Don’t stand by — HMD2016

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘Don’t Stand By’.

I think back to my trip to the Museum of German Resistance in Berlin in September — a tragic reminder that amid the horror, there were some brave, doomed Germans who refused to be bystanders. Almost inevitably, they were caught and murdered by the regime — often for actions as inconsequential as writing a leaflet or illegally listening to foreign radio.

These people existed all over Germany — even in my home town, Heidelberg, otherwise unfortunately a bastion of National Socialism.

As well as the millions of Jews, gypsies, Slavs, LGBT people, disabled people, communists, socialists, anarchists, liberals, democrats, pacifists, and others, I’m particularly remembering the people who walked the streets of the town I love and paid the ultimate price for resisting a great evil.

People like Josef Lehn — beheaded 10 December 1943 for ‘undermining the war effort’.

Or Oskar Linge — beheaded 20 March 1944 for ‘listening to foreign broadcasters’.

People like Ferdinand Thomas — a communist, beheaded 10 November 1944 for ‘preparing for treason’.

And almost most tragically of all, two young soldiers, Heinrich Schnitzer and Heinrich Aberle, hanged from a lamp post on the Rohrbacherstrasse only days before the liberation in 1945 for refusing to fight.

They certainly didn’t stand by — and they paid the price.

Never forget. Never be a bystander. Death to Fascism — anywhere and everywhere it appears!