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On Holocaust Memorial Day

“They are all our mothers and sisters, you would not be able to learn or play in freedom today, you may not have been born, if such women had not stood their slender bodies before you and your future, throughout the Fascist terror” – Odette Hallowes on the female spies of the Special Operations Executive.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, where the horrors of NAZI Germany are rightly taught throughout institutions across Great Britain, I would like to encourage people to pay attention to the role of the brave women who served with the Special Operations Executive and through whose bravery and commitment, paved the way for the liberation of Europe.

Unlike conventional soldiers, the Special Operations Executive were charged with the task of “setting Europe ablaze”, on the instruction of Winston Churchill, and being parachuted behind enemy lines to assist the war effort, also proved to be an essential life line to the European resistance movements.

As agents for an “unconventional outfit”, these ordinary women were not treated to the same rules of engagement or even categorised as Prisoners of War. If captured by NAZI officers and alongside every person who was fighting Fascism behind enemy lines, they ran the ultimate risk of facing torture by the Gestapo and then execution, alongside other prisoners in concentration camps.

While millions of people experienced one fight against the NAZI’s, these women braved the streets of Europe every single day, the constant fear of informants, making sure that communications with the allies was maintained, infiltration, organising landing sites and often using methods of sabotage, that for many would seem unusual, for a woman in 1940’s Britain.

There are names, which on Holocaust Memorial Day we have a duty to remember, like Noor Inyat Khan, who as codename “Madeleine”, was the first British female radio operator to be parachuted into NAZI controlled France and was later executed in the Dachau Concentration Camp.

Women such as Violette Szabo, who was executed at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp, along with many other women, who also served for the Special Operations Executive.

When the German officers sentenced SOE agent Odette Hallowes to death in 1943, I wonder if they ever contemplated, that after the war, this British woman would stand in a military uniform and in front of a court of law, would testify to having directly experienced the same treatment and brutality as every other prisoner of the Concentration Camps, whilst giving a voice to the millions who perished.

Hussein Al-alak
e-mail: iraq_campaign@yahoo.co.uk
Homepage: http://totallyhussein.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/on-holocaust-memorial-day.html

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

No!

27.01.2013 13:04

We reject the heirarchy and its crazed excuses for the epic human failure it was involved in during that time. We reject its excuses when trying to justify the dozens of millions of deaths it was responsble for. During that time, there were no heroes, no villains, no fascists, no excuses, no apologies which can justify the appalling brutality conducted freely by all those involved in what is now recognised as humanities darkest period.

The 'Holocaust' is unimportant. It is unimportant because the act of promoting the deaths of one group above the importance of another group is as vile a thing to do as the killing itself. The truth is that those generations freely engaged in slaughter that ended the lives of almost 1/5th of the population of Europe. Normally, that kind of death toll is reserved for general disease. That generation have taught us to believe that the Holocaust must be remembered, must be celebrated, must be permanently stuck to ous identity and our history. but of what use is that but to keep its memory alive so that we all 'know what to do' the next time this political failure appears.

It is wrong to lionise those involved in what was mankinds greatest failure. It is wrong to create heroes and heroines from the muck of war. In war, everybody is a coward. The survivors are the greatest cowards of all.

We live in the post-war period. This period is one in which the sorry excuse for current political discourse is governed by a weak, feeble and aimless political order that does and says only what it thinks it has permission to do and say. The generations that took part in this indiscriminate crime against humanity, are still oppressing us by their mere presense. They are violent, racist and deeply degenerative. Only when that generation have died and finally gone to hell, will we be fully free. Racism only exists in that generation, hatred of foreigners only exists in that generation, violence is routinely justified as normal in that generation. These are the things we have been conditioned by that generation to believe are normal. No part of it is normal. In time, we will all see the truth of this.

Try to see the bigger picture.

The generations that lived during the 1930's, were humanities most villlainous generations. Only in time, will we come to understand just how abnormal they really were!

Why lionise and make heroes of these people, future generations will see these 'heroes' in the same way that you see the Nazi's now.

Do not celebrate or remember an event that has no meaning. Genocide, is for generation genocide.

It is not for us.

anonymous

You've been had!

27.01.2013 15:44

The Jewish holocaust is just a BIG lie. It was invented to cover up the real holocaust
of non-jewish bourgeoisie in the Ukraine (Holodnor), when the Zionist Bolsheviks tried to exterminate all the property-owning kulaks, a form of pure Marxism.
It was also designed to cover up the real holocaust of German POWs and civilians after
the war had supposedly ended (Thomas Goodrich,Hellstorm).
The Zionist bankers know that if they embroil you in conflict it means that your government will need to borrow money, so that they can then take control of your bank.
This is how they control Britain and France, and why they are always trying to attack
Germany, because Germany is such a powerful economy.
Hitler used Russian prisoners as forced labour so that they woudn't need to pay any
of the workers so that Germany woudn't need to borrow as much as we would and end
up in debt to a Zionist bank as much as Britain,France and the United States would.
This is why Germany had so many labour camps and is why Germany recovered from
the war more quickly than we did.
If you care to visit Auschwitz you will notice that the signs are all in Russian, not Yiddish!

Freddy Truthfairy

Greg

27.01.2013 17:26

No, because of people like you who throw around the phrase 'Holocaust Denial', is this page no good anymore - these people arent denying the holocaust they are asking that people now look beyond that to see the lies they hide behind it, the truth is the Israelis (whether jewish or not) are the cause behind this, look at the spanking that British MP got for speaking his mind?

MrP

Never Again

28.01.2013 13:51

“Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”
― Primo Levi

Never Again.

Again and again.

28.01.2013 17:51

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"Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”
― Primo Levi
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"What do you despise? By this you are truly known."
- Michelangelo