Unbelievable and inspiring all at the same time, he recognized our family name and knew of our family…and all by a chance meeting…

so give a bit more of the context … tell the story

so give a bit more of the context … tell the story

please 🙂

Very inspiring, tell us more (and I promise I won’t mention any Apple products 😉 )

Going to listen to one tonight in a school hall;room full of 14/15 yo and you can hear a pin drop.

double post

Pure chance meet as a colleague is designing his 100yr bday invite, I went with him as he had mentioned about Kenya and fleeing Germany to my colleague yesterday, so I went with him today to meet the guy (we don’t normally do house visits but this is an exception !)

The guy was still really alert swims twice a week and very active, we spoke about how I have hardly any family on my mothers side (all wiped out) and what family I do have managed to escape to Kenya , the chance meet bit is that he had heard of my family, his story was that at the age of 26 he escaped from a camp in Germany and some how managed to end up in Kenya…I didn’t ask any questions as experience has told me never to ask a concentration camp survivor any questions they will tell you if they want…he is not the first survivor I have met…

The post isn’t about my family even though I never had the chance to meet any of them or what could have been future generation relatives today bought a lot into perspective…when I have sh 1t days…its nothing compared to what they may have seen or experienced…

My next door neighbour, who very recently died in his mid 90’s, spent best part of four years in a POW camp in Burma. Didn’t sound all that pleasant…

Rachel

It is a shame that as survivors die off, then then the impact / understanding of the Holocaust will diminish.
It is a lesson that nobody should forget but unfortunately it will happpen again and again …
Sachenhausen, on a damp , grey march day, is one of the grimist places I have ever been. Perhaps because it was so close to the centre of the town.

It is a shame that as survivors die off, then then the impact / understanding of the Holocaust will diminish.

Sadly during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 90’s it happened again, thankfully not on the samescale

@mrmoofo the UN has an active holocaust awareness programme. It’s actually quite broad as sadly there are many genocides alongside that perpetuated by the Germans on the Jews. I went to an event last year, there is designated remembrance day each year.

then then the impact / understanding of the Holocaust will diminish

Do they still have the Holocaust section at the Imperial War Museum? Everyone should go see that.

I remember seeing someone with a number tattooed on their forearm in Greece a long time ago.
Assumed they were from a camp.

I used to deal with a chap called Alex who sadly passed away a few years back aged 92. He and his wife, who died a couple of years earlier, both survived Auschwitz. At the camp they were separated from their son, Ralph, who they didn’t see again until 16 years after the war had ended. Both parties had assumed that the other had perished.

I still keep in contact with Ralph, who now runs his father’s business, despite not working with him anymore.

Their story is a triumph of human spirit over the disgusting things that some members of our species are capable of inflicting on fellow human beings.

Two nicer guys you could not hope to meet.

So, just as a contrast, I was walking through Cologne in September, and was more than a tad surprised to see a 30 plus year old man walking down the street with a very prominent “SS” tattoo on the shin of his right leg.

And being shown to all and sundry … so the hatred still exists

A lot of stories and experiences are being lost – I never met my grandfather – died just after I was born – but he served on the Arctic convoys. I had an uncle involved in the Yangtze incident. I often meet very elderly people with amazing stories of what they did in various wars.

My 10 year old was watching something the other day about a British POW who was held at the POW camp next to Auschwitz death camp – he went on work details with the concentration camp inmates, and knew what was happening there to the people he worked with. First time my lad had really heard someone talk – indirectly – about the Holocaust. He was quite upset that people could do such things, which is a good thing in my book.