Holocaust memorial day, various events are being held across the South

V2 Radio News Editor Philip Keeler covers current events in the South, while also reflecting on historical lessons this Holocaust Memorial Day. Asking has humanity truly grasped the lessons from one of history’s darkest periods in history?

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the soldiers of the First Ukrainian Front.

On this Holocaust Memorial Day, various events are being held across the South.

A flag-raising ceremony will take place in Portsmouth. In the evening, landmarks, including the Guildhall, Spinnaker Tower, and the City Museum, will be lit in purple as a tribute to those who perished and survived.

In Chichester, local schoolchildren will take part in "The Last Train to Tomorrow," a moving production at the Minerva Theatre. Composed by Carl Davis, the opera recounts the harrowing journeys of children who fled to safety in London via the Kindertransport.

The rest of this article is not for the faint hearted; but it is a fact of history which should be told to each and every generation. Let's now take you back to what happened on the 27th of January 1945 - Soldiers of the Soviet Army's First Ukrainian Front arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau; they were met with scenes that would sear the memory of humanity forever. 

Upon entering the gates, the liberators encountered a grim spectacle of survival and death. Auschwitz, a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, had become a central site in the Holocaust's machinery of mass murder. The soldiers found around 7,000 surviving prisoners, most of whom were emaciated, suffering from disease, and in a state of near-death from starvation and brutal treatment.

The physical conditions of the camp were horrific. Rows of barracks, hastily constructed and bitterly cold, had become the fragile shelters for the thousands who had not perished from the gas chambers, forced labor, starvation, or disease. The ground was littered with the personal belongings of the millions who had been brought through the camp—suitcases, shoes, eyeglasses—all remnants of the lives violently interrupted and destroyed.

The evidence of mass murder was undeniable. The liberators found mounds of human hair, piles of eyeglasses, and mountains of shoes, including those of children. Most chilling were the gas chambers and crematoria, still containing the remains of victims who had been exterminated shortly before the liberation. The air was thick with the smell of death, and the structures stood as stark testaments to the industrialized killing that had occurred.

The impact on the soldiers was profound. Many were left in stunned silence, grappling with the scope of the atrocities committed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The sights and stories of survivors, coupled with the tangible evidence of genocide, underscored a brutal reality that would define the legacy of the Holocaust: an unparalleled act of evil meticulously executed under the guise of ideology. 

80 years ago today, the world bore witness to the liberation of Auschwitz, a pivotal moment that begged humanity to reflect and learn from the profound depths of its cruelty. Yet, as we commemorate this anniversary, we must confront a pressing question: Has humanity truly learned from this dark chapter in history? While some strides toward peace and understanding have been made, conflicts such as the bloody wars in Yugoslavia, in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East, the persistent tensions between Israel and Gaza, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggest otherwise.

As part of my university dissertation, I interviewed a cameraman who once worked for a major television network, documenting the atrocities in Yugoslavia. He described the perilous conditions he faced while filming in a war-torn environment. During my interview, he shared a moment that led him to leave his TV career: he had captured the heart-wrenching moment when a sniper fatally shot a child. The child's gaze met the camera lens in his final moments, a haunting image that profoundly impacted him. Overwhelmed by the horrors he had witnessed he decided he could no longer continue work.

Recent reports from Ukraine are particularly disturbing, with evidence of mass burials and civilians being tortured and systematically executed by Russian forces. These atrocities occur in an era where technology holds the potential to foster unprecedented levels of communication, understanding, and good. Yet, it seems that for some, destruction remains the only option.  A lesson still unlearned: the essential value of human life and the urgent need for empathy and solidarity to prevent history's darkest events from repeating over and over again.