In late 1940, my Aunt Joan was a novice nun who, because of the occupation of France, was not able to take her vows in a nunnery [?] just outside
Paris.
At the tender age of 17, she was a simple runner, taking verbal notes between resistence groups.
Just before her 18th birthday, her group was betrayed by a 'loyal and brave Frenchman'.
Taken to Cinqe Avenue Foch, the Gestapo HQ, she was repeatedly raped, tortured and beaten.
Transferred to Ravensbruck, my aunt only survived because she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen 'as a possible foreigner' whilst her records
were checked through the Red Cross.
She, along with fourty thousand fellow prisoners, were liberated by the British Army in April 1945, between 11-14th.
My personal family history notwithstanding, the Holocaust does not only remember the 4.5 million jews who were murdered.
It also remembers the 1.5 million Polish and Russian POWs; the foreign political prisoners who were either shot out of hand or gassed in motor
coaches.
Also remembered are the half million or so Romany Gypsies, travellers and other socially or politically undesirable opponents of the Nazies.
The holocaust also remembers those victims who were ordained under various religeous orders.
The Nazis had no room for them so they systematically set about erasing them and their history from the face of the earth, starting with those living
in Germany. They were exterminated first.
For those posters who say that some of the people who claim to be Holocaust Survivors are lying, well yes, they could be.
On the other hand, it is possible, just possible that they could have been 3 or 4 year olds on the very last transports to the Death Camps.
We don't know. We weren't there.
For other posters who claim that the creation of the State of Israel was due to the Holocaust, nothing could be further from the truth.
The State of Israel came in to being to aswage the guilt felt by the UK, the USA and other countries, when they refused to accept as refugees, Jews
expelled from Europe under Goering's resettlement programmes.
As for the idiots who tell the Jews to stop bleating and 'get over it', it is just as well that they do bleat now and again.
Least we forget the terrible happenings in the Death and Concentration Camps of Europe, the Middle and Far East; the World War that saw more than 50
million souls lost between 1937 and 1945 - both service personnel and innocent civilians.



