麻豆约拍

From Julia Neuberger Senior Rabbi at the west London Synagogue:

This last Sunday, I heard an astonishing interview on the World Service with Ron Jones, the 100 year old man still selling poppies for veterans in South Wales. He was a Prisoner of War in a sub-camp of Auschwitz during World War II. He didn鈥檛 even talk about his experiences until late in life, but he wears a ring made of a bit of steel given to him by a starving Jewish prisoner, Josef, to whom he gave a bit of food from his own meagre rations.

Josef disappeared, presumably murdered in the gas ovens, and Ron Jones could not return the ring to any surviving family, as he never knew his surname.

That would be moving enough, but add in the fact that he, along with other British POWs, tried to sabotage the Germans- he by putting sand into a tank of artificial petrol, others, such as Arthur Dodd and his colleagues, filling pipes with stones. Dodd and co. thought they were about to be found out by the officer in charge- they would all have been shot if so. But just at the moment of discovery, the air raid siren went, and everyone dashed for cover. The pipes exploded, the officers couldn鈥檛 discover the sabotage, and Dodd and his colleagues lived to tell the tale.

What is remarkable is how long it took for them to tell the tale. Ron Jones, Arthur Dodd, Charles Coward and others did not tell their stories immediately after the war. It took them decades. Only now is some of this extraordinary history becoming known.

Many of us don鈥檛 ask our parents and grandparents enough about what they went through. These stories make it clear we should. We need to know what they did. We need to ask questions and persuade them to write their life stories down, before they are lost. The Bible tells us: You shall stand up before the grey haired鈥︹�� In other words, treat the old with respect. But how about the reverse. You shall sit down with the old, and listen to their stories. We could learn so much.