‘We must learn from the past’
A DESCENDANT of two Nazi regime survivors has taken a journey to Auschwitz concentration camp.
Ben Balla-Muir, 18, of Wantage Close, Maidenbower signed up to join the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lesson from Auschwitz’ programme after never getting to hear his grandparents’ testimonies first hand.
Ben’s grandfather, a skilled electrician and engineer, kept himself alive in a series of concentration camps thanks to his manual labour for camp commandants.
His grandmother cheated death by jumping backwards into a river and pretended to be dead, unlike many other Jews who became victims of the Einsatzgruppen killing squads on a purge in Hungary.
The sixth form student is a Deputy Member of UK Youth Parliament for Horsham and Mid Sussex.
He wrote an essay to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in January, describing his visit to the camp where 1.1million innocent lives were lost to the Nazis.
Ben said: “My grandmother died before I was born and my grandfather died when I was eight. At that age you don’t have the mental capacity to deal with that kind of graphic information and what really happened.”
Describing his trip, he added: “It felt really cold and you could sense the importance of what had happened. It was a really emotional experience.”
As part of the trip Ben also visited a small Jewish cemetery which lies within a high wall and behind a locked gate.
He said this was because in recent years it had been vandalised with Nazi swastikas sprayed on to gravestones.
He added: “I had learnt this prior to my visit to the site, and it played on my mind during the short time spent there; that people even now had the nerve to insult the memory of a race that just a few hundred metres away from that spot had been partially destroyed.”
Ben said he had since reflected on prejudices developing in modern society and wanted people to recognise their own prejudices.
He said: “I plead that it be recognised how dangerous prejudice is. Ignorance is no longer an excuse and it is no longer acceptable to blame innocent minorities.
“I feel exceptionally lucky that I am alive now, so will not let the efforts of my grandparents’ fight against such hate be in vain.
“We must learn from the past and pledge together to combat prejudice as a society.”
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Crawley
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 26 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Light showers
Temperature: 13 C to 25 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.