Like all sixteen-year olds my age, irrespective of my race, religion or ethnicity, I worry about normal sixteen-year old things: I worry about whether I have done the right homework and what to wear to the oh-so-important party next Saturday night. i worry about if I can afford those concert tickets that I am desperate to go to, and I worry about if that look that boy gave me that one time meant anything or not.
But unlike most other sixteen-year old girls, I worry about something that is far bigger than any of those trivial things:
As a sixteen year old, Jewish girl, I worry about something far greater- I worry about the rise in anti-Semitism, but particularly, the upcoming neo-Nazi rally as well as their decision to burn some of my most sacred books, and shred my Jewish homeland's flag.
Today, I was most alarmed to be informed that not only were people whoa re hell-bent in destroying the very thing I stand for, coming right to Golders Green in an attempt to belittle and desecrate my religion, but they were not going to stop there. They are also going to burn the books that my ancestry is written on. They are going to burn my history as if that will be effective in obliterating me.
In February I was fortunate enough to visit Poland with my year group. As I walked the paths of my ancestry, who seventy years before me were not as fortunate as I, because whilst I walked those same paths' with my head held high, clutching the arms of my extended family, I knew in my heart that nothing will ever do justice to the fact that, even though I walk free, walking is something amongst so many other things that six million of my brothers and sisters will never do again.
It has now been four months since I have returned from Poland, but it saddens me to say that since my return, I have noticed some alarming details that I feel, given what I have experienced, needs to be addressed.
Not only does this neo-Nazi rally remind me of the persecution suffered at the beginning of the Nazi regime that my brothers and sisters experienced just seventy years ago, but it is the burning of the books that hold the holy presence of my religion that is causing me to write this letter.
I am not asking you to believe in what I believe, but instead I am appealing to the human in you- the human that knows that if we enable this group of neo-Nazi's to have the power and satisfaction of knowing that they can get away with degrading me and my people, then it will empower them to go further and further.
Whilst many people argue that it is only a tiny minority of people that are going to participate in this rally, I see it as something else.
I see the beginnings of an extremely familiar trend that has followed my people round since time has begun. I see the sparks of persecution, and I do not like it. I see a chance for people to add fuel to the fire that should have been extinguished at the very least seventy years ago, when one man's hatred led to the mass annihilation of six million of my people as well as five million other people from all different religions and ethnicity's.
I am appealing to the human in you because i know that most of you reading this, will shake your head at the prospect of a neo-Nazi rally, and will acknowledge the kind of danger that this puts me and my people in, but will go no further than to sympathise with the pleas of a sixteen-year old girl.
I am asking you one simple thing, I am asking you to share this message with everyone, so that we turn a generation of by-standers, into a generation of those who seek to ensure that every person in the UK is living in comfortable safety.
I appeal to you because I know that when someone is killed or something is burnt, we reach out far and wide, and we cry as a country for the life lost and the bloodshed. But when the risk seem smaller and insignificant, people are more reluctant to stand up and put an end to what could be the start of something destructive.
So as I close this letter, I ask you as a sixteen-year old girl, who shares the same likes and dislikes, who goes to school and goes out with her friends, to help me by sharing this post and that hopes to raise awareness for help to protect my people.
I chose not to belittle or to humiliate those who have different views to mine, but to acknowledge them whilst reasserting the importance of my safety as well as my family's.
I ask you to share this post, and join the petition because like all other sixteen-year old girls, I just want to have fun, and not worry that the elimination of my people and what they stand for, is ever imminent.
Thank you,
LF, LR and MG
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