In his
video message to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, the Archbishop urges us to
speak on ‘behalf of the neighbour and on behalf of stranger’ as part of this
year’s theme of Speak
Up, Speak Out:
‘Holocaust
Memorial Day brings back to our minds the appalling consequences of a situation
where people don’t speak for the neighbour and don’t speak for the stranger;
where people are only concerned about their own security, their own comfort
zones.’
He goes on
to say ‘in our commemoration this year we are encouraged to challenge ourselves:
who do we speak for? Are we willing to speak for the neighbour and for the
stranger, for people like us and also people who are not like us? Are we willing
to take risks alongside one another?’
Archbishop
Rowan describes how, during a recent visit to Congo,
he spoke with people about their experience of living through
genocide:
‘I heard
there something of the experience of people who have lived through genocide of
another kind – people who didn’t know and couldn’t rely on the fact that there
were others to speak for them. And yet there were some; there were signs of
hope, and even the slightest difference in the middle of such a catastrophic
situation is of the greatest importance - a sign of grace, a sign of
God.’
In
commemorating the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Council
of Christians and Jews - the UK's oldest national Jewish/Christian interfaith
organisation - Dr Rowan Williams cites one of the founders, Archbishop William
Temple, who had ‘come to the conclusion that he had to learn to speak for a
stranger’. In 1943, Archbishop William Temple argued in the House of Lords
that the West should combat the atrocities against Jews in Nazi Germany, he also
argued that Jews should be given sanctuary as refugees in the
UK due to their persecution
during the Holocaust.
Looking
ahead to the witness that will be taken forward into the next generation, the
Archbishop expresses his hope that the ‘several decades of intense friendship
and relationship building’ shown by CCJ will continue to
develop.
‘Our words
may not be very loud, they may not instantly change everything, but they will
change something: they will change us, they will change at least one neighbour -
they will make some strangers into neighbours. And that is profoundly and
eternally worth doing.’
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