No need for Holocaust rant (From Echo)

No need for Holocaust rant

1:09pm Friday 3rd February 2012 in News

We attended the Holocaust memorial service and were surprised the speaker, whose brief was to introduce the main speaker, launched into a lengthy harangue, blaming the UK and US governments for not intervening to save the Jews. He asserted our intelligence was well aware of what was going on and could have stopped it.

Given that we were fighting for our lives at the time, an invasion was imminent and we stood alone after the fall of France, I wanted to ask him just how he supposed this could have been done.

If we had capitulated after Dunkirk in the summer of 1940, as very nearly happened, an awful lot more Jews would have been deported and killed.

In my experience, when asked to introduce a respected speaker at a public event, you do so briefly, courteously and without going off into a rant of your own.

Obviously someone else, apart from us, found the details of the main speech too harrowing, because someone burst out into an interruption of loud cries and shouts which did not, however, faze the speaker. She just carried on, but we couldn’t bear any more.

One day I’ll go to that tree which was planted, lay some flowers, say a quiet prayer and have my own private commemoration. I shan’t go to any of the public events ever again.

Margaret Stoll
Rochefort Drive
Rochford