Birmingham councillors and Birmingham have a history of not doing the right
thing by ethnic minorities. For example, Birmingham councillors were
involved in an incident when there was a move to stage the first Auschwitz
exhibition in Britain. This was an exhibition specially prepared by the
Auschwitz Museum. In a debate in one of the Council's sub committees about
staging the exhibition in Birmingham, the view was put that the exhibition
could not be staged unless the other view was put. What other view? The
Nazis' justification of what they did as represented by the BNP? The
exhibition was in fact staged in Southwark Cathedral. A footnote to the
staging is what happened when the exhibition returned to Birmingham for
storage before being returned to Poland. It was subject to an arson attack
by Neo Nazis and parts of the exhibition was irreparably damaged. The Poles
were stunned by what happened. If they had known that a man born and bred
in Birmingham had been present in an official Third Reich capacity at the
clearing of the Lublin ghetto and visited a number of the death camps in
1942-43, a fact only recently discovered, perhaps they would have been less
surprised.
Andy Charlesworth
Geography & Environmental Management Research Unit
Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education
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