Irish Examiner View: We must keep lessons of history alive

Holocaust fades from memory

Mary Elmes (center) and Alice Resch photographed with another man, fellow heroes who helped rescue Jewish children from occupied France. Photo: afsc.org

Like playwright Oscar Wilde, Sir Winston Churchill has earned his ranking on the list of most-quoted people in history. One of his more memorable lines was recalled this week to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force campaign that fought off sustained attacks from the Luftwaffe, Nazi Germany’s air force, in the summer and autumn of 1940.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” the then prime minister said of the pilots who are commemorated annually on Battle of Britain Day which fell on Tuesday.