In the name of God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

In 2001, 27th January was chosen as Holocaust Memorial Day.  This date marks the liberation of the concentration and extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where over 1 million Jewish people were killed by the Nazis; that there is not an exact number is shocking.  This year is the 80th anniversary of that liberation.  It is also the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.  

Last January I had a week of long service leave from school.  The plan of several years was to visit the Holy Land, but for obvious reasons I had to make alternative arrangements.  The week turned into a trip to Holy Island, with a visit to the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in a tiny village in Nottinghamshire.  Its name is Beth Shalom, House of Peace.  The Smith family ran a Christian retreat centre, and after visiting the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem in Israwl, they decided there was insufficient opportunities for people in this country to learn about the holocaust, and so the idea for the National Holocaust Centre and Museum was born.  It is quite remote, but well worth a visit, The National Holocaust Centre and Museum.  During my trip I also saw the film about Nicholas Winton, One Life.  I can recommend it to you, One Life (2023 film) - Wikipedia.

Our school runs a religious studies and history trip to Poland, a trip I have been on 5 times, and led 3 of them.  Each time we spend the day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and each time is a shocking, harrowing, humbling experience that leaves you feeling numb.  The scale and organisation of these camps is sobering.  During the last visit, they had carried out some building work on the route to the entrance.  To reach the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ / ‘work will set you free’ gates, you walk through a tunnel with speakers that are reading out names of those who died in the camps on a constant loop.  One of the buildings on the tour has walls lined with photos of the prisoners.  On each visit I look at them.  You cannot look away.  So many of them do not have anyone to remember them.  It is the least we can do.

Before the group leaves for the day, I talk to the pupils and tell them how much I admire them for being willing to confront the worst things humans can do to each other, that they are very brave to do so, but they cannot unknow what they learn that day.  It is a watershed experience.  You are changed.  Frankly, this is how it should be.  That there are still Holocaust deniers breaks my heart.

Yet it is in the times of the greatest horrors that we can witness – or experience – some of the greatest bravery and compassion.  On the trip we also visit the Oskar Schindler Factory Museum,  Oskar Schindler's Enamel Factory - Museum of Krakow.  We learn about Schindler, an accidental hero, who saved the lives of around 1200 Jewish workers at his enamel factory.  Our tour guides at the museum and at Auschwitz talk about how weddings took place in the camp.  Despite the hardships, life continued.  And not all Jews abandoned their belief in God.  In fact, it helped many to keep enduring the unimaginable.

This evening’s readings are rather apt for this topic.  Our Old Testament reading speaks of a camp, of moving around according to God’s wishes about how we should treat what is most holy.   

The reading from Numbers talks about how the Israelites were dependent on God, moving the tabernacle around as per his instructions.  “Whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, then the Israelites would set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the Israelites would camp.”  That utter dependence on God is something that they chose, it was part of their covenant relationship.

In the lead up to being sent to camps, Jewish people were moved from their homes, had their possessions stolen, lost their jobs, freedoms, were forced into manual labour, lived in smaller camps before deportation to places like Auschwitz.  They were utterly without freedom, through no choice or fault of their own.  This was because Hitler and his ideology of an Aryan race, who saw himself as the saviour of Germany.  We put leaders on pedestals at our peril.

Our New Testament reading refers to slavery.  Paul talks about God calling us as we are, as in he can refine what needs refining, and Paul is saying non-Jewish Christians do not have to become Jewish before they are welcomed into the Christian faith.  The exception he makes is if you were originally a slave.  “For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ.  You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of human masters.”  

Many German companies did well out of the slave labour from concentration camps, including BMW, Bayer, I G Farben, Shell and Siemens.  That slavery of any kind exists today is an abomination.  What can we do to stop it?  Check the ethics of the companies you buy from.  If, for example, Temu, the goods are incredibly cheap, this means they are not paying fair wages.  When this sermon appears on the website, there is a link to the C of E’s advice page on modern slavery: Modern Slavery Resources | The Church of England

This evening’s anthem, Totus Tuus, was written by the Polish composer, Henryk Gorecki, in 1987 to celebrate Pope John Paul II’s visit to Poland.  JPII, Karol Josef Wojtyla was Archbishop of Krakow, and he is still much beloved there.  The text was used by the pope for his personal devotion to Mary.  It is described as having ‘unabashed simplicity and undisguised roots in Polish Catholic chant.’

Totus Tuus sum Maria,/Mater nostri Redemptoris,/Virgo Dei, Virgo pia,/ Mater mundi Salvatoris

I dedicate myself to you, O Mary,/Mother of our Redeemer,/Virgin of God, virgin holy,/Mother of the Saviour of the world.

Gorecki is particularly well known for his Symphony No.3, the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Gorecki Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.  It is a solo soprano singing Polish texts in each of the three movements.  The first is a lament of Mary, mother of Jesus, the second words written on the wall of a Gestapo cell during WWII, and the third, a folk song of a mother searching for her son killed during the uprisings in Silesia in 1921.

Gorecki was asked to write music exploring the Holocaust in the 1960s, but he was unable to finish any of the pieces; it is too enormous a task to do that, perhaps?  How do you do it?  How do you express something so abhorrent?  Yet with the Sorrowful Songs, by focusing on the small, the intimate, the relationship between three women and their children, he communicates so much emotion; many people associate this symphony with the sorrows of the Holocaust.  You can feel the passion, the pain, the prayer in his music. Gorecki endured many health problems and said that he had ‘talked to death often.’  I think you can hear this in both Totus tuus and the Sorrowful Songs.  

Górecki said of the work, "Many of my family died in concentration camps. I had a grandfather who was in Dachau, an aunt in Auschwitz. You know how it is between Poles and Germans. But Bach was a German too—and Schubert, and Strauss. Everyone has his place on this little earth. That's all behind me. So the Third Symphony is not about war; it's not a Dies Irae; it's a normal Symphony of Sorrowful Songs." 

The world continues to experience sorrowful songs; genocides are still happening.  Sadly, there has been a rise in antisemitism.  Between 7th October 2023 and 2024, 5,500 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the UK alone, three times as many as in the previous 12-month period.  

At the end of teaching a unit on Judaism to Year 8, we explore antisemitism, Anne Frank, and the Holocaust, finishing with a Holocaust Memorial Design project.  The most impressive ones are not necessarily the most artistically able but show the presence of hope somewhere amidst the horror.  

The mood of the psalm is one of hope.  “Indeed, our heart rejoices in him”.  Last weekend I was at the Readers’ Conference, which was being led by the Anglican Order of Hopeweavers.  I think as people of faith we have a unique role where we can weave hope into all situations.  We rejoice in the news of a ceasefire and return ofhostages.  We can support the work of Corrymeela CorrymeelaCommunity - Corrymeela, and join the Community of the Cross of Nails based at Coventry Cathedral Community of the Cross of Nails.  

This week a documentary has been released on Sky and some other channels called The Lost Music of Auschwitz, ‘Why would an orchestra exist in this hell?’ Inside The Lost Music of Auschwitz | Television | The Guardian. Over the last 10 years, Leo Geyer has worked on trying to bring back to life some of the music composed in the camp.  Orchestras would play as workers left for work and as they returned at the end of the day.  Geyer talks about how the Nazis ‘weaponised’ music, forcing them to play upbeat tunes.  Yet, there were dissonances in the melodic lines, and passages in a minor key.  An act of rebellion that both explored the horrors of their reality and gave them some hope.

I want to end with a quotation from the Holocaust Memorial Day website, Holocaust Memorial Day Trust: “80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and 30 years since the genocide in Bosnia, we must become the generations who carry forward the legacy of the witnesses, remember those who were murdered, and challenge those who distort or deny the past, or who discriminate and persecute today.  We can all mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 and commit to making a better future for us all.”  

Amen.