To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, pupils and staff gathered in our Chapel for a service of reflection and acknowledgment.

“Memory hurts, memory helps, memory guides… without memory you have no history, no point of reference,” were the words said by Piotr Cywinski, Director of the Auschwitz Museum, on Holocaust Memorial Day as a plea to protect the memory of what happened during the Holocaust.

Today, our Chapel service, led by Principal Louise North, urged us to remember the Old Framlinghamians who assisted in the liberation of Auschwitz and helped free the Jewish people, one in particular was Constantin Karadja, a pupil at Framlingham College between 1906 and 1908.

During his two years at Framlingham, Constantin was President of the Debating Society and was noted for his knowledge of languages, speaking English, Swedish, Romanian, German, French, Danish, Norwegian, Latin and Greek.

On leaving the College, he qualified as a barrister at the Inner Temple in London before returning to his native Romania to become a diplomat. He held posts in Budapest, Stockholm, and Berlin.

Through his diplomatic activity, both as Romanian Consul General in Berlin from 1932 to 1941 and as the director of the consular department of the Romanian Foreign Ministry from 1941 to 1944, he saved the lives of thousands of Jews with Romanian nationality in Germany, France, Hungary, Greece and Italy.

His assistance for Jews led to him being labelled as persona non grata by the German authorities and he returned to Romania where he continued to save Jewish lives against the will of his own government, which was allied to the Nazi regime, thereby putting his own life at risk.

After the Second World War, Constantin was in danger from the Communist regime in his country, and he died in 1950 in Bucharest having been denied his pension and stripped of all honours.

It was not until the fall of the Communist regime that Constantin’s actions came to light, and in 2005 he was officially recognised as having put his own life at risk to save 51,000 verifiable Jewish lives – including a train full of children which he had diverted to Romania. His granddaughter submitted the request for his recognition, and he was posthumously awarded the Yad Vashem medal and certificate in 2005.

A core goal of Yad Vashem’s founders was to recognize non-Jews who, at personal risk and without financial or evangelistic motives, chose to save Jews from the ongoing genocide during the Holocaust. Those recognized by Israel are known as the Righteous Among the Nations. They are honoured in a section of Yad Vashem known as the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations. Constantin’s name is engraved on a plaque and on the wall in this garden.

It is said that he was influenced by his humanistic and juridical education to constantly follow the principles of international law respecting human rights. He persevered in the protection of the rights of the citizens under his care regardless of their ethnicity or religion.

Closing our service, Ms. North said: “I hope that we can all take some inspiration from Constantin Karadja. I hope that whatever adversity we may face in our lives, we might remember the selfless courage shown by this particular OF and find the same within ourselves. We are capable of infinitely more than we believe, we are stronger and more resourceful than we know, and we can endure much more than we think.”