“The last camp I was in, 15,000 children were there. Only 100 of us survived. Why me? Why did they choose me to survive?”
That deeply moving and powerful thought was offered by a remarkable 88-year-old man as he stood watching candles being carefully packed by hand into boxes during a visit to a workshop in Watford this morning.
Those candles are being sent to addresses across the country for Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) tomorrow when people are being encouraged to light a candle at 8pm in remembrance of those murdered during the Holocaust and more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
Steven Frank was one of those few children who survived being held in the Theresienstadt ghetto camp in occupied Czechoslovakia and he joined senior figures from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to watch the candles being packed at Watford Workshop for the annual Light the Darkness campaign.
The Chorleywood resident has spent many years giving talks in schools about the Holocaust, regarding it almost as his “mission” to do so after surviving the horrors of the Nazis during World War Two.
“I remember when I retired I thought what have I done in my life?” Mr Frank said. “And I thought why was I allowed to live? I’m a scientist but I haven’t invented some great big chemical process or analytical technique, I’m not Nobel Laurette, why was I chosen to live by whoever makes these decisions?
“All I can think is because they wanted me to do this job, give the talks. And I’ve been doing it for 26 years now."
As well as the campaign to light a candle, landmarks across the UK such as the London Eye and Blackpool Tower will also be lit in purple tomorrow to mark HMD.
“Genocide is a dreadful thing. And the Holocaust was really the first genocide that anybody really took any notice of and started doing something about,” Mr Frank said when asked what tomorrow means to him.
“The tragedy is that mankind doesn’t seem to learn from the terrible things that happened to people when they’re subjected to that sort of thing.
“It really came very much to life for me when [the war] started in Ukraine. There were pictures being shown on television of people going to cafes, having a cup of coffee, sitting outside in the sunshine and a few months later they were being bombed to hell.
“And you suddenly realise that freedom, that life that they had has been curtailed and now they’re struggling, they’re fighting like so many other people in the world are doing.
“Whenever you have war you have hatred and to me hatred is the cancer of the mind. If you can’t cure it, you die. And if all this hatred isn’t cured, we shall all die.”
The Watford Workshop, in Dalton Way, has been providing supported employment, work and life skills training to adults with disabilities since 1964.
The charity has been supplying candles for Holocaust Memorial Day events for the past three years and although it is in regular contact with the Trust, this was the first time it has hosted a visit of this significance.
Partnership manager Gill Nightingale said: “Given the history of the Holocaust, it’s particularly poignant that it is a disabled charity and it is people with disabilities that are creating that candle to remember those who lost their lives.”
Chair of the HMD Trust’s board of trustees Laura Marks said: “Not only is there a joy in supporting a charity to pack our candles, not only is there a joy in knowing that the candles are going out, but there’s also this added dimension that the charity is relevant to Holocaust Memorial Day – and not a relevance people think about much.
“When people think about Holocaust Memorial Day I think they think about the Jewish people who were murdered by the Nazis, but the Nazis murdered other people too. And other people over the years have continued to be persecuted for who they are and, even to this day, there is prejudice against people with disabilities.
“Our theme this year is the fragility of freedom and, here at the Watford Workshop, we’re not only thinking about the freedoms that were lost in the Holocaust, we’re thinking about the freedoms that people have today – the freedom to work, the freedom to earn a living – and it’s so special being here and seeing people doing something that is so life affirming.”
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