Lest we forget

Date: 01/01/2014

A ghastly, haunting, factual image that serves to remind us of Heine's quote:
"Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."

This was the year Hitler came to power, and my late mother was born. Wanda was Polish, and had to leave Poland with her mother and brother when the Second World War broke out. Her family lost everything, home, relatives. ... the lot. But they never lost their will to survive. They became refugees, travelled across Siberia and the Middle East, and found their way to a British refugee colony in Uganda. My family came over to Britain in 1948, and made this country (at its best, open, fair and tolerant) their home.

"Lest we forget" - now increasingly used for Remembrance Day tributes- is a line taken from Kipling's poem, "Recessional", composed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Hidden in this photo is our defiance against oppression, even if it is only in our response to its horror.