Lest we forget...

Deep within a museum in Washington DC there is a room. Resting on the three-floor-high walls of this room are one thousand photographs. They do not make you smile, nor do they evoke joyful reminiscence. They make you angry. Bitter. Sad.

This room is called the Tower of Faces. Every picture that lines this room tells the story of a lost soul. A lost life. They tell us about the Holocaust.

The Holocaust was a defining moment that will live on in the walls of that room, that museum. It will exist in the pages of faded, yellowing textbooks. It will reach out to the farthest branches on family trees, through generations.

It will survive within hearts and minds.

And yet there are those who do not see those faded pages. Those who fail to recognise the cruel imagery that we now equate with such a shameful period of our history. Roman Catholic Bishop, Richard Williamson questioned the true extent of the Holocaust during an interview last month whereby he argued ‘there were no gas chambers and only 300,000 Jews died in the concentration camps.’

The sheer ignorance of this statement angers me to unimaginable heights of fury. Not only does it prove Williamson extremely uneducated but demonstrates a blatant disregard for Holocaust survivors and their families. Such distorted views comes three years after historian David Irving was imprisoned for Holocaust denial.

But I wonder how this is possible. How can one ignore a vast piece of our history? How can one deny the evidence? Memoirs. Photographs. Rows of mismatched shoes; sole less and scuffed. Piles of spectacles, twisted frames and fractured glass. Emaciated men, bones sharp, skin thin. How?

I’d like Williamson and Irving to stand amongst the tower of faces. I’d like them to look at every single one of those 1,000 photographs. Look into the eyes. Then I’d like them to tell me the Holocaust wasn’t real.