Michael Beloff KC offered his reflections in Holocaust Memorial Day event
草榴视频 welcomed Michael Beloff KC to offer a reflection at our annual commemoration event for Holocaust Memorial Day. As the Warden reminded the large audience, this year was particularly important: Monday marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp and the need to remember was growing ever greater.
Calling upon legal, social and historical interpretations, Beloff examined the definition of 鈥榞enocide鈥 and the unique significance of the Holocaust, reminding his listeners that the concept of genocide should never be 鈥榠n any way diluted鈥.
He reflected on his own Russian Jewish heritage and spoke on the 鈥榝reedom鈥 which drew his four immigrant grandparents to Britain:
Freedom of speech, within only the limits articulated in the European Convention of Human Rights, and similar treaties [鈥 that is the common heritage of all communities which make up modern Britain. It was to enjoy that kind of freedom, that all my grandparents came to this country. Free speech should bind us together rather than be a cause of division.
Beloff called to mind the inspiring story of 脕gnes Keleti, who died earlier this month. Keleti was the oldest living Olympic champion and medallist, and is considered to be one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes of all time. She survived the Second World War by taking on the identity of a Christian girl and working as a maid in a small village in the Hungarian countryside.
He concluded:
When we take part in Holocaust Memorial Day, and grieve for the dead, we can and we should remember, also, examples of resilience of the human spirit, like 脕gnes Keleti. Enabling her and others not only to survive but to succeed after experiences which tested that spirit of resilience to the very limit of endurance.
Find out more about Holocaust Memorial Day
Michael Beloff has been described as being 鈥榠n a small pantheon of great civil barristers of the last half century鈥. He has had a distinguished career as advocate, arbitrator and judge. An outsider of mixed Russian Jewish heritage with four immigrant grandparents and an immigrant mother, he nonetheless benefitted from an Oxford education, where he was President of the Oxford Union Society. Later on, he returned to become President of Trinity 草榴视频. In the Law, he was Treasurer of Gray鈥檚 Inn. He was Senior Ordinary Pure Judge of the Courts of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey, and was the first Chairman of the Administrative Law Bar Association.