Swindon in the Past Lane

Local MP Robert Buckland, Mayor Ray Ballman and council officials joined those gathered around Swindon’s cenotaph in bitterly cold temperatures and beautiful sunshine to mark Holocaust Day 2012. The ceremony opened with a haunting violin duet played by musicians Debbie and Michael as we were reminded how important music and the arts were to those inside the Nazi death camps. Matt Holland addressed those present to remember the innocent victims of genocide, not only the six million Jews who died during the Second World War but those massacred since in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. By November 1939 the international press had already revealed there was mounting evidence of the plight of Jews in German occupied Poland.  Kept behind barbed wire in huge camps called ‘reservations’ men up to the age of 70 and women up to 55 were made to do 12 hours of forced labour a day with just one thirty minute break.  Children were looked after by the older women where it was reported...

"All the approaches to the Town Hall were densely packed with people," reported the Swindon Advertiser at the unveiling of the cenotaph on Saturday October 30, 1920. "Especially touching was the scene when the relatives of the fallen came forward to deposit their floral tributes at the base of the memorial," the front-page account continued. In his dedicatory speech, Alderman S.E. Walter, Mayor of Swindon, spoke of how "upwards of 6,000 men went out from their homes in Swindon to fight for what they believed to be the liberty and salvation of the world." Anxious to create a lasting memorial to those men, Swindon dignitaries perhaps failed to appreciate the post war hardships families continued to endure. An ambitious scheme launched by the then Mayor, Alderman C.A. Plaister in May 1919 was for a memorial hall. A public appeal was announced and a donation of £100 was made by both Alfred Manners and Major F.P. Goddard to get the ball rolling. Fun...