The Pear Tree

The Holocaust Memorial Day service in Cardiff yesterday was very moving, as it always is, each year. This year there was a Czech connection: Eva Clarke, a holocaust survivor, described her escape from Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia. Then the Chair of the Ystradgynlais Heritage Forum described how a sole pear tree that survived the Gestapo’s razing to the ground of the village of Lidice near Prague now has a connection with the little village of Cwmgiedd in South Wales. A cutting of that tree was transferred to the Welsh village where a new pear tree is presently growing. It is a symbol of great hope out of terrible adversity.