Friday 28 August 2020

A Stone for Srebrenica -25 years on


To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, our local group of Nisa Nashim (Muslim and Jewish women) joined Big Ideas in painting stones.  The stones will be a permanent reminder of the six million Jewish men, women and children murdered in the Holocaust and all other victims of Nazi persecution and to those murdered in subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

The stones from across the United Kingdom will be placed within the foundations of the new UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in London. Each painted stone is a commitment to remember the past and to build a future free from all forms of prejudice, discrimination and hatred.

My stone includes a heart, the Hebrew word Chai and flowers to represent Love, Life and Regeneration:



Pictures of other stones and more information can be found at https://www.big-ideas.org/current-projects/foundation-stones/

Sadly, we haven't learnt from the horrors of the past and persecution still continues today. 

In the words of Eli Wiesel, holocaust survivor: We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”



2 comments:

  1. It really looks that way, doesn't it, when we see what is going on in so many parts of the world; be it women, people of different "races" and ethnic backgrounds, even just of different political or religious views - sadly, we (as a species) have always considered anyone different from ourselves first and foremost a threat. There has never been such a thing as neutrality, not really.

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  2. So many times people say 'never again' and then turn a blind eye to intolerance.

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