Holocaust Memorial Day 2019

Today it is 74 years ago since the infamous Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp was liberated by Soviet forces. More than a million people, mainly Jews, were killed there during the Second World War. The process was conducted as an industrial process. To date, some of the goods left behind by the victims of the Holocaust remain on display. These include suitcases with name tags, spectacle frames, hair and shoes. I have never visited Auschwitz and am not likely to.

January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering all the victims of the Nazi's policy of extermination of all those they considered to be sub-human.

Holocaust Memorial Day remembers all victims of genocide.

We must never forget.

Returned

I have spent a week in Holland for family reasons (a pleasant one, I hasten to add), but have now returned to base in Stornoway. Winter has come, although the snow has (for now) melted, and there was no frost last night. We've dipped down below freezing on a few occasions.

Holland


Return journey to Lewis


Stornoway

Fourteen years ago today

Fourteen years ago today, a storm battered the Western Isles of Scotland. I well remember the night, staying in the Ravenspoint Centre in Cearsiadar. Power went off at 6.20pm, and was not restored for 48 hours. A lot of damage was done to property, from Barra to the Butt of Lewis, where gusts of wind upto 130 mph (if not more) occurred. 

However, the storm also claimed lives. Five members, out of three generations, of one family drowned when the two cars they were travelling in were swept away in a storm surge in the South Ford, between Benbecula and South Uist. They had fled their shoreline house at Lionacuidhe, as it was being battered by flying spray and pebbles. Their escape route was a road, paralleling the sea. As they crossed a bridge over the outflow from the inland Loch Bì, the waters from the loch were swept up by force 11 winds, combining with a tidal surge from the sea, which took them away to their deaths. The pictures of the smiling faces of the youngsters, see the below webpage, still haunt me. May they all rest in peace.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4170135.stm

Iolaire

Over the 14 years I have been in Stornoway, I have made much of the maritime tragedy that was the Iolaire Disaster. In brief, in the early hours of 1 January 1919, the depot ship HMY (His Majesty's Yacht) Iolaire was bringing back nearly 300 sailors to Stornoway, after more than 4 years of war service. Upon approaching the entrance to Stornoway harbour, a navigational error drove the ship aground on a reef, the Beasts of Holm. More than 200 of those on board drowned, less than 80 survived. Of those who perished, the bodies of 60 were never recovered. The losses were keenly felt, and the tragedy was barely spoken of. It took 40 years for a memorial to be erected, on the shore above the place where the ship went down. It took a full century for a national commemoration to be organised.

In the evening of 31st December 2018, a torchlight procession wound its way through the streets of Stornoway. There were 201 torches, one for each man lost. I have never seen so many people in the town centre, on any occasion.





At 1.55 in the morning of 1st January 1919, sixty people met at the Iolaire Memorial on Holm Point, and a brief vigil was held. The RNLI lifeboat shone a light on the marker that stands on the Beasts of Holm reef, and the Coastguard provided lights for people to walk from the carpark to the memorial. The time was the exact time 100 years before when the Iolaire struck the reef.





At midday, some five hundred people congregated at the memorial. Prince Charles, the Lord of the Isles, read from the Bible and laid a wreath on behalf of the nation. A quarter of a mile offshore, the ferry Loch Seaforth was the scene of a separate commemoration, which resulted in 201 carnations being cast into the water by schoolchildren. A local diver went down to the remnants of the wreck to affix a wreath.



Stornoway has been very quiet since then.

Lockerbie

July 1981. On my way north with family for the annual holiday. After a late afternoon break in the long journey in Swaledale, we crossed the Scottish border at 6pm. As we headed north up the A74, an all enveloping horror made me lie down on the back seat. I cannot explain what it was about, or why. But after I had given in to my emotion, I looked up again and asked where we were. "Lockerbie", came the answer, and I saw the sign for the A709 turn-off to Lockerbie and Lochmaben flash by.

The same sign that can be seen in the footage from December 1988. The location where parts of the plane came down. Don't ask me to explain the coincidence. I can't. In 1988, I was a student in Holland, and given to watch rubbish on the television. That evening, the Lockerbie images flashed by - and that road sign. A74 Glasgow, the North - A709 Lockerbie, Lochmaben. The documentaries that were shown these past few days were traumatic to watch. The eye witnesses that spoke were moved to tears, even after all those years. I'm no better. May the innocent victims of Lockerbie, from the plane, or on the ground, all rest in peace.

Losses

It has been a hard six weeks for me. Since the start of November, I have learned of the loss of five people. Four of these were purely on-line contacts, but that does not make their death any easier to bear.

Donna Diggins of Buffalo, NY (USA)
Donna was one of my oldest on-line contacts, and like the two to follow, was part of the J-land blogging community. She was one of its pillars, and keenly missed.


Merry Kenyon of Mason City, IA (USA)

Jimmy Sullivan of Miami Lakes, FL (USA)

Jo Forstrom of Claremont, NH (USA)

Jo was a fellow poet, and always encouraged me, if only through a few words, to carry on writing. 

Sophia Dale of Berneray, originally from Australia

I have posted extensively following Sophia's passing, and am only just about beginning to come to terms with her loss. I did meet her in person. 

Gilets jaunes

Following a discussion with one of my local FB contacts, I have an idea. Why don't we start a yellow-vest movement in the UK (along the lines of France, minus the violence) to protest against a political system that is no longer fit for purpose.

Conservatives: the clue is in the first three letters of their name. Brexit is a con, a ruse to plaster over the festering sore that's existed within the Tory party for 45 years.

Labour is labouring under its own principles, under a leader to whom Constructive Ambivalence is attributed - who has not got the strength of purpose to speak out for what he really stands for. Anti-semitism, anti-EU, anti-everything, he's only interested in a campaign, not in the end result. And neither does the party have the strength to take him to task over it.

Finally, the Scottish National Party strives for independence; I think it's time Scotland was independent of the SNP. They stand for nothing else.