Address Given by Bishop Tricia at Holocaust Memorial Gathering

An address given by the Bishop at the Holocaust Memorial Day gathering on Sunday 26th January 2025

2025 sees the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a place synonymous with the industrial-scale murder of Jewish people, and others. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the Bosnian genocide, during which over 100,000 people were killed, including the massacre at Srebrenica. These significant anniversaries shape our marking of Holocaust Memorial Day this year.

But how are we to remember in a world scarred by violence and hatred, past and present? Miroslav Volf, theologian and survivor of violence in the Balkans writes: “To remember rightly is to make past suffering not an instrument of further violence, but a source of transformation.”

We begin then by affirming that remembering is essential and powerful.

At Auschwitz, liberation came late for many and too late for over a million souls; Jewish people, Roma, disabled people, LGBT+ people and those who spoke out. Those who survived, carried with them the physical, emotional, and spiritual weight of their suffering. In Bosnia, the world watched as neighbour turned against neighbour, as communities once united by shared history were torn apart by hatred.

In remembering we give priority to honouring the victims; we also face the truth of what we human beings are capable of when hatred and indifference take root. Failing to remember would be to deny the humanity we share. So we remember by listening carefully to their stories and where possible to their own words. We listen that they may be honoured, given the dignity they deserve and that we individually and collectively might learn and be changed.

As we remember it’s important that we do so in ways which bring justice and liberation avoiding the fuelling of division and cycles of violence.  How then, do we remember rightly?

Remembering rightly means remembering truthfully. The Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide did not just happen. They began with words and attitudes which brought about fear, suspicion, division, exclusion, and dehumanization. The seeds of hatred were planted long before the camps were built or the massacres began.

To remember truthfully is to acknowledge the uncomfortable truths of history, including the complicity of those who stood by in silence. It means being watchful in our own day and rejecting denial and distortion, whether it comes from Holocaust deniers or those who minimize the suffering of people in dreadful situations today. Remembering rightly means being willing to face uncomfortable truths.

 Secondly, remembering rightly means remembering with compassion the people who are so much more than numbers. It means remembering them in all their richness. Remembering not just their death but how much the world was enriched by their presence and potential and diminished by their loss. Right remembering enters into the pain of others. It reaches out with compassion to the victims and survivors of acts of evil.

Thirdly, right remembering involves calling for justice while seeking to understand the forces that lead to such atrocities.

Miroslav Volf reminds us that to truly understand, hard as it is, we must consider the factors which lead to distortion of truth, hatred and fear. Never to excuse evil actions, but to recognize that to truly overcome them, our task is to transform not perpetuate them.

I was privileged to spend time with a man called Kemal Pervanic. His story stays with me. A Bosnian, born in 1968, Kamal had no particular faith but his mother was a Muslim. Then, as life began to change in the Balkans, he noticed some Serbian neighbours looking at him differently.

When attacks on Muslims began Kemal was taken to the notorious Omarska concentration camp, not knowing whether other family members were alive or dead. Shockingly he knew some of his interrogators and camp guards; one was his former teacher, another a former classmate. Tortured and trapped in a state of terror Kamal witnessed brutal killings.

Eventually released he went to England but the suffering persisted. He says of his darkest moments: ‘I imagined killing my torturers and feeling absolutely nothing as I did it’. Ten years later he made the journey to his old village, now just grass and rubble, to ask some former neighbours why they’d taken part in the violence. He met up with two of his former teachers. One seemed full of remorse, the other, the interrogator, far from it. The visit was traumatic. Back in England Kamal suffered a breakdown. He describes what followed afterwards:

‘Then something strange happened. One cold January morning, suddenly I found myself saying, ‘I forgive you’. Year after year I’d carried the memory of the perpetrators on my shoulders. When this moment came I felt a huge release. I didn’t decide not to hate because I’m a good person, I decided not to hate because hating would have finished the job they’d started so successfully. It would have poisoned me.’

That was his moment of liberation.

To remember rightly is to remember truthfully, with compassion and so that things may be different; not perpetuating violence but seeking to transform it for good. For, remembering rightly is not only about the past; it is about the future. It calls us to transformative action:

  • to build bridges across divides, to foster communities where differences are celebrated rather than feared.
  • To speak out and to act when truth is being distorted for evil ends.
  • to be active participants in creating a world where the dignity of every human being is upheld.

In the words of Elie Wiesel, survivor of Auschwitz: “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

As we are shaped by their witness, those who endured, we in turn are called to be witnesses.

May our witness honour each precious life caught up in the horrors of the past, transform the present, and shape a future where every person is treated with the dignity and compassion they deserve, that we all might be liberated.

Liberated from hatred.

Liberated through truth.

And liberated through compassion.