Mayor of Buckingham unveils Holocaust Memorial Stone

Buckingham has marked Holocaust Memorial Day, 2022, with the unveiling of a memorial stone in the town’s Bourton Park.

27^th January is the global day of remembrance for the six million people who died in the Holocaust under Nazi persecution during the Second World War, as well as for other genocides including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

It was on the 27^th January 1945, 77 years ago today, that the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland was liberated by Russian soldiers while advancing westwards towards Germany. An estimated 1.1 million people died at that camp alone.

The Holocaust Memorial Stone in Bourton Park, intended to act as a focal point for remembering those horrific events, was unveiled by the town’s mayor, Margaret Gateley, accompanied by the town clerk, Paul Hodson.

Among the honoured guests in attendance were the Lord-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, Countess Howe, the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, George Anson and Buckingham’s MP, Greg Smith.

As part of the commemoration the mayor read a poem written by Lolo Lewis, a British soldier who helped liberate Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in northern Germany, in April 1945. The poem is called ‘Belsen Silence’ and you can watch the reading here:

[VIDEO: Buckingham mayor, Margaret Gateley, reads 'Belsen Silence']

Speaking afterwards to Bucks Radio, the mayor said: “I think it's really important that we don't forget and learn the lessons from history, and it was appalling what happened during the Holocaust. We're near to a school here and those children need to learn what happened.”

“A stone is something special and there's the symbol of the candle on the stone and one of the things that I think is important is there were many good people around during that period - there's good and evil in the world but light does overcome the darkness of evil.”

[PHOTO: The people of Buckingham gather for the unveiling of the Holocaust Memorial Stone]

We were especially privileged to speak to Dovid Trepp, who attended the event with his wife. Describing himself as a modern Orthodox Jew, Dovid told us: “My family lost over 400 in the Holocaust – 14 in the camps and 386, we don’t know where they were murdered.

“Antisemitism is on the rise, racism is on the rise, so having something like this has to be here to remind people what happened in the past and we can’t make mistakes like this in the future.”

He went on to describe how his father’s childhood was robbed by the persecution and said his grandmother was made deaf by bombing raids during the war and often had to survive on a diet of just coffee and cigarettes.

Returning to the theme of the rise of antisemitism in the UK, Mr Trepp shared some of his own experiences: “I can see people’s eyes and you can see the hatred in their eyes and they murmur things, I’m not going to say the words, but four-letter words, because they can see visibly, I’m a Jewish person.

“I think to myself, I’ve done nothing to you, why do you hate me? You hate me because of my religion, you hate me because I’m a Jew? You’ve never met me.”

He added defiantly: “The Rabbis have told us many times don’t wear your Yarmulke out but I wear mine because it’s a symbol that we’re still alive. We’re still alive.”

Dovid said that he believes the key to change is educating children about what happened during the Holocaust.

[PHOTO: Dovid Trepp]

Sadly, the latest available data suggests that 2021 was the worst year on record for antisemitic hate incidents in the UK, with 639 recorded just in the month of May, the highest ever for any month-long period.

In August 2021, Mark Gardner, Chief Executive of the Community Security Trust, described the levels of hatred in Britain towards Jewish people as “worse than anything seen in decades.”

We also spoke to Buckingham MP Greg Smith today, who said: “The death of six million people simply because of their faith was to my mind humanity’s greatest evil against humanity.

“It’s incredibly important that collectively we never allow that heinous evil to be forgotten because unfortunately there is a pattern in human history where events repeat themselves and of course there have been genocides since the Holocaust.”

[PHOTO: MP Greg Smith]

It is intended that a remembrance event will take place each year at the stone, going forward.

Stones hold a special meaning in the Jewish faith, especially when placed on graves because it is believed they keep the person’s soul from leaving the burial site.