Remembering the Holocaust

Each year National Holocaust Day, held on the 27^th January, seeks to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust as well as stressing a continuing commitment to oppose racism and genocide. The date is significant as it is the day  the Red Army liberated Auschwitz Concentration camp in 1945. This year makes it the 75^th anniversary and the theme is” keeping the memory alive “

I met a concentration camp survivor purely by chance one day in the early 1980s on the Abbey Hulton Council estate in Stoke. I was working for the Education Department collecting information of Free School meal applicants when I visited a woman who was looking after her grandchildren.  She was born in Vienna and had witnessed the Nazi takeover in 1934. She was from a devoutly Catholic family. Their piety made them fall foul of an uncle who was a senior figure in the Nazi Party. He sent the whole family to a Concentration Camp as their faith made him question their loyalty to the Fuhrer. She showed me the concentration number tattooed on her arm. It ended badly for her uncle who was assassinated by Yugoslavian partisans.

More recently I met a local woman who was living in a small Dutch town during the war whose best friend was  a Jewish girl called Saartje aged 6 who along with other Jewish residents of the town was taken one spring day in 1942 ultimately to die at Auschwitz. The memory of her little friend fate haunts her still.

 2015 as well as being the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is also the 100^th anniversary of the genocide of the Armenian people in the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Armenians, a significant Christian minority, in a Muslim country fell under suspicion when Turkey declared war on the Allied powers in World War One especially as one of the enemy powers Russia was sympathetic to the Armenian cause of self determination.  Following a Turkish military defeat when Armenians were accused of acting like a fifth column for the Allies the Turks began a systematic campaign to eliminate the Armenian populations. There were mass executions, and death marches of men, women and children across the Syrian Desert to concentration camps with many dying along the way of exhaustion, exposure and starvation. It was estimated that approaching 1.5 million Armenians died in what historians would later recognise as genocide.

Much of this was quite well documented at the time by Western diplomats, missionaries and others, creating widespread wartime outrage against the Turks in the West.  News even reached Staffordshire where the Tamworth Herald of November 20^th 1915 carries a very full account of atrocities perpetrated.  Although its ally, Germany, was silent at the time, in later years documents have surfaced from high ranking German diplomats and military officers expressing horror at what was going on.

But the message of the thoroughness of the Turkish actions and the indifference of the West was not lost on one particular person. To justify his wish to destroy the Polish Nation Hitler remarked in 1939 “Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”  And in Turkey today the fate of the Armenians still remains a taboo subject. In fact raising the subject can lead to a criminal charge, but the fate of Armenians still needs to be kept alive in Turkey and the World.

Baghdad 1917 and 2003

I have only a vague memory of my grand father who died when I was 3 in 1958. He was a First World War veteran. He did not fight on the Western Front, but spent his war service in the Middle East in what is now Iraq. In 1914-8 the area was called Mesopotamia and part of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. He did say of his time in the 7th Battalion North Staffs that he was present at the fall of Baghdad in March 1917. I came across an account of the Staffords as they were given the honour of leading the Allied Forces into the City. It is certain that the account has a familiarity to the eyes of modern soldiers

“On the morning of the 12th, greatly to our joy, we were chosen to be the first Battalion to march in and commence the searching of the city. Every available man paraded, just about 300, and at mid-day we marched away from our bivouac as smart a battalion as was anywhere to be found. We entered the city by the north-gate—the Bab-el-Muadham—over which the Union Jack was floating in the breeze, and led by Lieut.-Col. J. W. Ley on his pony, Blue Boy, we marched down Khalil Pasha Street (now New Street) towards the centre of the town. Vast crowds of men, women, and children pressed upon us on all sides, clapping their hands in rhythm and chanting " AUah-il-AUah ! "Arriving at the top of " Bridge Street " we turned to our left into the Jewish quarter, and commenced searching houses, each Company being allotted several streets. The procedure was as follows : The street to be searched was cleared, and pickets were posted at intervals. The Company Commander and Platoon Officers with escorts went into the houses and searched them for arms,ammunition, hidden Turks, or loot.”

86 years after this event more or less to the day another allied force entered Baghdad. It is 10 years since a mainly American led coalition embarked upon the invasion of Iraq. I ,like a million others, took part in the February  mass demonstration in London against the onset of the war. I have no doubt a decade on that the 2003 war represents the greatest blunder in British Foreign Policy since Munich in 1938. I am sure supporters of the war will point to  the downfall of the odious Hussain regime, the creation of a semi autonomous Kurdish state in the north and freedom, although whether that includes Gays, Christians and women is a moot point. It seems to me the main gainer from the war was Iran ironically which  it is claimed does or is close to having weapons of mass destruction.

A Leek soldier in the Crimea 1854-5 Part 1

The Staffordshire Advertiser of the 30^th January 1855 carried in its pages a series of fascinating letters from a young Leek man fighting in the Crimean war to his brother in England. The documents offer an fascinating insight into a war that  lives on in such phrases as “ thin red line”, and “ Charge of the Light Brigade”. This engagement involved Sargent Major John Allen later the landlord of the Swan. . The Leek correspondent was a private soldier in the 20^th Regiment of Foot, later the Lancashire Fusiliers. He and Allen were part of allied force fighting the Russians..

How did we find ourselves in a war against the Russians? The cause of the war were fears that Czarist Russia was looking at expansion  at the expense of a disintegrating Ottoman Empire. The British and French felt that such an growth threatened their own colonial interests and war was declared in 1854.

The condition of the British Army was poor. Officers bought their commissions. the ordinary soldiers were of poor quality and discipline enforced by flogging. (The Leek soldier, however seems to be a pious man). The leadership was also lamentable. The Commander in Chief was the elderly Lord Raglan who had lost an arm at Waterloo nearly 40 years before. He frequently had to be reminded that the French were no longer the enemy. It should be said that the French were the more professional as they had seen recent conflict in Algeria

Our soldier left England on the slow moving “Columba” on 17^th July. It was an eventual voyage; there was a collision with Portuguese vessel.. The 20^th regiment had a brief stay in Malta and they were later caught in a dreadful storm in the Mediterrian. The battered convoy arrived in Constantinople on 1^st August. They reached the Crimea weeks later. It was an impressive force as there were 400 ships in the flotilla. The travel weary soldier started on the march to Sevastapol on the 19^th September and marched 40 miles. The force comprised of 80,000 French and British troops. Sevastopol the main port was surrounded by hills. He was soon in action. His regiment assaulted the heights above the town with heavy losses “it was a dreadful sight to see”, he commented. The British marched on to Black River where again they were brought up in battle array, but the Russians retreated