Holocaust Commemoration Week Events in Scotland, 2007 Jan 20–28
- An inclusive round table on the Nazi Holocaust
- A Scottish tour by historian Lenni Brenner
- Performances of Jim Allen’s play Perdition
"When I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-eighties, and the U.S. government was supporting death squads in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy…My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be circled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other atrocities in history. To remember what happened to the six million Jews, I said, served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world." American Jewish Historian, Howard Zinn
The Scottish PSC asks others to join us in the spirit of the stated objectives of the official Holocaust Commemoration Day:
- "achieve understanding of fundamental human rights and raising awareness of the intolerances and prejudices that still exist in communities across Britain"
- "applying the lessons of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides"
- "remembering the victims of the Holocaust and showing a commitment to opposing discrimination of all kinds"
- "It is important to arrange an event which is relevant and open to everyone – you may wish to involve different community groups in your planning. It is central to the aims of Holocaust Memorial Day that events are as inclusive as possible."
We are therefore inviting all groups and individuals committed to universal human rights to join with us to commemorate the Nazi Holocaust appropriately, i.e. to learn the lessons of what happened and apply them to the crisis of today.
A number of events are being organised in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and elsewhere:
An inclusive round table on the Nazi Holocaust:
- How can we end the British involvement in Foreign genocides?
- Speakers from a number of backgrounds, e.g. Russian, Jewish, Polish, Serb, Gypsy, disabled groups. Other speakers will contribute to a discussion on the significance of the Nazi extermination programme. The discussion will focus on applying the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust to the present day
*Performances of Jim Allen’s play Perdition
Allen's play deals with the issue of the collaboration of the Zionist leadership of the Hungarian Jews with the Nazis during the final year of the war, and the annihilation of the last Jewish community in Nazi-occupied Europe. The initial production directed by Ken Loach was censored by the Royal Court Theatre just before it was due to play.
Tour by historian Lenni Brenner
Brenner is author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, and a contributor to The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Brenner’s work was the basis for the play Perdition Lenni Brenner’s work underpinned Perdition, and he will be available for post performance discussion and debate.