The Queen has pledged to “never forget” the atrocities of the Holocaust and called for a “more tolerant future”, at an event ahead of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Camilla spoke as she attended the annual lunch of the Anne Frank Trust, an educational charity founded by family and friends of the diarist’s father, Otto Frank, on Thursday in central London. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:30...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:34...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:38...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:42...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:46...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:50...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:54...our chairperson, Jim Holt, our founding vice-president...
00:59Where am I supposed to be?
01:01I'm in the right place. I'm in the right place.
01:17Thursday, 25th May 1944.
01:21Dearest Kitty, the world's been turned upside down.
01:25The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells.
01:30While the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor.
01:36Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next.
01:43Yours, Anne M. Frey.
01:56Thank you very much.
02:00You can smile, it's OK.
02:03I'm quite nervous actually.
02:06It's always nerve-wracking getting up and speaking.
02:09I've got to get up and speak.
02:11I don't like it.
02:13I thought she was brilliant.
02:15But do you think she was brilliant?
02:19So where's the school?
02:22What?
02:28I ran a previous college in Barnsley.
02:30Oh, in Barnsley.
02:32And this is a member of my staff who has worked with the two girls.
02:36They've been with us for six years now and I'm proud of them.
02:52Oh, sorry.
03:05Do I like mine now?
03:08Eric was aged 11 when the Nazis invaded his home country of Poland in 1939.
03:15Most of his family were murdered.
03:18Eric survived a ghetto and several concentration camps including Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.
03:26Where liberation came.
03:30No, no, no.
03:36Survivors of the Holocaust.
03:38Survivors of genocide.
03:40Ladies and gentlemen.
03:42As patron of the Anne Frank Trust UK, it's an honour and a privilege to join you to remember the victims of Shoah and the genocide since the end of the Second World War.
03:56It's also an opportunity to renew our commitment to two simple but powerful words.
04:03Never forget.
04:06This year we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the death of Anne Frank in Bergen-Belsen at the age of 15.
04:15Had she lived, she would be 95.
04:19Miraculously, her father Otto survived.
04:23He had been one of the 7,000 people freed on the 27th of January, 1945, when the Soviet army marched under the gates of Auschwitz that bore the sign Arbeit Lach Frei.
04:37Work makes one free.
04:40Words, as I've just now said, have power.
04:44Those at the gates of Auschwitz represent one of the history's greatest and most evil lies.
04:51But Anne, they've always said, offer truth, comfort and hope.
04:57A year before she died, she made a promise in her diary.
05:01I'll make my voice heard.
05:03I'll go out into the world and work for mankind.
05:08She was never to do so in person.
05:11However, over subsequent decades, and thanks to Otto's tireless efforts, Anne's diary has become the enduring embodiment of that promise.
05:22We can only guess what she would have made of her legacy.
05:26Yet her story demonstrates that even the quietest, loneliest voice in the wilderness can change the world.
05:35That is the true power of words.
05:38Anne's life and death continue to inspire an anti-prejudice movement across the globe, including the Anne Frank Trust here in Britain.
05:49Last year, you reached 126,000 young people in this country alone, with your distinctive combination of Holocaust history, educational biodiscrimination and youth empowerment.
06:04I'm proud to be your patron, and grateful to all of you who support the Trust in this fight for work.
06:20Five years ago, I heard another survivor, Marian Turski, a Polish Jew, speak at a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
06:33During his testimony, Marian said this.
06:38I should not be telling you about the very worst experience, the tragedy of being separated from my nearest loved ones and sensing what awaited them after the selection.
06:49I want to talk to the generation of my daughter and the generation of my grandchild about themselves.
06:56Don't be complacent whenever you see the past being misused for current political purposes.
07:04Don't be complacent whenever any kind of minority is discriminated against.
07:10Democracy itself lies in the fact that the right of minorities must be protected.
07:16Don't be complacent, because if you become complacent, before you know it, some kind of Auschwitz will suddenly appear from nowhere and befall you and your descendants.
07:30Today or ever, with the levels of antisemitism at their highest level for a generation, and the disturbing rises in Islamophobia and other forms of racism and prejudice, we must heed this warning.
07:45The deadly seeds of the Holocaust were sown at first in small acts of exclusion, of aggression and of discrimination towards those who had previously been neighbours and friends.
08:00Over a terrifying short period of time, those seeds took root through the complacency of which we can all be guilty, of turning away from justice, of ignoring that which we know to be wrong, of thinking that someone else will do what's needed, and remaining silent.
08:24Let's unite in our commitment to take action, to speak up, and to ensure that the words never forget our guiding light that charts the path towards a better, brighter and more tolerant future for us all.
08:39As I wrote in my diary on 7th May 1944, what is done cannot be undone, but at least one can prevent it from happening again. Thank you.