Holocaust Memorial Day – (By Preet Shirgill – Guru Gobind Singh Khalsa College)
Six candles had been lit marking the Holocaust Memorial Day. This ceremony had taken place at the London Stadium ahead of the Hammers game against Crystal Palace. The candle lighting ceremony is performed as means to represent the six million Jewish people, who had lost their lives during World War Two because of the Nazi regime. Although the ceremony was publicly carried out by the local Mayor – Sir Robin Wales and five other authorities; Most Jewish people took this time to visit their local Synagogue and perform their own ceremony in remembrance of their ancestors, who were murdered simply for, “Being who they were,” according to the Mayor. This Memorial Day is a reminder that discrimination has always existed and so I decided to visit a Jewish Synagogue as a way to bring a small but impactful change in the world. My visit had surely surprised me as I found myself standing in midst of people who were not only Jewish but of different race and culture. I found myself talking to a Christian lady who had told me, “It was time to stop race creating a divide and to unite as no matter how different we are; when we are cut, we all bleed the same colour - red.” Her message may be confusing to some however, I understood that she had been trying to convey that before anything we are all human and so we should stick together, care for one another and think of each other as unique and different and not strange or weird.
