John Key, the Holocaust and his mother
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has told an Auckland meeting commemorating United Nations Holocaust Memorial Day about his mother’s escape from Nazi Europe.
John Key, PM NZ; Perry Trotter, Shadows of Shoah Founder; Inge Woolf, Director Holocaust Centre of NZ; Robert Narev MNZM; Shadows of Shoah Chairman
pic: www.shadowsofshoah.com
Around 200 people heard the Prime Minister tell the story of her flight to England in 1938 from her native Vienna.
He said that she did not want to teach him German and that she would cry on hearing news stories of the WWII atrocities.
The meeting was attended by Israel’s ambassador to New Zealand Shemi Tzur and several Holocaust survivors.
Sydneysider John Weiss, who was born in New Zealand, was at the meeting. He told J-Wire: “I went to the ceremony this morning – it was very moving and well done. John Key was wonderful He didn’t use prepared notes – spoke from the heart about his mother and her experiences.”
Fir the first time the liberation of Auschwitz was commemorated in two cities in New Zealand.
Vera Egermayer survived the Terezin concentration camp as a child and spoke at the other meeting in Wellington. She told the meeting: “Last December, 20 young children were shot dead in a school in the United States. The world reacted with dismay- horror-outrage-shock- disgust-it was literally sickening. There are no stronger words, in any language, for such diabolical events. So how can we possibly encompass the murder of 1 and a half million children ? It is beyond words and beyond the scope of our emotions- we are left speechless and numb. Yet no human being can afford to forget this indelible stain on our very humanity.
There are many ways of remembering. A gathering like this is one-books have been written- artworks created- films produced—museums and Centres such the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand- have been set up.
We can also remember through memorials.
A tree planted in Jerusalem – a cobble stone with a name set in the pavement in front of a house- a plaque in a cemetery where there is no grave- these are all memorials that I have put up for my own perished family in Prague. The sites of suffering such as Terezin the camp where I was interned as a 4 year old child have become memorials in themselves as has Auschwitz .
I have recently visited Auschwitz. As I stood frozen on the selection ramp I remembered members of our Community in Wellington who had stood there almost 70 years before me- Hanka Pressburg- Sofia Galler-Clare Winter. And I thought about all the frightened and bewildered children who were dispatched to instant death from that very ramp. And I thought how close I had come to being one of them.
The Nazis initially had no specific mission to exterminate children- they did not think that children mattered- children were a just nuisance to them when they appeared in the transports- they cried-they could not follow orders-they could not work- they created panic when you tried to separate them from their parents. So how can you get grown men and women- often parents themselves- to kill children? After all, children are innocent- they cannot be accused of all the vices with which antisemitism habitually stigmatises Jews. As the persecution progressed, the Nazi propaganda machine developed a perverse narrative. The story went as follows: if you let Jewish children live, one day they will wish to avenge their murdered families and will kill YOUR children in generations to come. So by killing Jewish children you are actually saving your own.
Vera Egermayer
That is why there was a frenzy of child killing towards the end of the war. Jewish orphanages became a target for transports- they were meant to be safe havens but they turned into reservoirs from which children could be conveniently plucked. This is a reminder of my own deportation to Terezin from a children’s home in Prague in 1945. Fortunately the war ended- I survived and we were able to emigrate to New Zealand as a family afterwards. I will not be symbolised in New Zealand’s memorial to the 1.5 million and that is one of the reasons why I am committed to its completion- to getting it built.
I have been spreading the word about the memorial on behalf of the HCNZ in a number of countries such as France, Poland, the Czech Republic, England and Norway and we have received endorsement from many prestigious individuals and institutions.
The Holocaust is still with us today- it affects all humanity across time and space and it addresses all generations. That is why the children of a small school in New Zealand were able to identify with children, like themselves , whose lives were cut off before they could be lived- decades previously in distant lands. And that is why they decided go beyond sentiment and take action.
The children who perished will be brought out of the shadow of history through New Zealand’s Button Memorial to the Children of the Holocaust and their lives will be validated. As a child who was spared, and as a New Zealander, I see this as a personal victory.
