Television worth watching

Shoes
Originally uploaded by MASSIVE DEFEAT.

As many of you know, I don't watch much television - in fact I only really get to see something if it takes my fancy on the BBC iPlayer.

Last week I read an article about Jerry Springer taking part in the BBC series, Who do you think you are?, and so made an effort to watch the programme.

Born in England to Jewish parents he was searching for what happened to his grandparents and his family during the Second World War.

What a moving and humbling programme, I'm not ashamed to say that it made me cry. How could any human being do such things to others? - millions of human lives ended for no reason.

It is stories like these that remind me (as if I needed it) why I am a pacifist, why I can never believe that it is right to take another persons life (under any circumstances), and why war can never, ever be the answer.

The shoes in the photograph are from part of the museum at Auschwitz - a place that I'm not sure I could cope with visiting.

This is something that MUST never be forgotten about, something that every child should be told about and something that we should all learn from.

I like to think that we (the human race) have learnt from something from this hideous period of our history, but I fear we have not.