated to memorialising the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides and sharing what we learn, to help societies avoid such atrocities in the future.
This week, we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and also the town of Tarnów, where, in June 1940, the first mass-transportation of Polish political prisoners was dispatched to the death camp. Many Jews would follow.
For me, the most harrowing part was our visit to the forest of Zbylitowska Góra, which initially appeared peaceful and idyllic, filled with vibrant birdsong. We were escorted to the area where around 10,000 men, women and children were murdered and left unidentified in mass graves.
The horror was all the more poignant when accompanying friends who fear that their lost relatives may be amongst the victims here.
The question I struggle to get my head around is how ordinary police and soldiers murder groups including children. In my role as hate crime advisor to the UK police, I have trained police around the world, I have regularly utilised the history of Battalion 101, a notorious group of German police volunteers. Many of these murderers later admitted that they were not acting under duress, as we may have anticipated, but were willing volunteers.
The question I struggle to get my head around is how ordinary police and soldiers murder groups including children.
Most shocking to modern officers is how their photographs, taken prior to the murders, appear so similar to their own teams with similar backgrounds, until they freely killed defenceless citizens in support of fascist ideologies.
We recently announced the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 as ‘The fragility of freedom’. We have learnt that there are always early indicators of potential genocide. It is the duty of leaders to recognise and counter these signs, knowing that, without strong moral leadership, societies can quickly escalate through the ‘ten stages’ of genocide.
This week, we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and also the town of Tarnów, where, in June 1940, the first mass-transportation of Polish political prisoners was dispatched to the death camp. Many Jews would follow.
This morning, I was sent an account of a troubled UK teenager, who thought his life was unfair and sought a gun so that he could emulate the Neo-Nazi mass-murderers he idolised.
Sadly, Philip Bialowitz died in 2016, at the age of 90. Despite his life’s work, his mission remained incomplete. The world remains a fractious place, where freedoms are, indeed, fragile. Since our meeting, I have been to the scene of more recent atrocities, in places like Myanmar and Srebrenica.
In such moments of despair, or when I read of disaffected teenagers seeking solutions in Nazi ideologies, I wonder whether we are even gaining ground.
We must all play our part. We owe it to Philip and the six million who died in the Holocaust to redouble our efforts to eradicate hate.
- Paul Giannasi OBE is a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Trust and Hate Crime Advisor to National Police Chief’s Council.
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